The sixth ComputingStuff LAN Party "Weekend Bash"

The sixth ComputingStuff LAN party "Weekend Bash" was held at Simon's (PCRanger) house on 28^th and 29^th May 2005 in celebration of nothing particular at all.

For the first time in the history of ComputingStuff LAN parties, it was decided to trial the idea of a party spanning two days. The idea was to get everybody set up on the first day and start playing some games, leaving the second day free for back to back gaming and eating. Well, that was the idea...

This time around we had one of our best attendances ever, with six members being able to make it, although not all were able to stay or return for the second day.

The party again got off to a somewhat staggered start, with people arriving at different times. However, even Toby (KamaKase), who lives the farthest away of all the ComputingStuff members was able to make it somewhat on time and set up his rig quite quickly. As always, Simon (PCRanger) was ready and available with his switches and servers to host the games. Also setting up early in the morning was Dan (slightly_demented) with his impressive lit up gaming rig, complete with inbuilt handle! Matt (matty_c) was this time relegated to the corner of the adjoining room, but he didn't waste his space, laying out all manner of devices and connecting them all up to his PC.

Also a first for a ComputingStuff LAN party was two members with laptops. Jon (computer_brain) brought along his newly fixed lappy ready to install and play games, and Ruben (wackomenace) bought along his recently acquired Apple iBook complete with the incompatible-with-just-about-every-game-ever-made Mac OS X. As there was no time or source to install a virtual machine, he was relegated to writing this report and doing some other tasks.

However, he wasn't completely left out in the rain and the laptop came into use with another first for a ComputingStuff LAN party - online pizza ordering. Well, it certainly beat shouting orders down the phone to some guy on the other end who probably can't hear you over the racket behind him, and ending up with someone else's order (and the bill to match!)

This was also a party of very little in the way of setbacks, and everybody thoroughly enjoyed the first part at least, except for the time when Toby (KamaKase) left the same music running in the background for hours on repeat, driving everybody mad in the process. The separate charged camera flash also made it's second debut in the darkness of the living room and gave people a reason for suffering temporary blindness.

All in all, a good time was had by all!^TM

The participants were:

• Simon (PCRanger) [Admin]
• Toby (KamaKase) [Admin]
• Ruben (wackomenace) [Admin]
• Dan (slightly_demented)
• Matt (matty_c)
• Jon (computer_brain)

Pictures are available.