RC2017/04 Final Results

Not only has April come and past, but now May is soon to follow. It is high time to post some results!

As a reminder, we have the following prize donations:

• Bounty Box: 8-bit pixelated sunglasses, a copy of The Soul of a New Machine (1981) in genuine dead-tree format, and and a pack of Sugru pliable epoxy repair putty (donated by Mike Spooner)
• a copy of Terrible Nerd, signed paper book or kindle (donated by Kevin Savetz)
• a signed/autographed Floppy Days T-shirt? Or any sort of Floppy Days item that can be purchased from VistaPrint (donated by Randy Kindig)
• a copy of the Original Gamer Stevie Strow CoCoFEST 25th Anniversary Edition CoCo Game Play Videos DVD (donated by Steve Strowbridge)
• two Raspberry Pi Zero W PCBs (donated by Michael Mulhern)

Just as a side note, Michael Mulhern was originally slated to help with the judging, but the real world has swamped him with personal committments. This has left the judging responsibilities completely to me this time around, so now you know whom to blame if you disagree with the results!

Now, on with the show! I would like to restate that the Retrochallenge is all about fun, with the understanding that it is fun to apply our technical skills and wherewithal to do silly things around old computers. A good showing in Retrochallenge should be fun for the participant and the audience, and receiving (or not receiving) a prize should not be seen as an endorsement (or lack thereof) of anyone's skills or efforts. With that in mind, I designate the following prize pairings in recognition for the entries that I found to be the most "Retrochallenge-y" this time around:

• Bounty Box -- Richard Loxley
• Terrible Nerd -- Scott Lawrence
• Floppy Days schwag -- Tom Raidna
• ogStevieStrow CoCo Game Play DVD -- Matteo Trevisan
• Raspberry Pi Zero W -- Mark Sherman
• Raspberry Pi Zero W -- Ryan Walmsley

Honorable Mentions also go out to Sean McNamara, Phillip Stevens, Alan Garfield, Christopher Just, and Mike Spooner -- nice projects! And, of course, we extend our deepest condolences to Rob O'Donnell on the untimely lost of his father. Best wishes to all, of course.

Prize winners, please send your shipping information to me as linville at tuxdriver dot com... If you can't decipher the email address, then ask in the comments! :-)
 
Well done, prize winners and honorable mentions! Better luck next time to the other competitors! And please do stay tuned for more Retrochallenge news and announcements as we approach the next event, currently slated for October 2017!

A moment for Manchester...

Saffie Rose Roussos: ‘quiet and unassuming with a creative flair’. Photograph: Collect/PAn

Second Manchester bomb victim named as eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos

I had intended to post the prize winners for RC2017/04 today, but after last night's attack on a concert in Manchester, England it seems bit out of place to celebrate much of anything today. As a father of three, it is devastating just to imagine finding myself where too many parents in the UK find themselves today.

Fundamentally the RetroChallenge is a silly thing, a bit of fun had mostly by a few old guys reaching back to their days of youth. But what happened last night is deadly serious. Out of sympathy and respect for the dead, the injured, and their friends and families, I will delay the prize announcements until Friday, 26 May 2017. Please check back here thereafter.

Even Judge's Excuses Wear Thin...

I know, I know -- where are the results? I am embarassed that this is taking so long, and I do apologize profusely!

Partial Results

In the meantime, I have gone through the entrants list and for those entries that never got off the ground I have appended a "FALSE START" notation. Similarly, for those that didn't seem to get where they were going I have added a "DID NOT FINISH" notation. Please check my work, in case I have followed the wrong link for someone's blog or made some other similarly bone-headed mistake -- these things can happen...

Plenty To Do

Once again I am amazed both at the number of entrants and at the quality and depth of many (even most) of the projects. This is something people do for fun and nominal "prizes"! We really have some great competitors producing work that I hope is as gratifying for them to produce as it is satisfying and entertaining for the rest of us to consume!

Anyway, enough of me blogging! I have other things I need to do... ;-)

Pencils Down for RC2017/04

Alright, someone blow the whistle! Everyone has now seen the end of April 2017, even in their own locations. It looks like we have some great entries this time around, so I've got some work to do to catch-up! I hope Michael Mulhern has been keeping-up better than I have, but I hear that Australia may have recently tried to kill him again... ;-) So, he may be just as far behind as I am...

Sit Tight

Anyway, I am now back from the various retro computing festivities this April (i.e. the festivities that distracted me from RetroChallenge until now). With the end of the competition, Michael and I will review the various entries and attempt to boil them down to the cream of the crop...or something like that. Give us another week or so for that review and then check back here for the results.

Suggestions?

In the meantime, feel free to answer back with any suggestions for improvements or offers to sponsor future prizes or whatever else might move you. I know that my own chief complaint this time would be about the lack of running commentary by the host and even the lack of my own entry as part of the competition. Both of those I blame on the new schedule, so if you have any suggestions as to alternate scheduling options, then please post them in the replies below! I, for one, am thinking that a February/August rotation might suite me better for me than the current April/October offering...thoughts?

Anyway, be sure to check back here in a week or so for 2017/04 results, and in the meantime remember this: you were only young once, but you can be RETRO forever!