Sundown party report.
This year, the same as last year I traveled up to Sundown with Wayne, it's a decent trip from where I live, it's about 3 and a half hours drive. The waether over the weekend was glorious, the beach must have been great, although I was too drunk to go to the beach later on in the night.
On arrival the place was pretty busy. We got there on Saturday, it was impossible to arrive Friday because of family commitments, but by all accounts the atmosphere was excellent on Friday night, we set up in between Spiny of Torment and Andy and Dave from RCM, there was not a lot of room but it was ok, internet was slower than ever this year, as we have come to expect from Sundown (thats part of its charm). We'd also missed the bacon rolls this time, we arrived just a little bit too late for them.
I set about trying to code something to release at the party, I had started on something just before the forum crashed, since that time my efforts have been fully geared into repairing the site, I had my doubts that I would make something in time for the deadline, eventually I came up with a kind of grid thing, Andy from RCM was working on something and so was Littlewhite who later came to sit with us (a really nice guy and a pleasure to meet him! Thanks for greeting DBF in your demo too).
I guess that comparisons have to be drawn to last year and for some reason the comps were very delayed and there were some technological problems with stuff and only a handful of entries for each competition, down in number a lot from last year but there were some real gems in amongst them.
The main thing was the friendly spirit at the party, it is attended by a great bunch, Ruairi was as welcoming as ever and it was good to catch up with some of the people from last year.
Sleeping was an ordeal, there were freaks sleeping everywhere, on the stage, in the hall, in the foyer... Wayne and I had a rather uncomfortable night sleeping in the foyer, on waking up there was an inordinate amount of empty beer cans all over the place, it will take a long time to clean up the hall.
It doesn't sound like a brilliant appraisal, in truth it wasn't quite as much fun as last year but nevertheless it was a great little party and I shall be looking forward to the next one, I hope that Ruairi doesnt take too much criticism for the party because it's really great that someone in the UK is taking the bull by the horns and taking the financial risk and investing the time into organising the only real UK demo party around these days.
And btw, Waynet has some photos too
