On 13th November 2010 the picturesque town of Chełm once again witnessed the invasion of red, blue, and multicoloured Amiga folk from all over the country. It was the tenth time for the AmiParty event to take place. For me, it began by waking up in a sunny Saturday morning and executing the "rucksack packing" algorithm. Traditionally, I managed to fit all my stuff, along with sleeping accesories, in just one travel bag. I discovered on this very occasion that a sleeping bag can serve as an ideal shock-absorber for all the hardware being shoved inside.

Around 2:00 P.M. a big, black Audi with aluminum rims and a suspiciously-looking elbow stuck outside the rolled-down car window stopped just by my block. At first, I wasn't quite sure it really was il_capitano coming to pick me up with his road-cruiser. To be honest, my money was on "local geysers going to a traditional Saturday pick-up outta city". But all my doubts were dispelled by the smiling il_capitano, who came out to greet me, and Albert and Rzookol whom I spotted waiting inside, as I approached the car. OK, I must admit, I jazzed it all up a notch - there were no aluminum rims, "cold elbows" and no gold blink-blink straight from da ghetto. Instead, having said our hellos, we just got into il_capitano's painfully mundane car and simply hit the road :).

After an hour's ride, having won a real road skirmish with some truck from Azerbaijan (trying to effectively block our way to Chełm), with a Duran Duran record still playing in our ears, we reached our destination. Sir_Lucas and ZED were already waiting for us right at the door of the CAMERATA MUSIC club (where the event took place). The hall itself was crammed with the rest of the AmiParty tenth edition team: Flea, Drako, Taurus, Widelec, Tims, Kwiatek, Jenot, Maag, as well as guests from more remote parts of the country, namely Krashan, Recedent and BagoZonde.

All the members of this elite team managed to bring in a great deal of delicious, alternative hardware. The largest group were Mini Macs, of which I counted 5 pieces. There were also two PowerMacs, proudly presented by Krashan and ZED. Of course, traditionally, there was also some cult equipment in the form of two Amigas 1200 (brought by Taurus and TIMS), and my good old C64. Taurus prepared an Amiga press booth where, on top of a complete PPA Magazine set (yes, all the issues ever published), one could also touch, pick up, and smell the books from the heyday of Amiga - real rarities, nearly impossible to spot today.

Spotting alcohol, on the other hand, was not that hard. The choice of alcoholic drinks was very wide and the stuff was flowing with a reasonably wide stream throughout the event. Some were sourcing locally, while the others managed to bring a tiny fraction of their domestic stocks with them. I'm thinking particularly of il_capitano who heroically fought against time - or rather with short expiration date - of fifteen litres of Pilsner Urquell that he'd purchased at a bargain price in his local supermarket. At the same time, Rzookol, kept treating the participants to his homemade wine - an exquisite beverage, with a hint of the unique microclimate of the western Lubelszczyzna region.

The event in full swing. Soon it turned out that each of the computers brought in by the participants offered something interesting to stumple upon. Maag presented an outline of his program for facilitating the compilation of complex applications on MorphOS; Recedent modelled something in Blender; Widelec programmed in MUI; and on my monitor, some classic C64 demos intermingled with bloody scenes from Duke Nukem 3D, running on MOS.

About 8:00 P.M., the concert of "Mr. Pollack" started. The band consists of one of the most distinguished Polish rock guitarists - Jacek Polak and his brother. At some point, thanks to the exquisite skills of the "guitar Paganini", even the greatest of wallflowers (such as myself) ended up frantically waving their arms and legs, all stirred up in some sort of a crazy ami-pogo. That didn't go without casualties, though. Flea, the beautiful paragon of all womenly virtues, suffered an injury (swear it wasn't me, milad), and - as the result - had to keep a moist towel on her knee for the rest of the evening.

As the concert was coming to an end, once again, I sat down to the GCC with Krashan. The results were, once again, electrifying - thanks Krash! Of course, it would be ungrateful and selfish to just go ahead and blow our own trumpet, while underestimating the important role of il_capitano and Recedent in optimizing the block diagram (which greatly improved the handling of subprocesses in Exciter Player) - see the scan. Kudos, you guys!

