Merry Christmas the ACiD news n e w s unsane -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - --- Issue No 14 An Official ACiD Productions(tm) Public Update December 1996 -- - - -- - - - -- - - - -- - - - - -- By Cthulu Winter - the harshest season The barren landscape a uniform white all landmarks hidden beneath a concealing shroud of snow Despite this we find a way to persevere Trapped in our busy cabins the mind is left alone to end- lessly spin with only one release - that of hot fingers on the keyboards and busy clicks of the mouse Tossing a few logs on the fire affords us the luxury of carrying on thawing frostbitten fingers and doing what has to be done because even though the rest of the scene seems to think that it s okay to hibernate once the snow falls that s not good enough for us We have to maintain our standards even while other groups curl up and dream of sugar-plums We ve got to grit our teeth and knuckle up because if we slack off the scene might not get what it is so eagerly awaiting for Christmas - the latest ACiD Acquisition Update The thought of all those teary-eyed doodleboys come January is revolting enough to make us see the necessity of what we do and we love it When it comes to the line we can t depend on a shining star to guide us through the night We ve just got to pack up our own sleigh Jack hitch the reins and bobtails to a couple of the hungriest fiercest timber wolves we can find and kick some rosy holiday ass! By Necromancer and RaD Man With the massive influx of scene-related internet activity it should come as no surprise that there are mounds of web sites devoted to art groups and their child-spawn Some of these sites are the home pages of groups while others offer the services of a scene yellow pages Still others offer fully functioning FTP sites harboring artpacks and related files The latest and largest addition to these archives is that of artpacks acid org This month ACiD unveils their latest vision-turned-reality to the public -- The ACiD Artpacks Archive (http artpacks acid org) What started out as a mere daily top ten counter for our FTP site has expanded into a full-blown web-based GUI archive for the entire art scene! Virtually every file manipu- lation command available through ftp a shell or dial-up bbs is now available on-line via Artpacks You can extract files from an archive view extracted files create batch queues for download or search our database for keywords all with the click of a button All new uploads are automatically inspected for validity and descriptions are extracted via the FILE_ID DIZ before indexing After being available for 30 days they are then involuntarily categorized and moved into the appropriate directory under pub artpacks category year alpha This is just the beginning How does it all happen Multiple As a photograph of Posk was not PERL script s combined with CGI that we available at press time ACiD like to call the ACiD Artpacks Archive offers you an alternative pork Engine or A3E for short That and the vast hardware resources of Walnut Creek CD ROM One Pentium Pro 150mHz with 512 megabytes of RAM 72 gigabytes of storage Not to mention bandwidth A 100 Mbps connection to the internet via three T3 s allowing up to 1250 users simultaneously And last but not least The Apache web server running on FreeBSD Unix v2 1 6 1-RELEASE No Microsoft product could ever supply the power necessary for this site With artwork and HTML designed by ColorNox the speed of PERL by Shivan Bastard and smooth operation of the site by your friendly ACiD hosts the the Artpacks Archive should feed all your arty pack needs By Cthulu On that cheery note (egg nog anybody ) there are some refinements to be made to ACiD s new internal organization We ve even checked our list twice None of those naughty fellows in our group It seems that Megga Hertz was a good boy this year so his present is to get a promotion to Telecom-Courier team Advisor replacing Mad Arab His predecessor however got more than a simple lump of coal Mad Arab remains to assist and coach the remaining members of the Telecom-Courier team though his profile isn t going to be quite as high as it once was Relatives inevitably show up for the holidays but here comes an old friend who we hope will stay a while Returning from a meandering route most lately though Apathy comes our old friend Stone the Crow the blotto raven For those of you unfamiliar with this RIPscrip master extraordinaire and former Bitchslap editor well now you are If nothing else he ll help us get rid of the turkey leftovers in the fridge I think they re starting to move Joining ACiD for the first time this frigid winter come three very talented and outstanding high-resolution artists The first of these Eporue joins us from that other group iCE boasting a mastery of both bit- mapped and rendered graphics KjllerPole isn t quite as diversified but what he lacks in variety he makes up for in specialization - particularly in his fantastic renderings If STC manages to finish the turkey these guys get the cranberry sauce The third of these it seems missed the rope-tow a few months back slipping between the cracks of the ACiD and Mop merger It is thus with our lost Vengeance and Raider restoring them to full glory with the rest of their former Mop-mates I hear that they re fond of sweet potatoes and candied yams That s fortunate because we just so happen to have a few tubs full of the bloody things You see we don t only recruit ACiD members for their artistic abilities but also for their ravenous appetites If we didn t recruit during the holidays we d be eating the bloody leftovers until Easter! Wintertime is always a good time to get