Computer Hermit

Computer Paranormality Afterthought

2012-01-08T12:00:00.011Z

Say that I present to you a bunch of tiny intros but I don't show you the code or file size and claim them to be 256 bytes or less. An expert who doesn't know the demoscene but his field has to do with computer graphics or image compression comes and shares his skeptic opinion that it's quite improbable that such detail of imagery and animation could be fit in such tiny space and this would even break the mathematical rules of what is the possible limit in loseless compression (just an example, I am not familiar with compression laws or limits). But think about it, if you were an expert in compression and didn't have an idea about procedural graphics, then based on your frame of reference you would conclude that the 256b intros hypothesis is a scum.

I want with this example to make a parallel to similar cases in real life where experts come out and sound so credible when they conclude that a particular case is a conspiracy or a hoax alternatively. Who am I to deny what they say? I'd wish to but I lack the expertise to truly make a definite conclusion. I could search for other sources on the internet but still I wouldn't know on my own. One says we didn't go to the moon because the Van Halen radiation belt would fry the astronauts and he says he is a physicist and doctor so that he knows what he is talking about. Other experts say it's possible because the speed of the space shuttle through the radioactive zone didn't left for enough time of exposure to be lethal. Both are experts. I don't even know about the Van Halen zone and how much is a lethal dose of radiation. All I can read is opinions of believers and also opinions of skeptics. Same with 9/11. The buildings really look like they had a rapid fall. It's strange. Conspiracists present it in such a way that make you believe. But there are also logical arguments that discard the conspiracy hypothesis and make the impossible seem possible. I don't have the knowledge in these matters to conclude myself. Most people just read either the believers or skeptics opinions and choose side. I can't. I don't know.

That's one important problem in conspiracy theories I think. Lack of expertise and time to properly verify the validity of them and be personally satisfied that you finally have a good explanation that you understand. Of course I could "verify" them by listening to a preferred side, the believers or skeptics. Though this is not truly knowing. This is belonging. I am really keen to learn and understand the whole truth behing things even if it doesn't proove to be extraordinary but trivial.

That's why I asked for computer paranormality in one of the previous posts. Because then I would be in the position of analyzing the claims with a higher feeling that I am actually the one who is concluding about reality, not the sources I read.

Multiple recursive effects experiment

2011-12-29T09:22:00.003Z

All this started when I had this crazy idea for this funny experiment at glsl.heroku.com. The first one was http://glsl.heroku.com/e#886.0 followed by http://glsl.heroku.com/e#888.0. Later I found a way to do the recursive version and the first version was a small test with 2x2 effects and later adapted to the massive version.

Of course it's harder to navigate on the GLSL sandbox version because I am just getting a mouse.xy as input for my shader. The youtube video shows my adaptation of the 4x4 recursive effects shader on a PC application where you can freely move, zoom and rotate so that I can explore the effects and stare them from closer and even closer range.

I have an idea on how to extend this in the future and maybe release it as a standalone application or screesaver.

Any paranormal computer science phenomena?

2011-12-09T11:53:00.003Z

I'd love to read some paranormal claims that involve anything having to do with computer science. Why?

Because I'd love to be able to explain something strange in a field that I have some experience. I'd laugh to see something trivial that's easilly explained yet also being puzzled by something that is harder to make sense out of it. I'd love the feeling of something invading our world where we have the expertise to make sense of it. It would also be easier to recognize false claims without wondering which side is right. Because I would have a personal view that is not just sticking to either the believers or the skeptics opinion but understanding your own thing.

I want to let you understand what's the problem with all those conspiracy and paranormal claims for the layman but even for myself too. Unless I wanted to stick fanatically to either one of the sides, the reality is that I really don't know what to think about some claims because I am not an expert in some fields. Sometimes you need to be, sometimes you don't but the answer doesn't come unless you are biased. I mean, if you are a believer you will distort the facts to fit your own view, but the same happens if you are a skeptic in the wrong sense that dismisses all the claims which sound extraordinary.

One fact that I realized is that the conspiracy theorists present their claims in such a way that it's so fucking believable. Something inside you tells you it can't be true, it's too good to be true, there must be another explanation here. But there are the claims that seem hard to refute, some are claims that sound valid to the layman but you'd wish you were a specialist in a field to really know the reality (for example, oh the twin towers, steel cannot melt if the temperature doesn't go over this threshold, we even talk to some experts, blabla). Sometimes though they intentionally don't present all the data (oh,. the flag in the moon landing waves like there was an atmosphere. No,. they have just showed a part of the moon landing video where the astronaut tries to stabilize the flag into the ground and so moves it. In all the rest of the video the flag is stationary)

It makes it annoying to someone like me who would love to know the truth, the real reality behind all these stuff, but sometimes fall for it. For the temperature steel melt or for some photography stuff or for other things, where even so called experts(?) come out and say yes it's extraordinary, something strange is happening. I cannot say! That boggles me. The best thing I can do is read what the skeptics have to say but aren't they also trying to find the most ordinary explanation out there? How can I have an objective personal view that is not affect of either groups?

Bring the computer science related claims. Because then you easilly know. Little example that made me think about this. In one of the 40 claims about the moon landing hoax from a site I cannot find right now, it was only one that made me easilly smile and understand that if you know about these things, you can easilly refute false claims or maybe even find some validity for the most extreme stuff.

The claim was something like that "Oh,. the simulation programm of Apollo 8 was running in an old 8bit processor with 64k. It's hard to believe that. Today you need a Pentium 3 with 128MB Ram to run a space simulator application".

With that above I could easilly laugh. Most people underestimate what older computers can do if their modern PC goes like a snail when trying to save a document in Word or something. Furthurmore when people read "Simulation" the imagine something like the Fuckin MATRIX!!! The programm in the space shuttle most probably was calculating or correcting trajectories during the flight or in the landing and was specialized to do these things effeciently. It's not a full blown application doing heavy simulations or displaying 3d graphics of what is happening. Having also a good idea of what 8bits can do either by programming for them or watching all those demos fitting in so few kilobytes of memory and showing impressive things, the claim above doesn't sound extraordinary at all. The average layman has a different perspective over someone who knows his field, and you could trick the first to believe there is something extraordinary here. Btw, the Apolo 11 guidance code is here for anyone interested.

