Well... got up at 4:30am to start the journey to Peterborough.

Looking forward to meeting some of you there. Always interesting meeting the forum members. Make sure you come up to Craig's stall and make yourself known to us! Might be an idea to make yourself a name badge too with your forum / real name - just to keep things easy!

I'll be wearing my Green 'Yoda' T-shirt fro those of you who feel like dropping in.

Again, for the day's events (mostly Amiga-Centric - but hey - it's their bash! ) go to :-

http://www.amigabigbash.net

There's even going to be a webcam set up for you all to gawp at us

I will be posting a report later with piccies. If you're in the area, come down and get in on the pics

Dance for the camera

Hope you enjoy it! I must make it up next year!

I'm heading up soon. Just hoping there is room on the bring and buy table for all this stuff:-) I tried to contact them beforehand, but no-one replied:-(

Excited!

Mark

Right! We're here, and some of the setting up is happening. Craig ain't arrived yet, but hopefully hewont be long...

Go here for the feed :-

I'm the round bloke in the green yoda t-shirt thats hanging aound around the cam at the moment....!

updates throughout the day...!

Live webcam feed...!

EDIT: Just trying to find out how to watch the bloody thing

Well... looks like you need something that can handle shoucast streams (.NSV I think) which includes winamp, and possibly itunes?

Its working anyway

cool, watching it now

I was watching it, hoped to see Mr Axe himself, but the feed has stopped .

back on now, axeman just flashed



his gp2x to the webcam

Heh - yep!

I'm here, as is Craig. Think he wants to remain in the background

Anyone know a good program in Linux to view this?
I'm not going to be able to make it there in person unfortunatly
Maybe next year.. I hope!

mmplayer should play it?

Mplayers not having it I'm afraid. Neithers XMMS
Nevermind I'll boot up my games machine & give it a go on WinXP64.
Cheers anyway..

***EDIT***
Installed WinAMP & the servers full.
Don't know if I should laugh or cry lol

only allows upto 35 people, its streaming at 100kbps so i reckon they could double the max listeners by dropping it to 50kbps. there shouldnt be much difference as my net connection is showing its using half at most.

Well that was kind of fun... Smaller than I expected and not enough retro people. Luckily I'm kind of into Amiga too. DIsappointed by the lack of people from here. Maybe next year? I took along a bunch of retro stuff to sell. I managed to get rid of the Amiga bits but none of the rest. Perhaps taking an ST to sell at an Amiga show was a little ambitious:-) Time to go ebay the rest.

Craig was there with a pair of attractive young ladies, who he had lured with free alcohol apparently. Not a bad plan! Like the pink hair:-) Axeman was there practicing his fencing with some kind of big stick like thing.

On the GP2X side the cool stuff was:
i) Lots of GP2Xs. Kind of a critical mass. Almost as unusual as meeting the guy who ported the BBC emu on the tube.
ii) Payback _playable_ demo. I had a quick play, but the lighting in the hall was troublesome. I didn't manage to get as far as strealing a single car. But hey it looked pretty. Just needs his legs sorting...
iii) Seeing the TVout on the big screen. I'll have to get a breakout lead to put it on my plasma (which is better than that big screen:-)).
iv) Grabbing a copy of Vectar.

On the Amiga side the cool stuff was:
i) Talking with Dennis about Minimig. Very nice FPGA hardware emulation project.
ii) Talking to Jens Schonfeld of Individual Computers. I showed him my broken soldering on GP32 and he suggested using a hot air soldering iron (at least I think that was him...). Perhaps I'll try that with my new GP32...
iii) Seeing MorphOS in action.
iv) Seeing AmigaOS 4 beta in action.
v) Convincing lots of the Amiga people to buy GP2Xs.

What was bad:
i) There were lots of scary geeks! Made me feel normal...
ii) Too small.
iii) Terrible too loud music.
iv) No-one bought my stuff.
v) Didn't get to have a proper technical chat about Minimig or Coldfusion boards. Too noisy and wrong atmosphere really.
vi) I didn't win the raffle!
vii) Not enough retro geeks or people from here.

Right, now I can go play with my new Giz.

Mark

Axeman seems like the sorta guy you would genuinely want to meet. I know nothing about the Amiga though, so wasn't there.

i may pop along to the next one to show off my TWO originals of Giana sisters.

Wow, what a day, i must have met over 50 people and i'm afraid to say if you didn't tell me who you were, i didn't know! But it was nice to meet all of you. And for you to buy me drinks.

Venue was small but packed with people, we sold almost all the gp2xs we took, including some display consoles!

Right, i'm going to sleep now. long long day. Photos?

Wooaahhh :'( :'( I had to go from Brigthon to Stamford today for a formal party. I was so upset in the car I wanted to go to a RETRO+AMIGA+Gp2X meeting, that was perfect for me :'( I just did 400 Miles today I went near peterboro twice and I coulnt go there... so bad

I didn't get to see what you looked like on the webcam, curses.

I imagine you as someone between 25-35 with a expensive sort of kings robe, as GP2x crown on and a sceptor with a GP32 mounted as the handle.

So sad to be at the wrong place at the wrong time , Amiga and GP2X are the most important bitburgers in my life.

I hope that everyone had a great time there, craigix, you sound tired

Kinda like...

Yeah, but rather....



(ps phear my crappy image editing skillz!!!11!!!eleven)

I'm definitely going to be there next year, it looks like I missed out on a lot of fun!

Hiya all...

