Interview with:

Dr.Outtasight of CRUSADERS


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Dr.Outtasight of Crusaders was inter~viewed by Chester of Brainstorm.

The 24 year old Norwegian is SysOp and maineditor of the wellknown "Crusaders Eurochart".

"I smoke a lot. Too much actually. When sitting in front of any monitor I constantly have a cigarette in my left hand.
It's a BAD habbit, your clothes stink, your fingers get yellow, your lungs are fucked forever and your disk drive has to be de-ashed every week."
 - Different EuroChart maineditors and managers came and quit, like Dr. Awesome and El Cubo. Now it's your turn to do the leading job, tell us why you do it now and tell us also a little bit about the other ex-maineditors and why they quit.

Just before releasing issue 11 of the Eurocharts we found that we had taken on too much work for the few people who were involved at that time. El Cubo, being the editor, had simply too much work to do and we really had a problem finishing the thing before the release date. I guess El Cubo got fed up with the pressure one gets just before a deadline, and wanted to do something else than spend weekend after weekend in front of AsmOne and Cygnus Ed.
We discussed the whole concept for a while and found that we needed to divide the work on more people. At that time I took over as main editor after El Cubo. Since we feared that if no one would take the responsibility of being the main editor the Eurochart would have to close, El Cubo and I devided the job between us with me as the main editor and El Cubo as a coordinator.
I guess Dr. Awesome, the first editor, after releasing 8 issues found that it was too much work for one person at the time, so he left the job to El Cubo.
I think we now have found an ideal amount of work for each of the contributors.


- Do you think that the EuroChart has or had consequences to the Amiga scene, especially the demo scene? Do you think some people work only to reach the top of the charts?

I think the Eurochart has become a kind of expression. Many people refer to it as simply "The Charts" and I do believe that for some groups it means something to reach the top of the charts. However, I don't believe that someone works with only this thing in mind.


- Talking about the history of the EuroChart, you reached now also 2 years. What was your aim with the EuroChart at the beginning and what is it now? Who had the idea that people should vote for the best in the scene?

Our aim in the beginning was simply to release a forum for competition. A media where coders could compete with other coders, where musicians compete with other musicians. Creating competition between groups usually results in the productions released by the group reaching a higher quality. I think it was Dr. Awesome who got the first idea to make a chart.


- Once Crusaders wanted to drop the EuroChart job and give it over to Flash Production. Why didn't you stop? Why had you choosen Flash Production?

It was at the same time when Dr. Awesome found that it was too much work for him. He then thought of leaving the Eurochart to Flash Productions, which we found to be the group best suited for the Eurocharts, El Cubo took over with some help from a number of other members.


- How is the whole work for the EuroChart split up between the Crusaders members?

First of all we get a lot of news and voting forms from our correspondants. The news are sent to Bustman, who apart from making the graphics for some of the issues, sorts and picks out whatever news are suitable for the News Section. At the same time most of the voting forms are received and counted mainly by El Cubo. Other members count the rest of the votes and when the deadline approaches the votes are sent on files to our board or by mail to El Cubo who finishes off the Eurochart by including the vote files, news, gallery pictures and so on in the main program.


- How do you split up the money you get from the advertisements?

We divide the money between the members who worked on the current issue using a percentage table. The one who does most of the work gets the larger part of the money.


- How much votes do you have to count every day? Or do you count'em weekly?

I guess the members who count the votes count about 10 votes per day. Near the deadline one doesn't have that much time to count votes so they try to finish the counting in good time.


- Probably you've got your own special program to type in the votes. How does it work?

The program has been developed by El Cubo. It looks much like a voting form with each section on screen. While typing the votes the program continously gives the user a number of choices read from a large data file based on earlier votes. This is done to minimize the typing needed.
On our two biggest boards, Home Sweet Home and Purple Haze we also have an online voting program where users of the boards can enter their votes 24 hours a day.


- Would it be big stress to release the EuroChart every month? Will you do it?