That's the problem. I didn't respond in the same way on the claims of shadows on the moon going wrong or the lack of stars or other photographic "evidence". I was like, OMG they are going the other way. Isn't it obvious I thought? But it's hard to believe. This is big! If I was more informed about the lens they used for the photographs, they light and ground conditions and other stuff, or if I had an idea about the relevant fields then I would have a great laugh at start. But now they manage to boggle your mind by presenting you claims in a way that it makes them believable especially if you don't have much idea about what's going on.

Thus I really want to read more paranormal stuff and conspiracies concerning computers or something related. Not that I am an expert in everything, I could still be boggled but it would be interesting. Because I feel I would have the proper knowledge and experience to not fall for it and make easilly sense.

Though most of the stuff would be some virus or some "hacker" who made someone believe his computer is the spawn of the devil or something :P :P :P

But I'd love to. Where is the ghost in the machine?

State of the open handheld scene

2011-11-19T19:50:00.006Z

Yesterday I received my second Caanoo (my first one is soooo dead there was no chance to resurrect). I am so happy about this one. It's a white one this time, came already with a 4GB SD filled with some games I have heard about at FunGP but never have bought, also seems to overclock at higher speeds (my old one was crashing over 750Mhz, this one runs nicely at 800Mhz and still doesn't seem to freeze at about +10-20 additionally).

Meanwhile, some new good stuff had been released since I last have broken my Caanoo, like for example a new Playstation emulator with ARM optimized CPU emulation, a better options menu and finally proper frame skipping. 800Mhz overclocking might have also helped a little, the fact is that some games run at normal gameplay speed with good sound even if they aren't always giving 60fps. Castlevania which is mostly 2d runs 60fps at times with little slow downs. A 3d game, for example Moto Racer runs at 30+fps with normal gameplay speed. I should try more stuff, maybe play the classics (resident evil, silent hill, ridge racer, tekken, etc) at a fairly good speed on the handheld instead of a PC emulator. Secondly, the Caanoo dongle has a reason of existance now since a web browser with virtual keyboard support has finally been released, also a browsing app that downloads and installs software automatically from the classic handheld console archive and an maps viewer using google maps and other services I didn't know too. I have also tried Caanoo IRSSI which is an irc client and it worked fine. It's nice to know my Caanoo can be connected to the outside world somehow.

Anyways, to go back to the main idea of this post, I'd like to just write my thoughts as brief as possible about the current state of the open handheld scene. What do I consider as an open handheld scene? I don't think that much about the famous commercial handhelds that can also serve as homebrew consoles when hacked, like the NDS, PSP, 3DS and others. I am mainly focusing to the open handhelds which you might not buy with the main focus to play commercial games but for your own hobby matters, programming the console, contributing to the community, playing classic ports and emulators, etc. Of course you can do all these with PSP or NDS if hacked but my main love are the open handhelds like gamepark series or dingoo or others, which are unknown to the mainstream. I can't say why but I feel more love and I am more motivated to contribute by writting coding for these consoles than the mainstream handhelds.

One more element that narrows down for me the handhelds I am interested into is the existance of a community. If I was to collect every open handheld and get involved into coding them, then it would be a hell considering the vastness of newly released crappy imitations of the original idea of an open console, as seen in this blog. I didn't even know most of these handhelds. The fact is that there is no community in most of them. They are alterations of the same concept, sometimes different models of a system on chip not being drastically better, made by chinese companies usually, trying to sell cheap and make some bucks as alternative solutions for emulation and media players. So, it gets a bit weird after that and thus my interpretation of the few handhelds belonging to this open handheld phenomenon is narrowed down a lot. There might even be a company which produces one console that I consider belonging in the defined set yet the company also produces a number of other similar consoles that are irrelevant to it. For example Dingoo where Dingoo A320 is a part of the scene and not the other numerous handhelds they have released (see obscure handhelds). However, if the community shows and interest to one of this handheld and as things start moving on, I will consider it as a part of my selection.

Maybe I should not speak at large and try to speak about the little consoles that are already part of the community and the future possibilities. I am very interested to what the future might bring because there are is a stall currently in the community which is quite interesting if not scary. Will there be a good open handheld community in the future and what are the future handhelds to move on?

When GP32 was released first at 2001, this was a real novelty from the folks at gamepark. It was a totally new idea and started the part of the scene I was trying to define above. It's only much later that everybody has seen you can take a SoC, install free software in it or let the community code their own games, emuls, etc and possibly get your own audience who might or might not form a community. Anyway, it was before hell brooke lose. Now, gamepark has never really overdid it like dingoo and mostly released a new console after some time has passed. So, we have GP32 of course, GP2X at 2005, and much later GP2X Wiz and Caanoo. Each of them is a unique machine (well Wiz might be similar to Caanoo and there was also GP2X F200 with a touch screen which I forget) and are parts of the real community. Now, the sad news are that we might probably not see another gamepark console in the future.

The question is. Should the community be moving? Towards which next handheld? And if there is no new gamepark handheld then will people probably write and port more software for the latest gamepark handhelds? The Caanoo (and similarly the Wiz) have not shown their full capabilities yet. I have seen very very few software utilizing the actual GPU residing in these last two and personally I haven't even touched even if I'd like to test the performance of this one. If we were living with the thought that Caanoo is old enough and that the next generation of a gamepark handheld will be released then some people might wait for the next beast and would not be motivated to start writting a big game project (for example) for Caanoo.

What is the state of the gamepark handhelds? GP32 is my beloved and I might buy a used one someday because my old is broken. GP2X is old too, though I know there are a lot of sceners (in the demoscene I mean) who bought one with the thought of creating demos for it and never moved on to the later Wiz or Caanoo (as it wasn't a novelty anymore and the market was filled with imitations of open handheld consoles (one calls these a PMP (portable media player) trying to say it's not interesting anymore as in the times of GP32 or GP2X)). So, I know for a fact that I would still be interested to code a new classic software demo for the GP2X since some people from the demoscene might be able to appreciate, but in the open handheld community most people have moved to the Wiz or Caanoo. So, more demoscene for GP2X and more interest for other projects for Caanoo for me. Now Wiz/Caanoo seems to have a future of a steady platform that stays as it is because of the reasons I said (no new gamepark). And the scene is nice there even if the software much less than in times of GP2X (just see the total sizes and number of files in the openhandhelds archive.

