January 3rd

A VISIT TO THE NUTTY NORWEGIANS
- or -
HOW TO MAKE A FOOL OF YOURSELF IN TWENTY LANGUAGES
- or -
A TRIP UP NORTH WITH CRONOS WARCHILD
- or -
OH BEAUTIFUL NORWAY I LOVED THEE...
- or -
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A FEMALE KIND
- or -
HOW TO MAKE A NERVOUS WRECK OUT OF YOUR BIORHYTHM
- or -
SHIT, WHAT'S THAT TOWEL DOING IN THERE?
- or -
WHERE DID ALL THOSE OSES COME FROM?
- or -
A NUTTY IMPRESSION OF A CERTAIN PART OF NORTHERN EUROPE
- or -
ON THE RUN FOR THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
- or -
NIGHTMARE ON BJØRKEVEGEN PART XIX
- or -
INTERLUDE TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA NORWEGICA
- or -
A FIRST LESSON IN NORWEGIAN FOR TRAVELLERS
- or -
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO NORWAY
- or -
ENGLISH FOR NUTTIES

by Stefan, Richard, Ronny, Lars-Erik, Torbjørn, Karl Anders,
Frøystein, Gard, Elin, Ole J., Morten, Bent, Kjetil, Bjørn,
Simen, Knis (the cat), Hanne-Mari, Anne-Grete and Bjørge

All individual people writing in this article are entirely
responsible for what they have written. No responsibility
whatsoever goes to the editorial staff of ST NEWS, unless where
they have written themselves.
You might at times be left wondering about the rather strange
setup of this article. Please remember that this article was not
only 'real time' typed, but also recorded on a walkman and later
typed out. This might result even in two stories being told at
the same time...

Part VIII - Wednesday, January 3rd 1990

10:22

We really have to be going out of bed now, since Lord HackBear
is coming down from Ose specially for us.

Richard

11:15

Now we're really leaving the camper and hitting the house.

Richard

11:20

So I am awake again.
When I entered Ronny's room, I was a bit surprised to find Elin
there. She told me that her dad did not find her healthy enough
to go to school today.
Breakfast is waiting, so I'd better hurry up in the shower and
get on with it!!
Lars-Erik just entered, looking slightly confused.

Stefan

11:21

My cold has its peak today. My nose is like a mountain of
solid....well...you know what....and when I swallow my ears make
funny noises (bubbling, I think).
But I feel at least slightly awake, and I think I'll have a go
at "Bubble Bobble" with Elin.

Richard

11:22

Shit, I've got Richard's cold (or was it Elin's?). Anyway -
everybody in this house at the moment (Richard, Elin, Lars-Erik
and Stefan) has the cold (or something like that). Aaaaatsjooo !

Lars-Erik

11:34

Reading the Norwegian teletext news. Twenty people in the town
of Narvik (in Norway) died from the flu. And that is what we
have got right now (I'm glad I got a vaccine so I'm a bit easier
off). I'll just hope that I'll bring back two living humans and
not a trunk full of dead Dutchies (Richard is looking a bit weak
right now - "Bubble Bobble" is not what it used to be).

Lars-Erik

11:39

F O O D ! !

Lars-Erik

12:02

D O O F ! !

(I ate it all)

Stefan

12:37

Lord HackBear just entered the room (YEAH!), and we drink the
first Coke of the day...
Lars-Erik reads a newspaper and tells us that he just read that
Kim Basinger is now living together with Prince...
NO! NO! GOD! NO!!!! THIS IS TERRIBLE! WHERE ARE THE HOPES OF
MANKIND WHEN SUCH A FEMALE GOES TO LIVE TOGETHER WITH SUCH A
MINDDEVASTATING ASSHOLY FAGOT?!
(Excuse my choice of words, but I kinda like(d) Kim)

Richard

13:36

The day is getting on....and so is my cold. It seems that
Stefan and Lars-Erik have minor versions of my cold (or flu, or
whatever), too.

Richard

13:46

After playing "Bubble Bobble" and "Super Sprint" since the day
started, Ronny's computer is now used by Lord HackBear and Stefan
to view some Degas pictures...

Richard

14:35

I think Lord HackBear and Stefan are now trying to develop a
small utility that will enable you to save your current
document(s) when you've just experienced a crash of "1st Word
Plus" during word processing (which happens quite a lot, I might
add).
I hope they succeed for that would be a major contribution to
the general wellfare of ST users.
Lord HackBear just left to get his "ST Internals" at home.
(Remark added at 15:12 by Ronny: "The book is mine!!")

