
                           Random Images
                        ==================
                        ~ A Xmas Sampler ~


Arranged  in  December 2009 by CiH / All images retain  the  copyrights  of
their respective owners.


 Ok, whatsitallaboutthen?
--------------------------
This is a small sampler of a much bigger collection of picture files coming
to  an  Atari  near you in the not so distant future.  In the  long  period
between  diskmag  issues,  I've  devoted  some of  the  available  time  to
collecting  and  converting many random pictures that took my fancy,  to  a
format  viewable  on  the good old ST or STe.  You might  guess  that  some
inspiration  was taken from the Pouet 'Random Images' thread,  along with a
small  part  of my source material.  (In fact,  less than I hoped from that
source,  with  Pouet,  there generally is a high crap to bandwidth ratio as
we all know, the picture thread is no exception!)

Otherwise  I have gathered interesting pictures from a variety of  sources,
specifically  themed searches on the interweb,  press and media stuff which
took  my  fancy,  even suitable pictures from my own photo collection,  old
screen  grabs  etc.  All  of this has been done,  little by little,  over a
period of several months.

The  next step was to take these diverse images,  convert them to an easily
accessible format on the Atari ST series,  scale down to a suitable size to
view  on the small screen.  I ended up with a lot of targa pictures,  which
co-operated happily with Photochrome and the Apex Media targa viewer.  Both
of these proggies are included with this sampler for ease of use.

So  I've gathered many hundreds of images,  the last count,  some time ago,
put  it somewhere near 500 images,  there are certainly more now,  and more
will be added before a full and final release.


 But whyyy?!
-------------
There  are  various  reasons.  Firstly  there  hasn't been  a  lot  of  new
highcolour material in recent years. The old stuff appears to have been re-
used  to  death.  I  guess this was some early effort to  be  eco-conscious
before  anyone even breathed one word about global warming,  but aren't you
all  fed  up with the same picture of that damned parrot!  (tactfully  put,
CiH,  well  done!)  Secondly,  I'm researching new and exciting ways to add
content to my new SatanDisk and UltraSatan storage devices, which I sort of
hinted at earlier this year.  Thirdly, once I started, the whole thing just
sort  of snowballed,  like a pebble gathering snow,  so I've gone as far as
arranging themed folders on what will be the finished article.

Oh,  did  I mention I'm doing something similar with animated .GIF files as
well? This could run to a CD-ROM styled effort by the time I've finished.

Another thing, merry Xmas!


 Tools used.
------------
There  were a variety of common and garden implements used to  bring  these
pictures  to  you.  On  the Mac,  the built-in picture displayer  'Preview'
allowed  me to sort out preliminary image quality issues.  Then 'Gimp' took
over to allow me to trim and scale and prune to get it to fit.  I've mainly
used  Hatari,  which  allows  a more or less working  display  of  enhanced
palette  images now to view the end result.  For final testing the pictures
have made their way onto my UltraSatan/Satandisk equipped STe.

I've generally assumed the STe to be the most suitable 'base hardware'  for
this collection. the Doug Little picture viewers could fake 4096 colours on
the STFM,  I have not tested these pictures yet in this mode,  but I intend
to do this before any final release.  Of course,  the STe can make the leap
to a nicely faked 32768 colours, which is where the image quality starts to
get  interesting.  Other Atari hardware of the MC68k persuasion can join in
too, so the TT and Falcon are not excluded by any means.

All  the images in this pre-release have been carefully selected for  their
strict compliance with a 320 x 200 resolution,  and will display fully on a
standard  ST/STe.  Quite a few other images in the full collection come  in
different resolutions,  quite often 320 x 240,  or even 320 x 480, which is
taken  care  of  by a different picture viewer,  namely  the  targa  viewer
written by Ray of tSCc.

At  the moment,  I am working in loose collaboration with Ray,  and hope to
obtain  an improved picture viewer in due course.  This would preferably be
able  to offer a better viewing experience than the current  flickery  hack
for those larger images. So here's a little reminder for him!

If  there is anyone else out there,  who can offer a previously  unreleased
slick .TGA picture viewer, especially one that can do overscan or cope with
non-standard  sizes  without flickering your eyeballs to death,  then  feel
free to get in touch!

Oh,  if  anyone  has got an animated GIF player that can offer  half-decent
speeds  on a stock ST -SNIP!- (That's quite enough from you!  / Undignified
begging prevention editor.)


 The future look and feel.
---------------------------
The final release is going to be a lot bigger than this taster version. I'm
still  debating  whether to roll it in together with  the  animated  GIF's.

Either way. getting this lot online will be more than a little bit fun.

There  should  be a wider choice of picture viewers,  (Cmon Ray!)  and  the
readme  file will be expanded to include a folder by folder commentary  and
hints and tips.


 Final words.
-------------
Enjoy this..

Merry Crimble..

Eat nutritious food..

Read Low Res Mag..

My apparent inactivity for 2009 is an illusion..

Well  mostly  not,  I  have been an idle sod with an ever-growing  list  of
unfinished  projects,  but  here's a small lifesign hiding  something  much
bigger, which does exist! Another thing I need to do soon is to resolve the
working hard drive conundrum on my CT60 and bring that back to life.

I  have got a plan,  sort of,  for my unreleased Alive 15 material for next
year,  I  guess Cyclone could still surprise everyone and release the  damn
issue, but on the other hand, it does no harm to prepare a back-up plan.

Damn,  this started as a sensible readme file,  but is rapidly degenerating
into an end of year newsletter, personal issues disclosure column, sorry!

Ok, that will most definitely do, see you all again next year.

CiH, December 2009.