But how about other alternatives? Dingoo A320, while a cheap chinese handheld nobody knew, somehow achieved creating a big community. Marketing? Contacts? Thing is, the company behind dingoo started releasing a lot of different variations of new handhelds, for example there is a Dingo A330 and a Gemei A330 (from the same people behind Dingoo, now one could confuse on A330 with the other A330) among others. See confusion and further confusion. So, there is no clear plan and the scene doesn't seem to move on from Dingoo A320. I have heard that the scene things mostly about the Gemei A330 which also seems my most favorite from all of the random junk out there, the people behind Dingux tried to port it to the new Gemei A330 but right now there doesn't seem to be sure the community moves there. We'd have to see Dingux and more stuff from it, a new archive, forum,. I mean how can the community decide with such a mess? Or maybe they will stay loyal to the old Dingoo A320? So, Gemei A330 is my personal guess for the future, concerning real open handheld community from the Dingoo side but time will tell.

Yet people might scream "Oh, but now my Iphone or my Android is much more powerful than these consoles". It's true and maybe there is a thing that could be a bit scary for the open handheld side of the scene. Though, I consider the touchpad/phone market something entirely different than my narrowed set of open handheld community. People though ask for more powerful open handheld devices and what is there?

The Pandora could be another alternative for the future of the hobby. It's 4 times as powerful than my Caanoo and it's maintain by geeks for geeks. It was an interesting project that went through various problems and maybe the release time was too late after two years of the first preorders when the touchpads and phones, recent 3DS or even possible new playstation portable will come. Though I don't personally care since as I said an open handheld is a different thing for me emotionally than big commercial handhelds that might become open if hacked. And maybe I don't want any power anymore. The Caanoo is enough powered and is still underutilized in terms of homebrew and demos (exception is most emulators which are really optimized to the bone). Maybe oneday we would see some real homebrew and demos of the class of good commercial games or some real demos. Maybe not.

Anyway, what's the state of Pandora? There was this massive drawback when people where expecting Pandora and it was late for two years and I think a lot of people haven't got their unit yet. Some kind of delays in the production proccess with Chinese manufacturers I have heard. Recent news say that a new German company has been selected for the circuit production, probably more reliable than the Chinese solution. The first new batch might arrive this January. Let's see how things will go, because with the demise of GPH (the hardware division I think) and the confusion from Dingoo, the road might have opened for Pandora to be revived. One major drawback though is that Pandora is quite expensive (around 330Euro I think?), so the community might not prefer it. People are also already pissed with the two years delay of Pandora. I still hold my believe in the project and maybe when I find a new job with a good pay, I might order one myself too.

What are other alternatives community-wise? Even if it sounds like a joke, I want to believe: The nD. A very cheap handheld for the community that you can buy more of them for just 10-20$ if your last one broke, with what I believe are still very good specs (ARM 400Mhz, 32MB ram, 320*240*16bpp) for my own love of the open handheld hobby with hopefully a big community. I see things a bit different than some people who wish a dual core 1GHZ, GPU accelerated, 256MB Ram and as much as more powered handheld, that will run PSX, N64, Dreamcast and other emuls and Far Cry and Crysis combined :P. I really don't care. GP2X was powerfull enough for me, especially for my software rendering ventures and if it's not perfect it's a challenge to optimize. Tons of good games both technically and gamewise do exist in emulators but this went mostly underutilized in every handheld released till now. Such specs are perfect for my hobby and all I need is the sense of a community too. It's gonna be very interesting if this handheld gets released and catches too.

So, in a nutshell for me the scene is no new gamepark, still personal interest in GP2X (demoscene mostly) for me, Wiz/Caanoo (these goes together almost, though I'll be working on my Caanoo mainly) will stay for the future, Dingoo A320 too (community is still strong), hoping for a pass to the next step being Gemei A330 possibly (I'd also prefer it from all the other junk), possible rise or fall of the Pandora (the prize, ah the prize) for people needing a more powerful open handheld and an alternative community concept with Nd that might be extremely interesting. Honorable mention (even though not a handheld but still an open mini computer in the similar spirit) is The Raspberry Pi. And what else the future might bring. This is in a nutshell the whole subset of where the open handheld community will move around and my interests too.

This tells me I should buy a new Dingoo A320 because my last one broke, stay loyal to the Caanoo (my Wiz has also a defunct screen, maybe I'll buy a new one in the future just for the completion and porting stuff from Caanoo), wait in hope for Gemei A330 creating a new community or not, see how Pandora goes and hope in vain for Nd. A retro comeback from my side to the GP32 if I buy one, even though you hear nothing about it in the scene anymore. So it's hardly community relevant anymore even if it was a part once.

Tons of text to put things in perspective about my love of the hobby.

Super noooooooo... nooo. nooo.. there is nooo... NOVA

2011-09-13T12:49:00.002+01:00

That's similar to the quote on that Amiga demo :)

My relation to astronomy is minimal even though I'd always like to get more into it. Obscured by my everyday activities, real life (if that even exists :P), hobbies (I realize I spend most of my time in front of my PC nowadays :) never let me get into a second hobby. And that would be buying a telescope and watching the sky for me. Maybe also follow what other comes with it, like going to astroparties, moving to far away locations to watch the sky (not just from my balcony) and even studying the physics of it. But sometimes it's hard to have a second hobby after the first grand one. Or not?

I have heard about the supernova possible being visible with binoculars and I was fascinated about it because supernova always fascinated me since I was a child. I must have been watching Cosmos by Carl Sagan in the greek TV then, a series that I'd like to watch again today (I was a child back then and maybe I don't remember much, also nostalgy).