When midnight came, the previously-announced, long-awaited, prize-rich AmiParty knowledge contest started. It turned out there was just a handful of adventurers bold enough to participate: Recedent, ZED, il_capitano, BagoZonde and Rzookol. Once the battle dust settled and all 36 points got properly assigned, the victorius Recedent emerged, proudly brandishing his trophy: his own, shiny MorphOS license. Il_capitano came second, with the total of 29 points, which got him a copy of the AMC program. ZED earned 19 points what placed him third and rewarded with an issue of "Digital Dreams" book. To his great surprise, BagoZonde, who found himself below the podium, ended up chewing on a new, crispy WiFi network adapter. The jury also singled out Rzookol, rewarding him with a commemorative mug. The three remaining mugs were cleverly distributed with the cunning use of a device called fair lottery. They went to Albert, MaaG and my humble self.

After the emotions of the competition, the time came to show some demos for the classic Amiga. This time, Taurus played the role of the "demo DJ", and boy, did he prepare a really devastating set of Amiga productions! Not only could we enjoy "the latest and greatest" of the Amiga demoscene, but also some of the older demos, dating as early as the 90s or even the 80s of the last century. Then, as a counterbalance (ok, mainly to cool off the projector lamp) I ran a few demos with the C64. Finally, Taurus re-appeared at the projector controls, ready to run some more demos. And he refused to leave the post until the first rays of the dawning sun stroked his weary face. What's worth noting, all productions were shown live on the Amiga and the C64. All honest stuff; none of them, Windows 7 laptops playing downloaded AVI files!

About 5:00 A.M. I "faded like a rose" and fell asleep. Oh, by the way: falling asleep at an Amiga party, on some mattress in a corner, with Amiga demos playing in the background is a feeling which words just fail to convey. On the surface - nothing extraordinary, but what's happening in my mind (just a moment before dreaming away) - priceless!

I awoke to the daylight. No Amiga music could be heard from speakers any more. Only Widelec carried on with his MUI programming marathon (just like some 10 hours earlier). The rest of participants were either just waking up, or greeting the dawn at the entrance to the club. The event was clearly and slowly drawing to a close. But before the participants of AmiParty scattered back to their homes all over Poland, we set off to have our commemorative meeting photo taken (this time at one of the aviation exhibits by the nearby secondary school). Once this was behind us, we had a farewell sip of tea, took a bite of the last salami sandwich, and started packing for the road. Thus, once again the time came to say goodbye. Just by the happy grins on sleepy faces could you tell that the tenth AmiParty had been a success!

To sum up: once again, everything went flawlessly. Drako asked me for some honest, critical feedback, but I'm just not able to generate any (d'you spray some drugs in the air before AmiParty, or what?). Speaking of the organizers: their huge commitment into preparing this Jubilee event was apparent. In addition to the competition with prizes, they arranged a special room decoration (Amiga-related posters), and equipment for the evening demo show. Not to mention the star of the evening concert - Mr. Pollack. Put this all together in one room, and stir it up properly: it's just got to work - and it so did! AmiParty #10 was a perfectly served high-percentage dose of sheer fun in the Amiga vibe, full of funny, though sometimes dramatic situations (Flea's injury), as well as moments of triumph of human thought over the digital matter (programming under MUI, and subprocessing). I only regret that this time at the AmiParty we were missing some of the well known Amiga faces from the previous editions. I am thinking of Virago, Kokos, Sand and Stach. One can be pleased, though, that this time the ranks of Ami-guerillas were reinforced by a very positive BagoZonde - previously I had no opportunity to get to know him in real life.

All in all, I think we should all be happy that, once again, we could meet by our Amigas/ Macs /Commodore's, talk, drink beer and get away - even for one short day - from the reality which is not always as perfect as the AmiParty!

See you at the next party!

Pictures:

Taurus, Sir_Lucas, il_capitano, fragments of concert, the competition

Translation: Konrad Czuba