SEAL WoA '99 Report

Well, before you taste what pics we have, yo should know by now that the show was a success. After initial worries (I went outside with 10 minutes to go before Saturdays opening to see the huge queus, to find about 10 people hanging around), we were inundated with Amigans. All the hard work of many talented and dedicated people pulled off an amazing show (the best yet, at the best venue yet).

Some things went wrong (as they always do), such as the CyberCafe' not cybering...or cafe'ing, but that was due to unforseen circumstances and missing equipment. Simon and Neil tried their utmost to work around these shortcomings (beyond sanity) for two days.
The Games Arena never fully materialised, as Richard Blair (who said that PAUG would handle it) pulled out at practically the last minute. Chris from Kickstart did a damn fine job of getting a few multi-player games running at their stand instead.

Andrew Korn, Andrew Elia and many more were running around like rabid dogs keeping everything going...we owe them all a drink (and probably a massage) after all the hard work they put in to helping everyone and everything else, as well as their own particular stands or projects.

Petro was working hard all weekend to keep the PR side of Amiga boinging along, with alot of help from Axel and the absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous sexy-beast Nicole. (cough). Germany here I come :) literally :). Oops.

Meeting Kermit Woodall (Nova Design); Urban Meuller (Aminet) and his lovely girlfriend (who modelled some boing-ball boxer shorts for us....pics as soon as I grab them off the Hi-8); and many many others was fantastic. Everyone is so down to earth and REAL. Seeing Alan Havemose and Petro again was a joy too. Alan really is a genius, and has the best interests of us all at heart.

The announcement was more like a freaky gospel church thingy, with all the clapping, cheering and a few "hallelujah's" and "praise the lord's" thrown in as well. It was very uplifting, if a bit tacky at times (just like sex really, sometimes..so we can't complain :).
By now you all know that Transmeta is the processor (even if they couldn't actually say it...it was on the video), and Corel and Sun are major partners. Oh, and Linus Torvalds is heavily involved in helping Amiga re-write the Linux kernal and bits so that it's much better and tighter, cleaner and meaner...especially for the Amiga os (although as Alan kept pointing out...it's not the kernal that matters..it could be frosted cornflake-kernal for all it matters...as it's the AmigaObject(TM bla bla) that is the real meat.

QNX reps were at the show in force (about 7 or 8), and I managed to speak to Bill (who's doing the user-environment design) and Brent (PR-dude). Brent gave us a lengthy video interview which we'll MPEG up for you (Just joking Brent :) ...well, I'll transcribe it withing the week and whack Brent up as another SEAL victim.

The show was fantastic, and even the retailers were generally happy (for once). We were happy with the bits and pieces tahat we bought, and I managed to squeeze enough cash out of my tight arse to buy Photogenics 4.1 (get it) , Ibrowse2 upgrade, and a bit of hardware called 'TV Amazing', which I'm hoping will convert VGA-PAL from the Bvision. Expect many reviews and tutorial in the next Clubbed magazine. Meanwhile, get yourselves subscribed to it. There's no excuse..it's great, non-profit, and we deliver all over the world. Click on the clubbed on our main page. Back-issues are also available, for that warm and fuzzy 'full-collection' feeling :).

We'll put up some more pics from Mick's digital camera (Olympus), and some grabs from the video I took, by the end of the week.

Friday 23rd of July 1999...setting up.