So, I tried this time to locate where this thing happens, at which times during the night it's visible and where I can locate it in my balcony. Yes, normally I should have gone somewhere far away where there are no city lights, though I don't have a car and I couldn't ask anyone then (they would probably want to sleep :P). But anyway, there was a nice window of time between 22:00 - 24:00 and visible from the side of a balcony in my home with a nice stand where I could sit there steady and aim my horrible binoculars I got from the middle ages to the sky. I could see just darkness. I had to take some mushrooms and imagine stuff. Who knows, they say drugs enhance your perception :)

No, no, no,.. there was no NO VA. But this thing motivated me to get new binoculars or even a telescope and start getting more into it (well, when I have the time and the money :P). At least I had tried for three days. Friday, Saturday, Sunday every night. Then the phenomenon fades away slowly. 21 million light years is boggling even if considered small for astronomical scales. This thing was fairly visible with a good set of binoculars they say.

News on the net also speak about some older supernovas that have occurred throughout history, one in 1576 that was visible with the naked eye and another one in 1006 which according to the Arabian and Chinese files was so bright that you could read at night. Wow! I am wondering how far away those supernovas were (there is nowhere stated in the news) and my greatest curiosity is, has a supernova inside our galaxy happened? With so many billion stars, wouldn't it be too common for one to happen inside our galaxy? And if a 21 million light years supernova is barely visible with binoculars, how bright would it be if it happened in our galaxy? Would a close enough supernova affect life here in disastrous ways? Maybe I should start studying these stuff instead of just asking, but you know these questions boggle my mind :)

When I started this blog, I had a post entitled the hermit and the stars. I think the stars are similar to our hobbies. People spend time in social casual talk while wondering what are we geeks doing with our lives. It's not about our life or a geekness trend though, it's not about belonging, it's not a bridge to the social, it's only because we find a meaning in these stuff. And as one cannot understand why are you so enthusiastic about programming and demos and retro and stuff, one can also not imagine what is there in the stars, more than just some bright dots. Ok,. he understands there is something that is not just bright twinkling dots but this is a thing for scientists not someone who likes to stare either with his naked eyes or with a telescope. Or he might just not care while we are fixated to this. Anyway, so my passion for the stars (which has not evolved because of my computer hobby :) is also relevant to my hermit personality. I like stuff, I like ideas, I like the human mind, I don't enjoy casual talk. I want the real thing!

Though, that was an irrelevant thought, not having to do with the supernova specific and since I have said everything I would like to say today about my epic failure at seeing it and my wish to get better equipment then I should stop. See you in a next post!

Procrastination and Demos

2011-09-01T17:18:00.026+01:00

As I was procrastinating by reading random blogs instead of finishing work, I stumpled upon an interesting article at Coding Horror with even more interesting links. In a nutshell it is a criticism on most self-help books/websites, also focusing on the few exceptions having to do with the scientific literature studying these things, which is the most interesting part to me for further study.

As for the self-help crap I generally agree as I don't like self-help gurus or new-age philosophies which tell you they have found the secret leading in a succesfull life. I admit though that in the process of searching for answers concerning the issues that have bothered me in life, I have stumbled upon a lot of these sites of self-proclaimed self-help gurus. Well, most of the times I didn't found "the secret" because if it was so simple then everybody's life would be much better than it is. All I found was some very general ideas that are too familiar and sound "oh-so-nice" to us and stories about how "this worked and changed my life", "my friend is a very different person now" and so on. Apparently most of the people who didn't gained anything from these ideas and those who think it's pure bull didn't bothered to comment on these sites.

But this is not the main focus of this post. I might write (or not) some more thoughts on the above in my Optimus Monologue blog. It's just that another link from the comments on the Coding Horror article lead me to a nice little tool which is an equation of motivation and makes quite a sense when used to describe various situations in my life where procrastination took over me. You might ask, do I need another equation to understand the obvious things? Does it have to be so logical? Isn't it about emotions? Well, I discovered that it helps taking a situation where for some reasons I am not motivated enough to work and speculate on each variable of the equation. Of course, I could just try to feel which parts of this work demotivate me. But it's much easier to reach some useful conclusion about what goes wrong or what could I change in my work process when going backwards. I could maybe see the key elements with my feelings but using this logic tool backwards helps me focus more accurately on the critical points and see what to change. I'd really want to explain my thoughts by writting about demomaking after posting and explaining the equation.

There are four variables in this. I'd say that Expectancy is mainly static concerning my demomaking hobby and the same happens with Impulsiveness which depends on the person and I'd say I have a fairly high one but not extreme. The most important parts for this study are Value and Delay. Let's explaing what those terms are in a nutshell (although the link I gave you above will help).

Expectancy has to do with negative or possitive expectation concerning the job you have to do. Do you have a low self-esteem concerning girls or job interviews? Then a low expectation concerning your success will kill your motivation or make you avoid taking action. Impulsiveness as I said depends on the person. High impulsiveness means that you want results/rewards NOW. If a specific task doesn't give you direct results but you have to finish the whole project or wait a lot to get some reward then as you understand this is a pretty unmotivating piece of work for a highly impulsive person. Value is simply what the word says. A very boring task or a job we don't want to do has a very low value. Delay is the period of time before we finish the task and get our reward. It's very much related with impulsiveness.

Let's give some examples relevant to my hobby. First about computers. Programming is a tough work for highly impulsive people. I know a lot of people who will read a programming book and expect to be able to do full blown apps in a month, yet be dissapointed and quit working because it really needs a lot of patience and years to learn. Maybe programming isn't about highly impulsive people or is it? Delay is big enough. It needs enough patience and work to move from a simple "Hello World" to something more impressive. For some Expectancy might be high enough too because it might feel impossible to them that oneday they might learn to write serious code. It won't be a case later (also a static variable that I will be able to remove) for me when I discuss later about my democoding motivation based on this scheme because I know I can code and I don't have doubts about it. Value. I said before that I consider myself to have somewhat high impulsivity. Maybe not extreme but something above the average. I might be wrong, but if I am right then how the heck did I learn to programm so well? Through lot's of pressure and insistence. I somehow REALLY wanted to be something in my life. I have chosen programm and I HAD to. Somehow this could be the Value parameter that made me insist on working on learning programming and doing my first demos regardless my Impulsivity to play games or surf the internet instead. I am not entirely sure about this but it's a nice first guess compared to the motivation equation.