together and share holiday spirit and no one took that advice more to heart than ASCiiD ACiD s ASCII department and Trank who joined their merry forces to recreate that most seasonal of groups Remorse which is taking over in a turn of events from ASCiiD as ACiD s ASCII department The band of wassailers includes all of the following artists all in good cheer too I might add Asphixia (who s having trouble breathing because he gobbled down too many mashed potatoes) Bad Spirit Cypher Hex Discyple Endless Name- less Enigmatic Erupt Ewheat Fahrenheit Fire- Smokey the Bear reminds us that only YOU can storm Forge Hiro Pro- prevent forest fires That means stay away from tagonist Kaleidas Piromaniak Fahrenheit and Firestorm all recent Lethal Injection acquisitions for the newly formed Remorse Stay Maestro The Messiah away from Bibby too His name spells trouble (celebrating a birthday recently) Miasma Mice Mr Self Destruct Omicron Piromaniak Polymorph Posk Sargon Sir Death Terminator2 Trip and Whodini who s stumbling around the hall in the Santa costume We figure that the new combined might of these two ASCII powerhouses should be sufficient to finally scarf down what s left of that fruitcake which has been sitting around for god knows how long If we don t finish it we ll just re-wrap it and give it to someone else ACiD s music division pHluid got a healthy boost (and not only from the spiced cider) from four marvelous musicians in addition to our twelve drummers drumming and eleven pipers piping Bibby composes successful swing jiving ja and rocking er rock music Phaze only has time to compose when he s not down on the floor grooving to his own tunes because he s deep into dance-muzak Stone might be found in the ambient room emerging through clouds of smoke as he rolls through trance triphop and techno tunes in his head As for Rexazy well his name just says it all In any event it ll be a welcome break from all of these saccharine carols Do you want me to tell you where you can shove those ten leaping lords buddy Two big names return to ACiD s coding division this holiday season Nivenh needs no introduction having been through so many groups and as the creator of the Impulse BBS software and Sharp is back in ACiD from a long hiatus previously to which he was an ACiD senior staff member They can stay as long as they want as long as they finish off the ham We would but it s just not kosher What do you get when you cross a web designer with a Photoshop master If you guessed Netscape Navigator with a smudge tool you deserve a smack in the head If however you guessed ColorNox - a multi-talented HTML phenomenon and graphic genius and newest member of ACiD Information Systems then you get to pass GO and collect $200 For his present we gave him the official title of webmaster of artpacks acid org - the ACiD Artpacks Archive Website Brushing and stomping the snow off their boots come three new members of ACiD s Telecom-Courier division Unholy Spirit and Mindreader fit the roles well enough - the first a telecom member the second a courier and the third - Tarheel - is now ACiD s official e-mail courier! E-mail pac-man@acid org to receive ACiD Acquisitions via e-mail from Tarheel! Just put subscribe acid artpack monthly in the BODY of the message! Isn t technology grand folks By Cthulu Old aquaintances should be forgot in the days of Auld Lang Syne so as such we ve decided to do a spot of early spring cleaning First out go three artists who didn t draw OR eat any of the food Talk about adding insult to injury! So toodle-oo to Abnormal Morbius and Pushead Mendator was so mad about not getting a Christmas cracker that he just off and left in search of a bigger bang Sodium temeporarily resigned due to the amount of time that his weekly zine - Acrylic - was taking from him He ll be back by this time next year though We can t say the same for Spirit of Illusion unless he changes his loyalties and realizes that ACiD is a much more valuable affiliation to have behind his name than Twilight Locutus was seen sneaking out of the window muttering something about assimilation and we just chucked Quisling out into the snow photomanipulation tools and all Movements through pHluid have included the summary ousting of Beaner Nova and Xenoc Sheesh couldn t they play anything besides Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire Any group would rather kick them out than listen to that tune all month Sheesh! Leaving the coding division is one lonely man - Jazz former coder of the Sinister off- line mail reading system but we don t think that he ll realize that he s been evicted for quite some time as we haven t heard from him for months Maybe by the time he realizes the error of his ways he can backtrack his foot prints in the snow drifts to regain his way back to the ACiD house of holiday merriment Napalm Death resigns from ACiD Information Inactive members are lined Systems this season - no one quite knows what up against a blood-stained happened to him Apparently there was some wall blindfolded offered a accident involving laundry detergent and petro- final cigarette and given a leum gasoline and he well died Oh well At parting gift Not shot of least we liked the way he smelled in the morn- course That would be bad ing ACiDic loses a few more members - Code Zero (actually Cold Zeno but he came down with the flu) Social Distortion and The Chosen One (obviously in this case we made the wrong choice ) Still we didn t send them off completely unequipped - they were each given a candy cane and a sprig of holly before they went Finally ACiD s Telecom-Courier department loses two members The difference between the first of these Soultaker