So, I went to BlockParty / DigiFest 2015. I was expecting to be able to post stuff along the way, but it seems that this site was down from Saturday afternoon onwards.
So, for uninitiated, this was a day long festival/party about the text based medium teletext - Ceefax, Oracle, Teletext, 4-Tel etc.. The day was more technical and was about the medium itself. I hesitate to use the word “medium” as there were a lot of people there who understood (and had worded with/created) the actual hardware that made Teletext possible, and on the first panel they spoke about the early days about how Ceefax at the BBC was run - basically using computers that output punch tape which had to by physically moved around TV Centre.
There was also a demonstration of recovering Teletext from VHDS and BetaMax tape - something I didn’t realise until recently. It’s possible with the right hardware and software to read the lines above the picture where the teletext signal is buried, and with some clever Linux software, unpack it and reconstitute the data. This is incredible, and those who worked in the media are really excited because their work is recoverable. It was thought to have been lost forever.
You can also bury Teletext signals into the video signal from the Raspberry Pi. That seems to involve hardware that’s very likely in your home already (Pi, Scart plug, and an internet connection). So that’s something to experiment with.
There was a designers’ panel when those who workedin the creation of pages - including graphics - were talking about it. This included Paul Rose and Tim Moore (better known to Digi fans as Mr Biffo and Mr Hairs respectively). They tried to keep off the subject of Digitiser as that was the evening’s subject matter, but there was the inevitable spill over. Paul Rose did a lot of the images in Teletext, so his work was not just confided to Digitiser.
Then the evening sessions started - a bar was set up, a massive pizza order placed, and the evening began with a panel of Digitiser alumni. I have a really dreadful picture of that - because most of the people’s eyes were closed when the image was taken (beer had mede me forget that if I held the shutter down, I could get a burst of shots to choose the best - ho hum):
L-R: Chris Coltrane (who was hosting the session), Tim “Mr Hairs" Moore, Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose, Violet Berlin “Wall” (she said she had changed her name to Berlin when the wall came down).
That panel as a chat about Digitiser, how it started, the attitudes in the gaming industry to non print media (ie they weren’t interested, despite the massive audience Digi had), and other anecdotes.
Finally, there was Quiz-Me-Do which was hosted by Paul Rose and had two teams of attendees playing very odd and bizarre games, a kind of very low budget Shooting Stars. It was hilarious.
Violet Berlin takes part in a round entitled “Fist My Box”:
And that was it - it rounded off at around 11pm. It was set to rumble on in an “after party” kind of way, but we had to get home - a 90 minute drive awaited. Next year (and I believe that next year is on the cards), we’ll be booking a hotel so that any after hours larks can be joined in with.
And, yes, I managed to speak to Paul Rose a couple of times. He was greeting people as they came in, and he remembered me from Twitter (yay), so he introduced me to a few people who liked my HTML Teletext simulations. We also grabbed a quick word before we left - he was really pleased with how the day went, and he’s keen to do it again. Nice bloke - very, very busy organising things and taking part.
Great fun, and the descent into lunacy in the evening was brilliant.
There will be videos of the event being posted soon. He’s posted a snatch of some of the video stupidity he had made for the event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqnnxgmDBvkI’ll post links to the rest as they come through.