Games. Internet. What do they have in common? Almost zero response to reward time. Delay is close to zero. The fun is NOW! That's why they are so popular among procrastinators. Value is high too in a way. I already said it. FUN.

Let's go on with this. Time of reward. A very important factor. Remember the old saying: Focus on the journey, not the destination. Let's put it aside the equation. It made sense even though I had a little trouble here determining whether I have assigned this to the right variables. I can't say since sometimes these variables might be interconnected (for example Delay and Impulsiveness). But let's see this. I wrote about games/internet above and how we prefer them from hard work. Delay is NOW aka the Journey. Reward is instant. In a programming job you usually long to get something working. It can be either finding a little bug, writting a piece of code, completing an important algorithm or even the whole project. The last one was my usual mistake. This is the destination. Delay would equal the whole time of the project completion. This also makes sense with the saying about splitting your work into smaller parts. You focus on completing the smaller tasks and thus the Delay factor is much smaller thus increasing your motivation. Not if you always long for completing the whole project though.

This is where it seems to me that Value and Delay are interconnected. Say that you have a very boring project to finish. You are longing to finish it so that you can finally get rid of it. The Value factor of getting rid of the damn thing is quite high because you will be relieved from this nuisance, yet you get your reward (which is only completing it, the destination) after a long time, thus the Delay factor is also big. What can you do? You could reduce the Delay factor a lot by splitting the whole project into much smaller tasks. But what about the value of each of these tasks. Considering that it's just a boring project that you want to get rid of, it's quite possible that these parts and generally the whole process (aka the journey) don't give enough Value points to get the thing moving on. This is the part where they say you should FIND motivations but I never manage to do. But it's quite logical considering it's a project that you have to finish but don't want to actually work on. I quote Tales of Mere Existence

I have a project I have to do. I have a project I need to do. I don't know if it's a project I really want to do, but I do know that I want my project to be done.

So, what happens with demos? Luckily I think it's not the same case as in a boring university/professional work you might be in the miserable position to HAVE to do but NOT WANT to. Because it's a kind of hobby where it's possible to enjoy the journey too. My mistake was that I was focusing on the far side of the road, the destination. I was too obsessed with seeing my demo released and it's a thing that worked positive as a motivation at the beginning but faded away by the time. In the interconnected equation, when I value the destination (So we can say, the Value is the number assigned to how much I'd like to see my demo released) the Delay gets big. It needs too much patience to work hard for months while longing for the single day when my work is done and it's definitelly not the right way to motivate yourself. But this time you can do something better to keep working while moving your mind away from the thought of releasing your work. Ask yourself, which smaller parts of demomaking do you enjoy more? Can you focus on just doing these parts and forget demomaking for a while? You will end up still doing effects or small parts that can be later connected to do a bigger demo while still feeling active and being all happy about it. Congratulations! Big Value and very short Delay (aka fast rewards). Can you get away from the demoscene releasing to the crowd virus and just concentrate on what you love for a while?

It took me so long to start learning doing this because this equation is missing some other factors. Emotional habits. Psychology. Being in the scene. I recal wondering: But how can I just focus on effects and little algorithms? I need to show my work to people. They want it in some complete "demo-format". What if I end up only doing effects that I keep in my HD and never complete any demo? I tell you now that this is bullshit! With this psychology you can't be motivated to work at all. It's better just doing effects and little experimentations just for you than longing for showing something to the crowd and maybe your effort being acknowledged. Even if there is the fear of never contributing with a full blown demo, at least my final plan works! You have to understand it and slowly slowly integrate this new philosophy of creativity in your life. The equation explains afterwards why this works better but doesn't give you the tools to change direction in your life/hobby so that to not make the same mistakes. It's just nice how it reflects the more correct direction I recently took with my hobby.

About Value, there are different qualities in it. Finishing a demo has a big value even if it takes time (big Delay). The second approach has both a fairly good Value of enjoying every moment coding stuff that you like and a much shorter reward time (small Delay). But even if both Values have big numbers, what is of more quality? Doing stuff only for the final reward however big or enjoying the whole essence of coding every single time? Apart from that, the first choice had not always positive value. A lot of things where happening with this approach, for example first came happiness of releasing stuff within the community but then sorrow was second with some people dissing your work or not getting enough of the response you longed for, forcing you again to get into the same cycle of HAVING to work hard so that maybe they appreciate your next work. It was full of shit (apart from strawberries :).

I have come to the conclusion that the best strategy for me is to just focus on the things that I love (code experimentation, optimization, retro platforms, etc) without planning to necessary (or early) release any of these in a demo. Yet, if this happens that I put my work in a full blown demo then the audience response should be considered as an additional bonus and not thought as the actual goal.

So, it's just a bonus. Just do what you love and people might appreciate it or not but you won't care about this enough if you have followed the second route and had a great time during the journey. The motivation equation just describes (and puts in order) some of my feelings in a more compact way. It might be a great tool to see what slows me down in other parts of my life too..

p.s. Some parts I left out. 4k or smaller intros are nicer because Delay is smaller than regular demo and Value is still good (fun and appreciation by the community). My Otinanum crapmos was my failed attempt to receive the reward of releasing something fast, aka Value is big enough but with very very small Delay. But that's a lie. I didn't enjoyed these project. First of all, where is the fun of coding good stuff that you like? Secondly they were mostly dissed by the community of course. Finally, I didn't felt for these reasons and other that the Value was big. So, by decreasing the reward time with a stupid way of releasing demos with the use of a shovel (as in shovelware?) I unintentionally decreased the value too. I know some groups (ISO, Jumalauta) did such tons of small releases and I don't know if they liked it but I definitelly didn't. Who knows, maybe I will release a bigger Otinanum demo oneday (I secretly have some sources :) where I actually enjoy the process of coding abstract, noisy or BITS stuff and get the kicks out of it. Still without worrying about the scene.

p.p.s. Now, will the motivation equation help me to get laid? Duh :P

Doing archeology on my digital memories

2011-08-03T21:34:00.006+01:00

This will be a little post concerning what I am doing these days and the thoughts it emitted. When I left for London to start my MSc, that being September 2009, I also left all my retro junk at home. Since I started a new life there, I didn't bothered much, and my parents transfered a lot of these stuff at our village. Few days ago I have visited my village (which is situated near Chalkidiki, a place in northern greek where you can easily travel to the sea) after such a long time with some friends so that we stay there and go for a bath to the near sea. The first thing I did was searching for my old stuff and deciding what to salvage at the moment. As I didn't want to take too much stuff with me, I decided I would only take one hardware (and that is CPC :) and then the smaller stuff (GBA cartidges, cables I was missing, CDs with important old stuff, etc).