Richard

14:52

Loud bouncing on the window indicates that Ronny is back from
school!
Ronny! YEAH!

Richard

15:13

Yes, it's no fake - it's me, entering the room after a so-so
busy day at school and a lot of talking to some aforementioned
girl.
I just suggested that we should go down to a small café called
'Norrøna' to eat some really good (and stuffing) dinner look-a-
like pizzas. Everybody agreed, so we will probably do that.
I'm hungry, so I'd better ask when to leave.

Ronny

16:44

16YHFEDFCTjokmjhvgfds

Anne-Grete

16:45

We just came back from the aforementioned restaurant, and the
food (pizza they called it) was good and PLENTY. However, it
seemed to be a place where only senile demented people generally
ate (one of them made Anne Grete laugh all the time).
We also went to get some souvenirs. Stefan bought a mini-Viking-
ship and I bought a little troll (for Miranda, of course).
Oh yeah. We met Anne-Grete (waiting for the bus) in Ørsta town.
She is now trying to harass Ronny all the time (yeah...she's
here now) and....YEAH!.....Lord HackBear just also popped in.
GREAT!!!
Er...yeah...it is raining outside.

Richard

16:57

Anne-Grete has another one of her ridiculous laughter attacks.
The room shudders and shakes with violent emotions of joy (joy?).
A true Nutty She-Norwegian!

Richard

17:24

Another female just entered the room. She's called Gry
Elisabeth, and she's bringing Ronny his homework. We are almost
blinded by her hair which is EXTREMELY blond.
A typical Skandinavian Viking female (the likes of which would
probably not have any problems discovering the U.S. of A.).
She's not from Oslo, and she's 18.

Richard

17:34

The She-Viking just left.

Richard

17:54

Anne-Grete just left, and Ronny went with her to 'take her to
the bus' (good excuse, Ron!).
The sheer thought that this is in fact my last night in Ørsta
shudders my being into unlimited sadness. Dear thoughts of what
now seems to be almost all years in my life (except for those
with Miranda, of course) pass through my senses.
The meeting. The Oses. Lord HackBear. Norway. The mountains. New
Year's Eve. The Esso Station. The fun. The alcohol. The high
prices. Everything. But especially the incredible hospitality of
Ronny "Forever patient" Hatlemark and his very considerate (and
equally patient) parents.
Tomorrow, we will have to go back to Oslo, and the day after we
will go back to Holland. Will I ever return to this beautiful
land? Will I ever return to these lovely people? Will I ever see
an Ose in my life again? Will I ever meet so many drunk people
again on New Year's Eve? Will I ever again sleep in a camper
strewn with dog hair?
I seriously doubt it.
But there's ONE good side about getting back: Miranda!

Richard

18:08

I am playing "WAR" (a card game) with Elin.
Lord HackBear and Stefan are still trying to code that program I
mentioned earlier.

Richard

18:35

I had Elin win, and directed some of my attention towards the
two coding freaks. The program seems to be working (basically),
but there are some more modifications to be made as far as I've
been able to understand (which is only a little).
Some good music is again shattering the silence: Metal Church'
debut album.
The lack of Miranda, the flu (or whatever) I have and the
knowledge that Kim Basinger now lives together with Prince,
however, succeeds in letting me not feeling entirely well. I
think there's even a slight ache of the stomach on its way
(especially due to the first point I mentioned).

Richard

18:53

RONNY IS BACK!
"Thank you!"
Ronny quote

Richard

18:56

Elin just brought some Icecream cake down. This is surely nice
since it's hot here and with our vicious colds we're all sweating
like mutant pigs...

Richard

19:30

Lars-Erik has been sent off to fetch some Coke in a local store
that doesn't close until 8 PM. The "1st Word Plus" saver is
getting on nicely, and there are only some minor bugs left in it.
When those have been solved, there will be some slight cosmetic
changes and then....it will be READY!
I do seem to be writing a lot today. Maybe I should have someone
else have a go?

Richard

19:44

As I was just starting to write, Lars-Erik returned with 8 big
bottles (or so) of the brown liquid that gives you a feeling that
you just cannot beat.
Lars-Erik claims he has something to tell about his Coke quest,
so I will leave the keyboard for him, and have another go later
on.

Ronny

19:49

Yes, while the other ones are doing stupid things (like
programming :-) I have saved us from the ultimate disaster (that
is running out of Coke). The town looked almost dead and most of
the shops were closed. I only saw a few cars and some girls
(most of them 15 or 16 years olds looking in shop windows)
walking on the street (no, no - keep those dirty thoughts to
yourselves). Well. At least we are saved for the moment (8
litres).