and the second Clover is that where Soultaker stepped down due to lack of time while Clover was summarily ejected for never having been active at all There With that nastiness out of the way we can crank up the tunes and party away in our little shack until the snow stops falling By Necromancer In the history of the computer underground art scene there have been many collaborations between people Many times have artists and administrators gathered together to better their groups and advance their own status in the scene And ACiD is rivaled by almost none in the sheer amount of merges that have happened in the annals of art scene history Such greats as iCE Gothic and MOP have been assimilated by ACiD into the mass melting pot of artistic talent that is ACiD And now the ascii scene is no exception Early in the month of November I was made aware that Trank!Ascii was in a sad state of disorganization Whodini wasn t able to handle the group due to certain real-life problems and no one was stepping up to shoulder the responsibility Me being a Trank member and Whodini s friend brought up the fact that we could merge ACiD!Ascii and Trank He asked if this would be alright with RaD Man and I said yes I had already inquired with him about the merge and that it was ok So starting just about 2 weeks before the beginning of December we announced to the #ascii gathering of Trank and ACiD!Ascii members that we would be merging the two groups and the result of the merge would be thus A This reformation would be a rebirth of the original Remorse!Ascii founded back in 1994 B We would as a seperate entity from ACiD while retaining our ACiD affiliation ala pHluid and ACiDiC And C We would take the ascii scene by storm Sir Death often associated with the unliving breaks We have done all these things successfully free from the stereotype as our first pack available at by drawing ascii artwork ftp artpacks acid org pub artpacks artpacks 1996 rmrs-06 zip was immensely popular judging by it s day-to-day statistics Even though it was a slightly hurried pack it was filled to the brim with the high-quality art you would only expect to see from ACiD Productions And next month will be even better By Necromancer Whodini and RaD Man The year of the rat was a great year for many groups and a time of liberation for many small third-world countries But 1996 was a GREAT year for ACiD and a time of many changes Yet these changes are not to be feared but to be welcomed with open arms and warm holiday eggnog-filled cheeriness Many of the changes made were time-old traditions that had been written in stone for many years in the way ACiD was run And many other changes were just that -- changes Nothing else You will also find within this article not just modifications to the way ACiD was run but also accomplishments made by the group as a whole and by individual members striving to be all that they can be And it is these members who wish to be the best and who wish to make their group the best that make ACiD so great Without artists coders writers web designers and musicians what would you have Nothing You would have an empty nfo file which would most likely look like crap since there would be no artists Starting to understand No I didn t think so So let s move right on to the momentous occasions that made 1996 such a great year One of the biggest changes in ACiD was its presence over the internet On January 6th acid org became an official domain name succeeding acid extern ucsd edu Later in the year the administration of the site also changed hands from Wonder Monkey to Wolfie resulting in a speed boost from ISDN to T1 The scene also witnessed the removal of the ansi directory on the Hornet Archive and then later it s restoration in the form of the ACiD Artpacks Archive (artpacks acid org) ACiD also changed how the group itself is structured The traditional Senior Staff and Coordinator hierarchy was done away with replaced with a more functional Advisory Staff The archive format for the packs was changed from the monthly ACiD Acquisition format we ve had for the last four years to a numbered system Along with these changes were a few major archievements The infamous ACiD T-shirts sold out ACiD s attendance at the NAID 1996 Demo Festival resulted in winning 1st in the graphics competition by Blue Gravity as well as two places in the top twenty in the music compos by our pHluid musicians Tasmaniac develops XBIN format an improved textmode binary stan- dard for the scene The Product 2 coded by MrKite was a hit providing a variety of informative articles And like years prior we had a few major mergers The Piranha PPE cod- ing group merged with ACiDiC Saga and MOP merged with ACiD Productions Trank!Ascii merges with ACiD!Ascii division to create a new ACiD subsidiary Remorse As you can see 1996 has been quite a sensational year for us all at ACiD Productions and we look forward to even greater things to come! By Cthulu As we toss the last logs on the fire and watch it slowly burn out we pull on our parkas and march out through the end of winter and its lasting twilight and into the sunrise of the spring Though the hoary frost still savages the few tender blades of grass which poke through the sodden mess a change is nigh The days grow longer and we grow stronger our abilities growing with the rebirth of the world Spring is coming and there s nothing that any of us can do to stop it Temperatures rise and winter s cold domain comes to an end It s time to pull out of this deep freeze and show the scene that there is life past the ice ACiD Credits Writers Cthulu and Necromancer Editor RaD Man ACiD ACiD Special Thanks Unsane Photographer Nitnatsnoc ACiD