These days, apart from running demos and games on my CPC (The last time it was August 2009 I think, last demo I had tried on the real thing was From Scratch by Vanity iirc) I spent a lot of time searching through my old CDs. Except from some original stuff (Mindcandy DVDs) and other unimportant CDs (warez I can also find on the internet) I have salvaged a big stack of CDs and DVDs with regular backups of my old stuff, from 2003 to 2009. Random downloads, backups of old code and other works of mine, several stuff I might not have kept on my current PC right now. It's a tedious work, searching from all the tons of random downloads and triple copies of the same backed up source codes, trying to save the essentials in your HD but it emmited memories finding a lot of old rare stuff.

First of all, my very old emails. In the past, I managed to save all the thousands emails I had ever received from my obsolete hotmail account with outlook express. Then I did this again in my more recent yahoo account. Till 2002-3 I think. Nowadays I don't do that. I stopped. I think that whatever email I get just stays in my mind or maybe I forget it but it doesn't matter. It's the same with backups. I stopped hoarding every random thing I download in tons of DVDs. Though, it brought tears into my eyes reading parts of my endless ruminations, huge emails, old friends I miss, my old enthousiasm when I first met the demoscene community, my stupid obsessions, huge website with tons of text I build, silly irc logs from the old scene, my past. Even if I sometimes wanted to forget it, it was more powerful than now. Currently, I feel a little strange or laugh hilarious reading some of my old stuff. Was that me? Have I changed? Do I wish to go back?

Sometimes I do. Looking at the things I was building back then, with all the presure, the lack of freedom (I was growing up, studying for my university and arguing with my parents about the extensive use of the computer, even though I was mostly coding or writting, not playing much games) how did I manage to do all these? Even if they look ridiculous now, ugly websites with tons of boring text, mediocre demos, being too obsessive, to desperate with that hobby, also obsessive with geek girls, do not forget that (I think I really scared them back then :P) and the scene, the same and the same disapointments, arguing with the scene, with pouet, becoming a wreck yet I continued doing stuff with great force. I was dead since 2003 yet I really decided to cut the crap after 2008. I know it by reading my private old texts reminscing my situation. I was emotionally shattered since 2003. Yet I still pressed myself till 2008.

What do I want to say? I don't feel like my past self. I still did some things for the scene (Chunky Chan was a small comeback on CPC, followed by my little Spectrum/CPC/C64 tiny intro releases) and wish I can do more. I still code, I will never leave code, especially the one where motivation flows and you don't do it because you have to release something, but out of own curiosity and experimentation (For example I am trying OpenWatcom C on my 386 again without planning a demo or something). As long as I do it in the healthy way it's good for me. I think I have put those rules on me, for example if I feel like I am pressing myself I avoid doing it. (For example, last dbfinteractive competition, image processing. I was planning something but I didn't do anything for this reason. Thinking only about releasing something under pressure, not having fun). It's good for me to follow that road. Yet this is not my old self which is good but then I miss something. I miss the times when I was active. I look at my old stuff and see that even if it was obsessive, there was that stuborness there, the one that fueled the whole thing. I feel like I lost my energy now, I can't do this again anymore.

I even had several websites I updated frequently. I want to start my new website on my new place but I can't even think about doing the work that it needs. How could I spent half of the time updating so many sites (optimus site, cpc scene site, greek demoscene site) and even doing lists of demos in pure html style and not with some automated script back then? Doing it the stupid bruteforce way. Insisting stuborness. I see the works of the past and I am scared. It scares me because I remember the pressure under which I did this. It's not bad now, when you see your works it's like you see your soul. I just realized I can hardly do this anymore. Maybe I will be coding at rare times, or possibly a good team might motivate me. I will be doing it for fun, not because I should. But that was the force of the past. Without it, I would possibly just do nothing and only play online games. Sometimes this is one of the forces that makes geeks do the hard work they do without getting anything in return.

Nowadays things that I need to resolve in my real life makes me avoid getting too obsessed to start a new project. There are a lot of things I still want to do, either things I have started recently or things I want to start, but I am afraid to touch. It's kinda logical, I am 31, hopefully got well with my master exams recently, next step being to find a job and try to settle down my life. I hope that after this I might feel more free to work on some new stuff inbetween. I miss it. Yet, I love that I am free of the obsession, thus if I feel like, I can decide to not work on my next scene project today. It's a dileema.

Still nice to revive some old memories back by looking at the contents of those backup CDs. Also, I fixed my CPC drive cable yesterday so that it's registered as drive A and not B (It was easier than I thought. So many years I was afraid to touch it because I am not the hardware guy but there is a way where you don't need to solder). This is essential for running Batman Forever among few other software that don't like drive B (Symbos too). Last thing I did at night was finishing again Orion Prime in a big three hours longplay. It was a great experience and I had two years to touch a real CPC.

I still have a bunch of old CDs to go through this night..

People forget it's just a hobby

2011-07-18T01:56:00.006+01:00

As I grow up and gradually evolve my view concerning my involvement in the demoscene and other communities, I encounter amusing arguments from people inside the community concerning my activities. It's not a regular phenomenon and maybe I misunderstand what people meaned to say, yet it becomes more obviously weird to see these conflicting arguments since I have matured enough concerning my hobby and all these ideas sound like senseless arguing to me. Nowadays I am more detached from my hobby, or let's better say less obsessed with it, being there for the good things that it still gives me but not emotionally hard involved.

