Vammala Party 2026

Another summer, another Vammala Party.

I made a late moment decision to not take a Commodore 64 with me, so no Rambo. But I did not even have my traditional Linux laptop. This put some constraints to what I could do at the site.

Running some kind of Spectrum emulator online

Instead, I only took a Samsung Galaxy Tab with me, and became more familiar with it. Moving files about was cumbersome, but there were ultimately some dodgy ssh solutions that helped do it. I found surprisingly few text editors for it, a topic I might explore later.

Also, the space freed by not having the C64 allowed me to take some of my accumulated MIDI gear, with no intention to contribute to the music compo at all. I rarely have time to experiment with them, so the opportunity was welcome.

Wonder of wonders, it could all be synced

So, the long weekend was filled with movies, odd compos, food, music and gear.

One minor problem was that nearly everything needed charging, sometimes multiple times: phone, Galaxy Tab, handheld gaming device, the Roland synths.

Table full of gear, just different kind

The weather was not cruel hot, in fact it started raining on Saturday.

This changed some of the competitions, no more floppy disk throwing outside.

Previously I thought that Krita on the Android is not a good idea, but as keyboard shortcuts were now possible, it's actually quite powerful. P to use pipette (or left control directly) an using semi-opaque brush of nearly same size, I don't even need that many keys.

"Lesser Terminators", Krita drawing, here scaled down and jpg'd

My approach is to use largely the same tools for the entire image, no layers, not special effects. Just a "palimpsest" of drawing over and over again. The outcome probably has very little appeal to anyone who isn't me. It resembles some of the things I've drawn or painted in the past using physical media.

It looks like I've not released a PETSCII since the last year's Vammala Party. This PETSCII was made quickly before even traveling to the party, not my proudest moment but it ended up second after all. 

Jänis PETSCII, Commodore 64

I'm not sure what to say about the increased presence of AI in the compos. I think it's quite fair there are dedicated AI-themed compos (Prompted graphics, and "vibe code prompt") with a very low entry threshold. It's then very clear what the entries are.

But then it's also quite obvious the main demo compo has more entries because it's now possible to use AI in support of coding. So the line between a high effort "vibe code prompt" compo contribution and a low-effort main demo compo contribution was quite blurry.

Acorn Archimedes A3020

As usual, I couldn't resist making some trades. One was a Quickshot joystick, another was an Acorn Archimedes A3020.

Vammala Party 2026 at Demozoo