KansasFest 96 Report, Part II

[geoff@seeker.the-hermes.net (Geoff Weiss)]

Day 1: Wednesday, July 18th
---------------------------

I decided to get some sleep so I skipped breakfast and the first session.
The second morning session was the Spectrum 2.1 upgrade.  This was
hosted by Dave Hecker from Seven Hills and Ewen Wannop, programmer.  Since my
IIgs was the unit which the demo was displayed on, I attended this event.
I have never seen Spectrum before so I didn't know what to expect.  My
first impression was the new features seemed useless.  I ended up buying
Spectrum at the end of KansasFest and have to say the new featured
give Spectrum alot of potential.  Custom scripts can draw on text and
graphics on the super high-res screen and sections can be made to be
"clickable" with the mouse.  Functionality of Hypercard was added
to Spectrum.  Since Spectrum will probably be the only comm program that
will ever get future upgrades, I think it should be the number one
comm program of choice for the Apple IIgs user.  Oh, if anybody really
cares what all the new features are in Spectrum, I can post them.
The best part of the presentation was when of the KansasFest attendees
fell asleep and started snoring.  Cindy Adams was trying to get someone
to wake him up.  I think everybody was being polite by letting him
sleep.  Diz, being the comedian-wanna-be that he is, decided to stand
next to the guy, leaned down so he was near the guy's ear and loudly
said "I have a question!"  Laughter erupted by all--I'm not sure if
the guy woke up by us laughing or by Diz.

Lunch came after this session.  I finally had a chance to meet Joe Kohn
in person.  I have had e-mail conversations with him since 1992.  After
I introduced myself (I had failed to put on my name tag that morning),
the first thing he said was that he couldn't find any bugs in the HTML
editor I had ported to Hypercard GS.  At first I was a little confused,
then I remembered that I told him that there were a few bugs in the
program back when I released it last year.  I had told him back then
that you really had to look for the bugs to find them.  I later told
him that he would have been a lousy beta tester.  I think I should
point out that the bugs were in the original code, not any that I
had introduced.  I just didn't feel like fixing them since I figured
no one would come across them.  Of course the other argument is if
nobody uses the program then nobody will see the bugs.

After lunch was the introduction of the GraphicWriter III upgrade.  This
was hosted by Dave Hecker and Richard Bennett, programmer.  My IIgs
and 19" monitor was used for this session as well.  Unfortunately, my
Zip was set to normal speed and the hard drive they used for this event
didn't have the Zip Control Panel installed.  The entire demonstration
was shown in Normal Speed.  I do have to say the program was very
useable on a 2.8 Mhz IIgs.  I would hate to see Microsoft Word run on a
2.8 Mhz PC or Mac :)  Since I am happy with AppleWorks GS as my
word processor and page layout of choice, I really wasn't too interested
in that session.  If I ever need to do some major page layout work
on a IIgs, I would buy GraphicWriter III since it does have some
capabilities not in AppleWorks GS.  For the little writing I do on a
IIgs, AppleWorks GS suits me fine.

I attended Mike Westerfield's and Erick Wagner's session on Robotics.
Back when I was high school, I had wanted to control a robot through
the 16-pin joystick port inside the IIgs.  Obviously this was what
the session was showing.  Unfortunately, my interests have changed
and I no longer want to do that.  It was fun seeing a project that
Mike Westerfield did to interact a robot with his IIgs.  He had
a skeleton which had eyes that glowed and dimmed, mouth that opened
and closed, and a speaker in his head to play sounds that would have
come through the GS speaker.  Fortunately, I had enough electronics
classes in my college days to follow along with the discussion.  I
did like finding out about what kind of motors are used and how they
can be controlled.  Even though it wasn't practical, it was loads 
of fun.  It did get noisy when Mike let loose 5 robots to roam around
the room.

After supper, Gary Utter gave the Keynote Address.  He mentioned that
Genie was "the" source for the Apple II users to get information about
the Apple II.  Since most of the attendees are Genie users, I guess it
must be so.  I actually took offense to the comment since I exclusively
use the Internet, specifically the news groups such as csa2.  There was
alot of agreement that csa2 was a very lousy source of information.
That was the same time period when there was 3 month on-going flame-fest.  
Gary Utter added that the future of Genie looked bleak and new 
alternatives must be found in case Genie close their doors for good.
IMO, moderated mailing lists, and a telnet-able chat site would be
a good start to expanding the exclusive Genie functions.  All we
need to find is someone who knows how to set this stuff up and
a server to host it.

After the keynote address, Wolfenstein 3D was demoed.  The game ran
great on a GS with a Zip.  It was very playable--the tearing on a
Second Sight screen wasn't bad at all.  The graphics looked awesome.
The graphics in the game looked much than the stuff that showed up on
comp.binaries.apple2 a year ago.  It surprised me to find that much
of the game was written in C.  Of course all the animation routines were
written (and rewritten and rewritten to be faster) in assembly.
When the game is released, it won't have the sound effects that can
be found on the other computer platforms.  All the sound effects have
to be re-recorded to prevent any copyright violations.

Bite-the-bag was scheduled for the evening but it was canceled due
to a number of people heading off to the movies.  Pretty much
everybody went to see ID4.  I spent some time that evening trying
to modify C code with Chris Budewig.

I learned some techniques in how to hack Appletalk Networks.

At one point that night, I started hearing the song "The Night Santa Went
Crazy."  My ears perked up, I thought "Cool! Weird Al!" I wandered
down to wear the music was and was in Tony Diaz's room.  All I
remeber was Eric Sheppard and Bill Heineman seeing Weird Al songs--
what a nightmare.

Tony was having fun with "toy of the year."  This year he brought a
train whitle.  It is a wooden whistle that sounds like a train
whistle.  Lucky for me, I was awake whenever he sounded it in the wee
hours of the morning.

Earlier that day, it was proven that an Apple IIgs could work with Appletalk
over a Novell Network with the Apple Ethernet card.  It was commented
that the card was designed really well...too bad it was never released.
Parts of the code on the card was disassembled that night which might lead
to a third party producing that card??? <--my rumor, take it with a whole
lot of grains of salt (in other words, don't really expect it).

I think I should point out by the end of that day, I was upset about the
Apple II and I was once again happy and proud to be a IIgs owner.  I
probably won't finish any projects that I have announced I was working
on.  There is alot of new stuff that I want to start (and hopefully
this time finish).

I think I went to bed at 4 a.m.
-- 
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The report of my death was greatly exaggerated. -- Mark Twain