Re: KFest 2006 report

["Kirk Mitchell" <kirkmitchell@gmail.com>]

Day 5!

OK, I've hit the wall.  Even though I slept in another hour and missed
breakfast, it wasn't enough.  I won't be staying up much later than
now,  B-{)

Another busy day as far as sessions went though.

Howard Katz let us know that Deja II, an emulator that works
specifically with Appleworks will be ported to a Universal Binary for
Intel Macs and others.  It used to be a Classic application.

Andy Molloy demonstrated the ftp client SAFE 2 "Spectrum Automated File
Exchange 2.0" by Ewen Wannop while using the Uthernet Card with
Marinetti.  This looks like a great program!  See:

http://homepage.mac.com/speccie/

Paul Zaleski did a presentation on wiki and how we can all contribute
to the Apple II wiki on Wikipedia.com.  Very informative tour of the
possibilities!

Andrew Roughan actually called us live from Australia (using Skype of
course) to let us know what he's been up to for the last year.  He
announced the availability of Marinetti 3.0b3, which includes bugfixes
and stability issues.  He hopes to have a release copy of 3.0 done by
the end of the year!

Next came the judging and awards for the Hackfest contest that's been
running here since Wed.  Paul's already written that up on another post
in this tread, so I won't add more.  In fact, he was sitting next to me
as he wrote that stuff up.  B-{)

The finale was a presentations by Tony Diaz where he showed us a
variety of rare prototypes of the Apple II, Apple II+, IIe, and the
IIgs, dozens of circuit boards, and motherboards.  Many of these were
one of a kind.  The favorite of course was the Mark Twain IIgs.  What
could have been!

It was now time for the Swap Meet/Vendor Fair.  We had 4 or 5 folks
selling stuff, and it was fun to poke through old software, or the
newer products from Syndicomm.  I left quite a bit of money behind, and
will probably have to try to sneek this back into the house to avoid a
wife who questions my sanity about the Apple II.  B-{)

We then piled into cars and headed to KC Masterpiece to do our
carnivore business.  Except for Ken and Howard who had to settle for
unfood food.  Our table certainly had a lot of fun.  B-{)

Afterwards, most of the folks went to the movies to see the Superman
movie.  There is a small cadre holding down the fort right now, taking
advantage of the quiet time to shortsheet some of the others, or just
get in one last chat with friends.

The others haven't returned yet.  Perhaps things will pick up then.
Unfortunately, you probably won't hear about what happens, since this
is my final report.  Tomorrow, it's breakfast if I get up that early,
packing and then for me, a 7 hour drive home.  For others, it's flights
or bus or train.  And I don't think you'll find a one of them that will
express regret at the cost or time they've spent for these last 6 days.
 4 new faces, 30 return attendee's, and at we all know of more who wish
they'd been here.

I feel better about keeping KFest alive this year.  And I hope these
reports get you to thinking about next year and joining in the fun!

Ah!  The movie folks are back.  Gotta go!

Kirk