Introduction
=============

    Welcome to the first issue of Restless. I, jmX, hope you enjoy the text
and music we've pulled together for the first issue. This mag is the only
mag that I know of that is produced in the US and has more of a US side to
it. This doesn't mean it is a US-only mag. We will continue to support both
the world demoscene and the US demoscene until the US's scene matures to
merge with the world scene (if that ever happens).  To my knowledge, this
is the only mag with charts for the US scene *AND* Euro/world scene. This
arangement gives recognition to those who deserve it, and gives the US a
chance to see who's out there and hopefully initiate some sort of alliances
between us.

The restless scene mag idea started a few months ago when I realized how the
inactive the american scene (American scene=US scene=US, Canada, and South
America) was inbetween the annual demo party.  The original goal was to
produce a US only mag, but that quickly changed. If a mag was to ever grow
and be taken seriously it needed to be open minded, especially when the best
productions come from overseas. So now restless is a world mag, with an
american twist. Hope you like it.



Who's behind it all?
=====================

    Well, this mag is made in the USA, by a group named Opiate. jmX (me)
did all the programming and art except for the opening picture by FROST of
DCB.  Phoenix/Hornet seems to be the trusty sidekick in the organization of
this issue. He gave a lot of ideas, support, and critique to the mag in its
time of need. Other people to note are GD/Hornet, and Blurry/Opiate. Both
put forth effort to get articles from the somewhat non-motivated scene.
Thanks again guys.


My experience
==============
    Throughout the production of this mag I have learned a lot of things
about the way the US scene operates. For the most part, I have found that
there are a LOT of lazy people, and most of them complain about how lazy
they, and the rest of the american scene are. Interesting.

    I also found that the music scene is much bigger proportionally to the
demo scene over here in NA.  Kosmic and Five Musicians showed up in the top
groups section because of this fact. They aren't demo groups per say (Kosmic
has done a few demos :), but I guess since we didn't specify DEMO group on
the voteform, that is OK.

    One of the biggests wastes of time that I have found to exist is a small
thing called IRC. The main NA scene channels are #trax and #coders on
anothernet (irc.neato.org, irc.another.net). These channels seemed to be
filled with a lot of people talking nonsense and just playing around..which
is fine. But after a while people get sucked in. Like me. It is very hard
to IRC while coding, tracking, pixeling, whatevering. Don't try to fool
yourself in thinking you can do both at one time. Many times I have wished
I deleted my IRC client altogether just so I'd actually get something done,
but I never have. I realize that it is a good way to get to know who's out
there, but for me it has wasted a lot of valuable time.


Closing words
==============

    I ought to stop rambling on now, read through the mag. We hope to have
something for everybody. Some interviews, some coding articles (both novice
and advanced), some misc stuff, tracking stuff, and some charts. Enjoy.


                                                    -jmX / Opiate / Kosmic
                                                     jmX@texas.net