Lars-Erik

19:53

School is like a girl. You have a go at it, and nine months
later you wish you'd never come.
What I actually had in mind, was my school (suck it) and the
bloody exercise that has to be finished for tomorrow (not the one
I mentioned (<-understatement) yesterday). I will have to type
about 10-20 pages, and to make it go faster, Lars-Erik will
assist me reading some papers aloud (he really could NOT say no).
No more talk, let's get down to business.

Ronny

20:09

Apparently, Stefan and Lord HackBear thought their task was a
bit too simple. So their program turned out to be working totally
the wrong way (just saving a part of memory, supposing that the
file was stored in memory just like on disk).
No guys. GST obviously didn't make it that easy.
I think the best bet will be finding out where "1st Word Plus"
saves its files, and jump to that routine.
But who am I to say? I am but an outsider in comparision with
their immeasurable intellect and programming experience...
(Cough cough)
Ahem.

Richard

20:29

Well, Well, Richard surely knows what he is talking about here.
No man, we were not THAT stupid. When we created a small test
document, all lines were stored in memory in different places,
but not all sequentially in memory. Also, at the end of the file
seemed to be some magic word followed by the number of lines in
the file. We made a program that could save that file (and did),
but when we took a larger file, it turned out that the file had
been cut into large chunks scattered all around memory with some
strange links between them. Since we don't feel like figuring it
all out, we have now decided to start looking for the save file
routine in wordplus (I'd better return to Lord HackBear before he
finds it without my indispensable guidance).

Stefan

20:47

Lord HackBear and Co just stopped.
THEY ACTUALLY QUIT!
Is He no longer worthy of the title 'Ripper of the Decade'? Has
Stefan lost his nuts?
WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?
Has flu struck? This must be a bad dream!

Richard

20:50

Uuuhhhh.....
Well, it is actually quite hard to hack programs that use GEM
and the lot. At least demos and stuff are straightforward, and
not hopelessly cluttered with GEM calls and other insane stuff.
The fact that WordPlus has been written with a compiler (C most
probably) doesn't make it a lot easier either. Tracing the thing
is hopeless. I think the Cuddly Demos are less trouble to hack!!

Elin just barged in and took some pills from a little bottle
that was on Ronny's shelf. Is the whole Hatlemark family on some
kind of mysterious drug?
A closer examination of the aforementioned bottle teaches us that
it is a harmless type of painkiller. Just like the 'aspirine' we
have in Holland.

Stefan

21:10

We just booted up a new disk magazine. It's written in 'English'
and it's from Sweden, called "Inc Magazine". It is quite bad, and
I surely hope that it will become a lot better (otherwise, it is
totally not interesting).
I really hate to say this, as the authors appear to be very
friendly people and true freaks.
"It's Incredibly bad!"
Lord HackBear quote

Richard

21:16

Just finished helping Ronny with tying 6 pages of his homework
(I read - he typed on the Amstrad PC which is located in another
room in the Hatlemark residence). When we were finished he said
- quote "Ahhh... This was the first of 12 questions!"
"Arrrrrrgggggggggg !!!!!"
Yours truly quote

Lars-Erik

21:19

Yes, our teacher has really been mad, giving us a LOT of
homework, ever since his head was hit by a big wooden plank.
Everybody at school has noticed it, he was really a swell guy
last year!
Anyway, the next question needs 8 pages of answering... So,
Lars-Erik, let's once again get back to business.

Ronny

21:52

Stefan just found out that about 35 litres of Coke have been
devoured since we came here.
"Wow."
Elin quote
Elin just made some terrific marsipan cake and it's revolting.

Richard

21:56

Morten (thus one fourth of the total Ose gang) just arrived in
Ronny's room. Great.

Richard

21:59

This is really fantastic, this is the first time I have been
here in this room with just four people in it, but it didn't last
long because Ole J. just barged in with some candy.
The first day at school was really bad, I have got very much
homework to do for tomorrow, so I can't stay here for the whole
night.

Morten

22:07

Elin just now wanted to clean her rabbit (Tina) in the shower,
and accidentally she only put on 'hot'. The rabbit was almost
fried, and she was wondering where the animal got its sudden
enormous strength to escape from.
Poor rabbit.
And poor us, for she didn't actually completely fry the animal
so now we're only left with the smell of fried rabbit but without
any meat to follow.
Fan (Hey! That's Norwegian - and Swedish, too!).

