Welcome to VN#57, presented to you in August 2011.

The c64 scene is bustling with activity. Besides a demo scene that seems to peak year by year, the hardware hacking scene is gaining much activity. When peeking into the projects going on all over the planet one is overwhelmed by the constantly germinating flora the scene around this old computer seems to have. Of course does not everything end up in being the new 1541U, but I guess that is what a creative community is all about. To boldly go where that nerdy mind of yours wants to take you.

I develop these thoughts in the opening of this issues' Opinion Poll, a Poll entitled Gaming Renaissance. In it the audience of this diskmag has expounded the thoughts on the current rise of crowd-funded game labels around this commercially dead platform. Will the quality of games be able to compete with the quality of demos? Is it really for real that I can purchase premium disks and cartridges with newly programmed c64 games, now? When setting my mind into a ten year perspective I am astounded, but due to recent unfolding I am less so as things appears to improve for us Commodore junkies. Despite the oddness of how that last sentence reads.

For this reason and for a few others there has been a fresh cracker debate, as certain rules seems to need an update, while still being respectful to the traditions of the past quarter of a century. I myself hope that this will spring out in a current debate on communications and the possibility to have an open scene on various online foras running parallel with a more closed subculture with regained activity on the (telnet) board scene. The latter may provide a necessary nurture for CG phreaks, old elite and cyberpunx in need of that male bonding and ragging such would provide. Phone conferences are still best arranged by AT&T though.

Meanwhile on a personal level, I have recently become father again, to my second child. A daughter. For this reason I was unable to attend the Little Computer People event in Lund earlier this month, reasons obvious, but compensated this rather perfectly through watching the demos with my 21-months old son on Sunday morning. He actually seemed to enjoy it as much as his father did. My wife however, with a twinkle in her eye, claimed it was a brain washing of sorts. I fondly refused to get her point.

Family matters aside, the torch is handed over to my Tasmanian colleague and partner in crime. When his ramblings are done I suggest you browse further in this off-line disk-magazine to enjoy, if I may say so myself, another fine piece of c64 journalism. 

Jonatan FG "Macx".