Pictures from Codex Alpe Adria 2005

These are my pictures from Codex Alpe Adria (formerly called Amiga Alpe Adria) in Udine, Friuli, Italy, July 2nd, 2005.

For several years, I had been wanting to visit this show, which was rumoured to have a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere, and at the same time some interesting activities and themes.

So this year, we decided to arrange our summer vacation around it, and planned to spend the rest of the vacation driving around to other nice places in Northern Italy. Unfortunately, I couldn't get two weeks of vacation at that time, it turned out that a colleague had already booked his vacation for the same timeframe, and I had to fill in for him. But I managed to beg my way into getting three days off, Thursday through Monday.

Therefore, my wife and I ended up driving all the way from Denmark to Italy, going to the show and dinner, spending some time together with the locals Sunday, and driving all the way back again, all within those five days. I'll admit I was tired afterwards, but it was well worth the drive.

It was my first visit at an Italian show, and although I do understand just a "piccolo poco italiano", I hadn't really expected to be able to follow everything that was going on. But it turned out that most people were very willing to speak English when needed, and a lot of the topics were quite easy to understand even in Italian, since they were dealing with familiar stuff.

When I look at the pictures I took and the captions I've been able to write afterwards, it strikes me that I haven't caught as many names as usual. I guess I must have been too busy concentrating on the language, so I forgot to look at the nice badges. So I'd be very grateful for any supplementary information about names and other facts. Michael already helped me out with a lot of the names I do mention, thanks also for that!

Finally, I must say I am deeply impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm of the organizers and participants of this event. We had a very good time during the whole weekend and hope very much to be able to visit again some other year. Thanks to everybody involved, and of course especially to Michael Battilana, who did a fabulous job. And once you get bored looking at my pictures, pop on over to his collection of pictures taken by a number of visitors.


Niels Bache (webmaster@nbache.dk) Niels Bache

Back to overview page

Version with frames (if you can)
All slides in one page - for those with more memory than desire to be online

Ah, there's the door! Let's enter and see what happens.Slide 1 Well, over there ... mmm, pizza! Uh, as I was saying, over there along one wall were a couple of Pegasi, an A1200 and a Mac. All getting along quite nicely.Slide 2 And along the opposite wall, there were two AmigaOnes with the latest OS4 prerelease, and Max Tretene (Soft3) had some of his items on display. I got a good deal on an SiI3114 SATA controller. In the foreground a table where the Italian site Amigaplatform.com had lots of old software and magazines etc. for sale.Slide 3 Further on up the room, it turned into an auditorium with plenty of nice chairs. Good for taking a break as well.Slide 4 In another room across the hall was a more or less continuous video display with various demos, as well as some samples from the videos that will come on the two DVDs packed with the new Amiga Forever 2005.Slide 5 There was also some interesting old collector's items. How about this Altair 8800, complete with the issue of popular Electronics that first presented it, and Bill Gates' handwritten sketch of the memory map for the builtin BASIC?Slide 6 Or the legendary NeXT Cube? It looks a bit like a modern mini tower, it was just slightly ahead of its time, I guess.Slide 7 More oldies but goodies: aTI99/4, a C65, an SX64, and a beautiful chess computer.Slide 8 And here are the innards of an A4000. Well, not just any A4000, of course. It's an early prototype.Slide 9 Next to that is a prototype for the legendary Picasso II graphics card from VillageTronics, along with an original A1000 and a copy of the issue of Byte Magazine that presented it.Slide 10 Back in the main hall, a reporter from a regional newspaper is busy covering the event, while others sample the nice "refreshment" table. There were, at various times during the day, pizza, sandwiches, snacks, cakes, cookies, soda, water, wine, beer, and probably lots of other stuff. And it was all for free. Really nice!Slide 11 The two Pegasi get a good looking over. As usual, Morphos draws quite some attention partly because it simply looks fabulous.Slide 12 Well, the podium is ready, let's get this thing started.Slide 13 So off we go. Michael Battilana (Cloanto), who is the main organizer of the show, bids us all welcome and outlines the agenda.Slide 14 The crowd gather with eager attention.Slide 15 Michael introduces Delilah, who organizes the demo competitions of the day.Slide 16 Christian Zelona of the Mannheim-based company yellowTab starts his presentation. They market an x86 OS called Zeta, which has evolved from BeOS.Slide 17 It looks like a pretty no-nonsense, simple and clear design. Not flashy and overdone like some we could mention in comparison.Slide 18 The boot screen. Zeta can be installed in a few minutes to act as dual boot alternative on a Windows machine. The installation procedure looked very hassle-free.Slide 19 Then Dario Soccoli was introduced, he made a very nice presentation, outlining the developments that had taken place during the three releases of the OS4 Prerelease, and showing various features and capabilities. Max Tretene is sitting over to the right, he later followed up with some tidbits from the latest beta (those that had been cleared for the public, of course ;-)).Slide 20 Among the things Dario showed was the tool he had used to make his presentation, Hollywood. This is the first time I've actually seen it "in real life", and I must say it looks really great. I'll have to get that, I guess.Slide 21 Here are the panels that define how the slides look, with one of them showing behind.Slide 22 Next up were the two Pegasos users, Andrea Maniero and Mauro Nardotto, who showed Morphos and Ambient in all their glory, along with some nice applications. Here we see mplayer in action.Slide 23 And here's some live video. That's actually yours truly there in the centre of the frame, taking this very picture.Slide 24 Right, compo time. Michael introduces the music compo, which had all of four entries, so we had to actually vote to find a winner. Later, in the demo categories, only one entry was submitted for each, so they automatically won. Hopefully there will be a little more activity next year.Slide 25 Delilah and Skan sitting back and listening to one of the music entries.Slide 26 Three OS 4 beta testers lined up for your pleasure: Enrico Vidale (Virtual Works), Joachim Thomas, and Stefano Guidetti.Slide 27 The after-show dinner at the Trattoria alla Ghiacciaia: Michael, Sara (Michael's girlfriend), Maurizio (Cloanto), ?, Valeria (girlfriend of The Dark Coder), Luca Forlizzi (The Dark Coder), Luca Danelon (Cloanto).Slide 28 Luca Danelon, Claudio Marro Filosa (Cloanto), Jens Schönfeld, Andrea Maniero, Stefan Leitner, Joachim (with his DV camera).Slide 29 Andrea, Stefan, Joachim, Andreas Bornmann, Sami Ylönen, Alessandro Sartori (Amigaplatform).Slide 30 Andreas, Sami, Alessandro, ?.Slide 31 Dario Soccoli (Cloanto), Varthall, Luca Giusti (Amigaplatform).Slide 32 Luca Giusti, Enrico, Stefano, Max.Slide 33 The day after: A small group relaxes on a pretty square in downtown Udine: Sami, my wife Jette, Michael, Sara, Dario, and Claudio.Slide 34

Page generated 14/7-2005 16:55:37

Valid XHTML 1.0!