I am not an atomic playboy!

10 seconds to transmission.

Transmission

I afraid that the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Well, I can now rest easy that if indeed such rumors had spawned in my absence they have now been quenched in one fell swoop.

I went to visit my father in Viborg yesterday and failed to finish the piece on skinning Windows. I’ll have it up later today, I promise.

Anyway, I borrowed his HP Jornada 540 since he wasn’t using it anyway. I don’t know if I have any use of it at this point in time, but who am I to pass off a chance to play with any piece of hardware? So if you have something that I should try out with it now that I’ve got it, go ahead and enlighten me.

Yesterday finally saw the .7 release of Firebird, the most indispensable piece of software on my machine (bar Windows of course). If you’re not using it already… Well it’s your grave.

Also, today should be the day (everybody’s guessing) where Apple unleashes iTunes onto the Windows platform. The ramifications of which are… Well… Quite unknown at this point. Seeing as the iTunes Music Store isn’t available on the mainland yet (that’d be Europe!), it really only has practical use as a music player for us. But having used it a few times on the Mac I’m pretty excited about the opportunity to get it under my nails again, and this time for everyday use.

And speaking of music, Bjørn sent me a few chiptunes (very small MOD’s… MOD’s? They’re like MP3’s, just very different) today which made me look into my – unfortunatly – rather small archive of MOD’s from back in the day. And while I wish I could stream all of them to you, as they all rock, I think I’ll have to do with just bringing you what has to be the coolest theme music from the coolest demo ever made. Second Reality by The Future Crew. If you’ve never seen this baby, you’re sorely missing out. Today it would probably not lift a single eyebrow, what with the likes of Half-Life 2 around. But I remember when I first saw this sucker back in the day. The music still gives me shivers.

You might’ve seen Final Reality, a successor made by Remedy when they were starting out as a benchmarking company. The later split off and one section formed MadOnion which became FutureMark (Makers of among a host of other benchmarking apps, 3DMark) and the others went on to do Death Rally, Max Payne and just now of course, Max Payne 2, keeping the name Remedy.

Anyway, enough of that. I suggest you take a listen to Skaven and Purple Motion’s Second Reality soundtracks. Bear in mind that Skaven’s part is actually split in two. During the silent middle part of the track Purple Motion’s track should be played…

I’ll go hunt for some way to show off Second Reality in today’s day and age. I know that there’s the Mindcandy they made with a bunch of old demos, but it’s no longer in stock and I doubt anyone bothered ripping and distributing it :(.

Impressions of Hero and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will be up in a little bit.

Update: You can find the Future Crew’s old stuff here.

Update: Also, if you have no idea what the demo scene is all about, you can read up on it or you can visit this page and download some of the PC classics, though you’ll have to dust off that old 386.