I don't think we have every planned to release the Eurochart every month. It takes a month to finish it, and that month of leisure in between gives us time to do something else.


- In every issue of the EuroChart there are new graphics, done by Bustman or Inctec. Which graphic artist do you prefer?

It really depends on the picture. I like Bustman's Sci-Fi drawings, but then again I like Intec's fabulous accuracy too.











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- Why do you write "best" and not "most popoular"?

Well, the voting form says "Vote for best..." and the charts says "Voted best..." so it really means the same thing. Anyway, the next issue, issue 13 says "Most popular" :-)


- Do you vote, too? And do you vote in any other mags? What do you think about other mags have got a vote system like the EuroChart?

I vote as much as I can. Unfortunately I don't have too much time to spend on checking new demos and so on, so I tend to get a bit out of date.
I think it's ok for other mags to feature a voting system like the Eurocharts, but it seems to me that in most cases these votes have been collected from the members of the group making the mag, or by a very small number of voters.


- Wouldn't it be better or at least more interesting to publish the pictures of the people who appear in the charts instead of those sometimes really unfamous freaks in the gallery?

The problem is that it is a bit hard to get hold of pictures of everyone. But we keep whatever pictures we get in in case one of them gets famous in the future (hehe).


- Are there any new efforts to make the News-section and the Gallery even better?

The Gallery will probably be left out some time in the future. I really like to have a picture of the person or group in question beside for example an article in the News Section. That'll give the thing a more newspaper-ish look. You'll also find that the News-Section has been somewhat improved in the forthcoming issue.


- Do you think it's a good idea to have News-correspondents and does it work good?

It works, but it seems that most of the news one can get hold of it who-left-what-group and so on. That kind of news makes the news section a bit boring to read all at once to say the least. But most people like it, so we will continue to include the who-left-what bits.


- What do you think about releasing EuroChart on the PC, or the same with Zine. Is there any future?

Well, I see no problems with that. We have a couple of experienced PC coders in the group too.


- Compare the PC with the Amiga and compare their scenes.

Actually I work more with the PC nowadays, but I don't get a taste of the PC scene as much as I do with the Amiga scene.
It's hard to compare two so very different machines, but I'd say that the PC has at least the potential of the Amiga. But there are certain things I would never like to do on a PC. Like using DPaint for example. The PC is based on a text mode output system, and things like Windows only makes the rather fast PC slower than a Mac. However, operating systems like OS/2 2.0 seems to bring the speed to graphical interfaces.


- Have you heard about the Amiga 500+, would you buy it?

Never. I'll stick to my A500 as long as it lasts. Maybe I'll even sell it any buy a PC.


- You're also SysOp. Talk a little bit about your board. When have you begun with it? Were there any improvments?

The board is a pure Amiga board running on a 386 PC using the brilliant MBBS BBS system. At present we have around 1200 more or less active users and about 3000 online files. The board is open 24 hours a day with three modem lines, one V.22bis 2400bps and two V.32bis 14400bps lines. On these three lines there are approx. 150 logins per day.
We started the board four years ago, and it has been open ever since. It first started out as an Elite Board for the group (way back when we were known as the International Fart Federation :-) but seeing that everyone else got their Elite Boards up, we decided to go for a legal board with lots of files and conferences instead.


- What do you think about blue boxing, the actual modem scene and the future of the modem scene?

Since I never have used a blue box I can't tell you much about it. I think the people who discover such "features" should keep their discoveries to themselves and not give them away to everyone.
The modem scene nowadays is much based on people who enjoy their hi speed modems without knowing anything about what a modem is, and that's a bad sign. Modems and other means of communicating with other computers will become the "hot thing" for everyone who uses a computer. It is the future. If you don't know the first thing about telecommunications, your fucked (excuse my French).
The future of the modem scene is so utterly interesting. Modems will get faster and faster, and soon some of us will be connected to the ISDN network. When the network is up, I plan to be one of the first BBS's on it. So I have studied the arcitechture of the ISDN network closely.
Within a short time a new CCITT recommendation (V.fast) will be issued on the modem scene giving dial-up modems a stunning line speed of over 240000 bits per second.