Well.... I enjoyed it. But.

Unfortunately (I think due to short-noticeness of it all), It wasnt as 'retro' as we were hoping. However, what it has done is enabled us to test the waters and see that there's a lot of interest in all things retro, even among the hardcore Amiga community. I'm going to have a post-show chat with Craig and see if we can muster together something a whole lot more spectacular for next year.

The people there were great, though I've never seen a collection of such dedicated geeks in one place - all nice people though

Craig did great on the sales front - like hea said, almost all of his stock had gone by the end of the day. What I want to know is WHO TURNED UP?

I ask becasue apparently a lot of people approached Craig and knew who he was, but didnt say how. I'm guessing at least a few of them were from this board.

Thanks to foft for turning up, and sorry you didnt manage to sell more stuff. The interest in the bring-and-buy was almost zero, so they must have put it off for this year. The loud music was the 'Big Bash Radio' and was actually being broadcast too, as was the webcam feed. I Spoke to WarmFluffy online whilst doing stupid things in front of the webcam (so to speak), so there was some interaction there somewhere....

I must admit, I was dissapointed by the lack of turn out from these boards... Meeting people that you know online is always interesting, and very often eye-opening

We'll have to see what we can do for next year - maybe a seperate event, or a bigger integration even (we've got loads of time to plan it now at least ).

Thanks for the support form everyone who turned up anyway, and hope to see you at another meetup in the not-too-disstant future.

A few photos to follow!

BTW: Those 'pics' of Craig arnt actually a million miles away Minus the crown and staff though

Yeah you should do it more in the south!

Couldn't be there this year Ah, well, I might turn up next year then. Would've been nice to meet y'all. And craigix the "big fat gay pink executive"

Right....

Photos!

Not too many cos the missus drove off with the camera for half the day!

Anyway:-


GP2xs on the gp2x.co.uk stall


more...


flyers


Craig and Bobsonsirjonny doign what looks like some really dodgy deal
This is the one craig asked me to use....!

Yep I turned up with a mate late in the afternoon, got to meet craig who was a great down to earth guy and a few of the girls who work for him. Anyway he was doing some great deals for the gp2x and my mate brought one for a great price with got some free extras. I even nearly brought another one (the mk2 as I have a older one) as I felt the joystick was much better.

I was waiting for his gp2x presentation but I has to go, did he ever do his presentation?

Wow, craig does look like ethan, lol.

That's me on the right. Drunk. Look at the eyes.

LOL at the pic some defo shady was going down Craig looks like the coolest dude

Wish I could have made it wouldn't have minded buying a new GP2X but it was best mates engagment this weekend

Maybe next year perhaps it'll be closer to the DUURTY SOUTTH next year ( sooryy couldnt help myself)

Anyone ever told you you have more than a passing resemblance to a certain Mr J Depp?


Like the tablecloth by the way...

And Craigx look more younger thant I though ;-), since hes running a business I had the impression he was an older chap! But its great to see he might be even younger than me ;-).

Ohhh and if Craigx was drunk that maybe why some folks got some good deals ;-). He probably lost count and didnt remember the numbers too much ahahahah! But I think it really great that the sales went well, that means people are definately interested in the GP2X!

Maybe I should organise that kind of meeting around Montreal, ahhhh in the old days me and my friend used to organise the Amiga Convention in downtown montreal.

Question for craigix really really but if any knows they can answer too,

the beta of payback you had at BB4 can I download that from anywere
as I think I could sell a few 2X's with that, and i wouldnt mind another go either...

Nope - unfortunately not!

I think that beta is too close to a finished product for a public release.

I would like a playable demo of some form, I don't want to buy it on the basis of pretty pictures...

I agree, Craig is quite a cute fella indeed .

Nova fancies you!

There will be a new demo soonish yes sir.

Great - In all the photos I look smashed, and have a beer in one hand and food in the other, or the camera has been placed in such a way to give me double chins.. hehe ;-) As for the scary geeks - yes there are some who look a tad scary, but one of the cool things about the Amiga scene is a fairly varied demographic.

It was a good day, and thankyou to all those from these boards who came. The GP2X has created a bit of a fever amongst some people in the Amiga scene - Craig would have had a few more sales had it not been for some wives putting their foot down.

We had tried to get it more retro - we had contacted many retro firms and exhibitors - we had interest from some, only for them to pull out at the last minute. Craigs attendance was greatly appreciated. There were some geek journalists at the show, and I know (but am not at liberty to disclose WHO) that as a result, two magazines are thinking about doing a feature on the GP2X, and one is thinking of doing a regular round up on the console.

The GP2x was won by an Amigan, and the the uA1 was won by someone from the GP2X scene! If you know the chap who won the uA1, please advise him that as the OS is in beta, there are still some things (tho very few) that have a bit of a learning curve - particularly if you have forgotten the Amiga's way of doing things. If he would like any help please feel free to pop over to one of the amiga boards shown on www.amigabigbash.net (I wont post their urls here as I'm not sure of the netiquette for this site) Also, if you find its not to your likeing and decide to put it on ebay, its worth £500, so make sure you dont get any less for it.

I bought a gp2x at the show - very impressed with it. I'm now off to buy a copy of Vectar :-)

IF I could have travelled I would have been there... alas my uni grant/loan money only went in today. So right up today I have been counting pennies...

There will be a new demo soonish yes sir.


cool, i will be buying it anyway, and if it is coming out when you said it was its not too
long to wait anyway....