Richard

22:14

Well, this is the last time that I write in this Realtime-
article. School started today, and that was really very, very
boring. Boring lessons with boring teachers and boring subjects
the whole day. One of the funniest, most interesting and greatest
holidays I have ever experienced in my whole life is over. Stefan
and Richard are leaving Ørsta tomorrow morning, and many things
sure look bad. Nevertheless, life must go on. I'am going to buy
the new and great Atari STE machine. I'm really setting my hopes
high concerning that machine. I have read about it both in "Atari
ST User" and in "ST World" and it sounds like a nice and
interesting Amiga-beating machine. The STE has just been released
on the Norwegian market, and I will buy it as soon as I can
afford it (very soon actually).
The Atari is constantly increasing its possession as a great
machine both for use at home and in offices. Now the 1980s are
gone, and the 1990s have just started. It will be exciting to see
how the STE and the new TT will sell on the international market.
I think the STE will become a huge success. It can be used to
almost anything, and I think that as the demos and the utility
programs specially made for the STE increases more and more
people will buy this great machine. The increasing use of
computers everywere in our society have made more and more people
interested in computers and computing. It looks like people are
interested in learning and using these "strange things". Many
people were afraid of computers, they often thought that
computers can be dangerous. But I think that people nowadays have
changed their opinions concerning computers. People are getting
used to them, and they see that they are not as dangerous, as
they may have thought they were. And I must add to the stuff that
I'm now writing, that it's positive to watch the interest for the
Atari in Norway. Almost every day since Ronny Hatlemark started
the Norwegian ST-club (ST-Klubben) he has received letters from
people that will join the club. More and more people write
articles and send them to Ronny, this shows that the right spirit
lives in the Norwegian people. Well, time surely flies away
these days. I have to stop writing now. I have listened to the
"Mucky Pup" CD called "A Boy in a Mans World" that I bought from
Stefan yesterday for several times. My ears don't work any more
and my brain has turned crazy from the fabolous lyrics on this
fantastic CD. I will just finish with these words: Please
continue to make ST NEWS (Stefan & Richard)!

Ole Jørgen

22:24

Ronny just came and went again when he smelled the stinking air
in this room. Stefan is showing some really good demos - you're
probably gonna see them in the future.....
Yngwie Malmsteen really shows that he can handle the guitar,
because he is really good with it. As you maybe have read, we
(Ole J. and me) bought Stefan's Mucky Pup CD, it's so good that I
will probably listen to it into the next century.
It was still raining when we came in, by the megagalactic
bypass.

Morten

23:00

Ole J. and me is now leaving, and everybody is crying, Richard
is taking pictures and it is very painful.............
GOODBYE for now.

Morten

23:12

Gry just entered the room while I was reading through the last
hundred or so of kilobytes of this record length real-time-
article. I guess I haven't written antything since yesterday so
I'd better tell you about some of the things that happened.

Yesterday I had one of the usual days when inspiration seems to
avoid me completely, and as usual I sat down in front of the
computer and looked at the latest demo to inserted into my vast
demo-collection (TSD). Just when the f.cking slow decruncher
(sorry Thalion guys, the cruncher is incredibly good but
unfortunately also incredibly slow) had finished somebody was
obviously trying to break down my poor door. At first I thought
it was Ole as usual, but when I got closer to the door I heard
words in the English language, and the most terrible thought
struck my mind: could it be the badly reputated ST NEWS editorial
staff that had come to visit me, and most importantly would they
smash up the place?? Luckily they turned out be in a slightly
nice mood and actually didn't break anything. Stefan and myself
played some table-ice hockey, and I did beat Stefan with
something like 10-5 even though two of my players where kind of
injured (hardware problems). The rest is history and is already
mentioned earlier so I will not repeat it.

Since Richard claimed earlier that I might not be worthy of the
title 'Ripper of the decade', I think I'll remind him about the
fact that we are now in a new decade! Anyway I really HATE any
programs that start with things like MOVE.L 4(A7),Ax (MOVE.W
#$2700,SR is more my kinda stuff!). Intelligent readers might
notice that this is the usual start of well behaved GEM
programs, these programs are usually written in some kind of
high-level language like C or Pascal (or even various versions of
compiled basics) Bleuuuuuuuuurghhh! Very intelligent readers
should know that this kind of programs use all kind of JSR
$1234(a5),LINK #6,A4,UNLNK A4 and thousands of BSR instructions.
All this makes hacking into this kind of programs incredibly
difficult, even the slow method of single-stepping through the
code won't normally work because of the f.cking operating system.
I really don't like operating systems you know, especially not
operating systems written in C (like in our ST). Well,
inspiration just left me.

Lord Hackbear