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...continued from last article.


- What's your opinion about pure pirate boards? What makes your board different to others?

I've visited a number of pirate boards, but the same goes for all of them: they're just huge file servers with the latest pirate software on. It seems that very few pirate sysops even know that a BBS can handle conferences and messages.
As I said earlier our board differs from other groups' boards in the way that the message areas are used frequently by all users. That's what's fun with a BBS!


- Are there any plans to go to the "Crystal, Anarchy, Silents"-party in Denmark this December?

I don't think so. Most of us are getting to old for that kind of activities. And getting off from work for a trip to Denmark is rather difficult.


- Will you ever organize a party?

Maybe. But I guess it's just too much work involved. I must seem like we are VERY lazy bunch of guys, but the fact is that most of us are getting too old for the Amiga scene.


- As you said you're one of the older Amiga freaks. What do you think about new 14/15 years old freaks, will there be a future for the scene with those guys? How old are you?

There is definitly a future for young freaks in the scene, but the guys with the most knowledge will, in lack of a better word, "rule". Right now I'm 24 years old. I'm not lazy! I just have a life beside the Amiga.


- Are you going to work?

Almost every day. I work at a computer center at a business school. I'm in a support team that support our students and whoever needs a helping hand. To describe that I do in short, you could say I'm a Computer Communication Systems Consultant.


- Do you smoke, booze or take drugs? And what's your opinion about it?

I smoke a lot. Too much actually. When sitting in front of any monitor I constantly have a cigarette in my left hand. It's a BAD habbit, your clothes stink, your fingers get yellow, your lungs are fucked forever and your disk drive has to be de-ashed every week.
I take a glass of white wine every now and then, and maybe a bottle or two whenever I feel like it. Sorry guys, no beer.
I stated my opinions about drugs in an early issue of the Eurochart. If you feel like taking up drugs, take my advice and do the following:
Mount small bits of sandpaper on a pair of Q-tips and ram them up your nose while burning 100 dollar bills. It's not addictive and you get to spend the same amount of money on something equally useful.


- What do you think about right wing radicalism? Is it a problem in Norway?

The problem we have in Norway is those fucking (excuse my French again) rasist peckerheads who go around hitting anti-rasist people in the head with baseball bats!


- Almost everybody knows your long scrolltexts with all those jokes, now for the end tell us your best one...

Oh. Ehrm. Well, there was this guy who felt that his sexlife had gone down the drain and he didn't enjoy it that much anymore. He spoke to a friend about it and he suggested that he'd try the Chinese method. His friend explained that way the chinese people make love is that they jump in bed with their partner and violently fuck for a minute or two, then stop for a short time, smoking a cigarette or something. Then back to bed and fuck hard for a minute or two and stop again for a short time and so on. The guy liked the idea and he decided to try it out on his girlfriend the same night. When they got to bed he screwed her brains out for a minute, then he suddenly stopped and smoked a cigarette.
After the cigarette it was back to bed, back to the violent fucking, and after a while a new pause. This kept on going the whole night long and his girlfriend got more and more horny. He again jumped back in to bed and started jumping away on her. Again he suddenly stopped for yet another break. This time his girlfriend had had enough. "Argh! What are you doing?!" she screamed. "You're fucking like a chinese!".

Not that good I suspect. But we're all in a hurry, and I hope I get hold of someone who can deliver this interview in time for the ZINE deadline.


- Thanks for answering the questions and good luck with the EuroChart and your board in the future...

No problemo. Thank YOU. I really enjoyed it. Now I must get back to finishing off the Eurochart editorial.
Peace! to everyone, and remeber to say NO to pink, moist, highly experienced French pesant girls who just want to use your body.‚


Dr.Outtasight/CRS and Chester/BRS