It was diferrent the very first time we've started. When I initially met the demoscene it was a whole new world for me and I have tried to make sense to it. Somehow it was connected to my personality too, so anyone dissing this hobby or giving it another touch would make me angry. Since this thing was connected deeply with my personality, I had imagined a static form describing it, preferably the one it felt more "right" to me. Thus, excessive argumentations concerning the nature of my hobby took part, like "dos demos VS windows demos" and such stuff. "My demoscene" couldn't fit this or that platform, demos shouldn't be this, demos should be that, etc. This is one instance of the absurdity even though you stop caring as you grow up.

Do you remember those people who are outside of your hobby and yet they insist arguing whether you should do what you do? Oh, why do you code demos? It's totally useless! This is the first case of people who don't understand the senselesness of arguing about this, because they forget it's just a hobby and it doesn't have to be "useful". The most possible reason for the inability to understand is that these people never had a real hobby. Though I have discussed about this case already in a very old blog post, I am just using it as a bridge to move on to a second type of very amusing cases.

Outsiders cannot understand why we are doing what we are doing and that's understandable. From the other side, I would expect that people who are inside this hobby would understand the glorious senselessness of what we are doing and not seek for a reason or question one. Yet one discovers some funny cases, maybe those people didn't mean it but it is truly hilarious that even your own kind doesn't get it. Say you meet an Amiga scener to whom you show your CPC demos. Ok, maybe Amstrad CPC is uninteresting to him and this is understandable but this is not related to the answer you get. The guy says, "Hmmm CPC. That's too primitive, why do you spend your time coding for such an obsolete machine?". Yeah right! While your Amiga is modern :P

That's not much different than saying "it makes sense as long as it's my platform". Yeah, Amiga doesn't sound so much primitive than CPC, but we forget that both sceners are doing demos which are "senseless" in itself. In my opinion even if the person arguing was only doing modern PC demos it wouldn't make a difference. Even if he would argue that at least he is also learning something modern that could be used in a job. But are we spending so much time just to fill our CV with experience? If that was the case then why not try to find a job instead of spending so much time doing demos? People forget that what we do doesn't necessary have to be "useful" in a real world sense. I didn't started being involved in the demoscene because I thought it would be a good career move. I didn't choose CPC instead of Amiga because I thought it would give me more relevant job experience. Hell, all I had in my mind was an endless love for retro and hobby programming, something that doesn't need to be explained in a "logical" way.

This is what happens when we have these hobbies (which we initially started out of passion) and at a later stage we try to rationalize our involvement. You were there. I was there too. Wondering why I spend so much time in the demoscene. Why such an effort for something that is just a hobby. When you worry about it, you try to make sense of it in comparison to the real world. You say, maybe it's just a hobby, but at least I have learned programming which might help me get a job. You say, hmm.. Amiga is not that primitive, I have learned some concepts I can still use. But is this the real reason or is it just a way to rationalize your hobby?

Funny thing, I have a "rational" explanation for this question. Programming takes a lot of time and effort. Why do it as a pure hobby? You could use your time different in the same time and gain some money. But then it's not about money. Then what is it for? Big effort needs huge motivation. You can't just sit and spend so many workhours for nothing! A friend told me this revealing idea: Fame is the money of the internet. Yes! While it's controversial to say that you are doing this for "fame" (also, it sounds too egoistic, so we could just switch this word with another, for example "expose") there is nothing else left. Every person, in every hobby that doesn't pay real money, there needs some kind of motivational force to be able to spend so much effort and time into the whole thing. Becoming popular to the community is a very good motive to push yourself to produce big things for no monetal gain. Why do you think that such big hard working communities of geeks thrive today? Everyone wants to hear good words about his work. People enjoy getting a good name in a community that matters. Thus, I don't doubt it anymore, fame is a primary motive in all these hobby communities and I could also use different words like glory or honor to make it not sound bad. But it's good and it's natural, since you are doing the hard work for a reason at the end. It was only bad when I was obsessing about it but now it's just a nice little bonus.

My brother once told me, these sceners are crazy! They are supposed to be an underground community who value limitless creativity just for the sake of it. Yet some people argue continuously whether demoscene should be this or that, whether a demo running on windows, dos, flash, assembly, c, etc should be a demo or not. Well, some of the times these flames are just for fun maybe. I know they don't mean it. It's only that everyone wants to be there and have an opinion to what his hobby should be about, sometimes being a bit too opinionated. If you have seen your hobby from an outer perspective, you stop being too obsessive about it and all these things are funny. Who cares if a demo is made in Flash. Do you like it? If you find it uninteresting because of lack of low level code then you can just move along. It's ok to say that it's not your cup of tea but denying this piece of work because it doesn't fit your little universe? Everything is fine regardless the platform / language / tools used as long as it tries to be creative or do something impressive.

In a nutshell, once I was curious about people outside my hobby who not only understand why I am doing what I am doing but arguing about how useless it is. Today, as I keep a distance from the demoscene, being there but not be too obsessed with it, being only active when I feel like, I see things with a more clear view. Thus, I discover that even people inside these communities who are supposed to understand free creativity without a reason, sometimes doesn't seem to get it. When I think about someone who argues about my retro platform being too old and useless while spending free time on a platform that is still retro by todays standard it makes me cringe. Not mentioning the fanatics (we all used to be once) who can't seem to understand that free creativity is the key to happiness. Even if one cannot understand the motivation behind some obscure demo releases, one should respect the free cretivity behind making the most "absurd" wild demos or coding for obsolete platforms that nobody ever uses. Well, seing people arguing about these stuff while you know the nature of the demoscene or other creative communities that do it for nothing, is amusing in the most strange way.

Thus, I end up with this strange random piece of thoughts from my side, making people wondering why do I waste so much time writting these senseless blog posts. Who cares..

I should still learn how to play adventure games

2011-05-28T22:45:00.009+01:00

Each time I decide to give it a try at playing an adventure game, I realize that there is some kind of sophistication behind this type of gaming that you don't usually find in your regular gaming moments. Adventure games need a unique kind of mindset that one might manage to get into slowly after a long period of being involved in this kind of gaming. This is important not only for getting smarter on this by the years but primarily for learning to enjoy the genre at it's fullest.

What am I trying to say really? I almost got caught by the common pitfall again. Using the walkthrough impatiently, in every chance I got. This is the reason I am writing this post today. It has been proven to me for another time that being tempted to use the solution for an adventure game spoils the fun of discover it all by yourself.

Usually, when I get stuck three things might be the reason. The most common being that something has to "happen" in the game for new stuff to be revealed. Either you have to visit a place again after you have finished another action or talk again to a character, gather all essential items you will need in the next part to survive and so on. It's not dumb if you stuck there but maybe it's not a fair enough reason to look at the solution. Another reason for stucking might be that you are simply stupid. Or you are so impatient to finish the game that you stop caring about the story and the details that might help you understand what to do next. In this case if I read the solution, I realize that I have unnecessarily (ab)used the walkthrough for something that I could easily think myself. That's the worst case where I feel that I genuinely slaughtered the whole gaming experience for nothing. The third way to stuck is of course when a riddle is ridiculous or very hard to figure out, something you would hardly ever imagine and it feels fair opening the solution in this case. Though, even in such a case, figuring it all out by yourself would give you the ultimate feeling of accomplishment.

And it's not only that impatience makes you eager to look at the solution and spoil the fun. This kind of mentality makes it also harder to play an adventure properly. Sometimes in order to solve some riddles one has to observe the environment very well or follow the story carefully for clues. If one doesn't have the patience to actually play the game but only being too harsh with himself to finish it for the cutscenes or the finale, one is bound to not think clearly, missing obvious clues while feeling stupid again by opening the solution for no good reasons. The brain doesn't work well under pressure or when you are too fixated with the goal (to finish the damn thing) and not with actually being there. So, the rule of not using the walkthrough so impatiently, might also have to do a lot to do with how you play the game.

But why do we succumb into temptation and spoil the fun? How is this thing connected with what I am saying about a different mindset or sophistication behind playing adventure games? It's not much about the fact that in adventure games you have to think. Someone would say that even in strategy games or even fps you have to think. The major difference is that with adventure games you need to have patience. You should try to find a free evening, a peaceful moment, that period of time when you don't have other things in mind and decide to dive into the world of some random adventure title. You must not hurry up to finish the game, you should not worry about the two hours spent on a single riddle, you should be in a relaxed state where you can accept spending your time in the same environments searching for the next damn thing to do to move on.

Maybe our way of life is rapid or so do they say (was it ever different?) that we can't accept spending our time playing a computer game in a more relaxed manner. The fact is that most computer games nowadays, even those where you have to think for a while, are made for people who wish to play something fast in their limited free time that gives them a lot of action or content in very short periods. Guy comes back from work very tired, needs to relax with his friends on the internet, joins his favorite multiplayer RTS / FPS / MMORPG / whatever for a fast 1-2 hour play. Give him his fix now, now, now and fast!!!

Think that real time strategy games are the most popular of the strategy genre. People used to play many turn based strategy games in the past where you could have a break to make a coffee during your turn :). Nowadays, RTS are far more popular because a lot of funky stuff are happening in the screen, keeping the player always occupied. This is ideal for a person who wants to play a game for say half an hour and still experience enormous amounts of fun for the short time being. Even modern puzzle games, as seen for example by casual games company Popcap and others, have been following the rule of "big reward per click" ratio. You've got to just click "randomly" (see bejewelled :) somewhere in the screen and lot's of funky stuff will happen. It also explains (among other reasons) why people prefer multiplayer games instead of classic single player games with a story. They just want to experience some short period of fun without being much involved in a longer story-driven gameplay.

This is the situation with most modern games, yet I don't imply that this is necessary bad. I would only like to stretch that for the case of adventure games, one has to adopt an entirely different mentality that might be opposite to what one is used to in the majority of games.

I am a "victim" of the common mentality, as I sometimes tend to worry about the hours I spend playing a game when I could be doing something else. So, in the case of adventure games, when I am courageous enough to start one, it's so easy to fall prey to the walkthrough. I make another common mistake, wanting to play some classic games, just to finish those games, just to say to myself that I have finished that classic game forever, as if they were movies or books that you "have" to see/read so that you feel more complete culturally. We make this mistake a lot, even in non adventure games. We play a game just to finish it.

It's really that hard. Adventure games ask exactly the opposite behaviour. I think that the next time I will give it a try, I will try to have some discipline concerning the use of a walkthrough. If I get bored, being at the same place for an hour, then I will just close the damn thing and start it the next day. Sometimes it's nice to get off your computer and wonder in your sleep, how the hell are you supposed to solve that riddle? Now that would be fun, living this adventure with it's riddles bothering you in your everyday life, even when you are not in front of the computer. Isn't that an interesting feeling? As in the case of turn-based rts. Going to the kitchen to make some coffee while wondering about your next move. Or any other game that could possibly be played in a more relaxed manner. That's an interesting thought even for an fps.

p.s. The last adventure game I've finished is Orion Prime and this is a recent adventure on CPC made by sceners. One reason I truly enjoyed it is because there is no solution for it yet. The adventure was very well thought in terms of riddles (quite logical but some were hard), interesting non-linear gameplay, lot's of fun stuff and little puzzle games inside, enough care to make this not ridiculous (for example no insane pixel hunting or being unable to finish without knowing it) so that one can finish it without the solution yet have a hard enough time with it so that you feel accomplished. The author even has something different in his site instead of a full solution, which is hints that work quite well even if you get stuck and rely on them. The thing is, even if you get tempted to see a hint, you don't feel the same stupid or dissapointed as you would be reading the solution. You get some help to be unstuck but it doesn't seem to spoil the fun. So, hints could be a much better alternative if you really are impatient.

A demogroup that motivates

2011-04-04T12:19:00.014+01:00

I have been a member of many demogroups in the past. Though, I can rarely remember working together as a real group in most of them. Sometimes we were planning a new demo but when the deadline came and I met my teammates at a demoparty I was the only one having brought some pieces of code that could make it into a demo. Of course, the opposite would happen too, my teammates being more active than me. I am saying this also to not discredit other teammates who came with some nice stuff from time to time when I was inactive.

I was wondering recently, what is the thing that motivates us? Some sceners might have noticed that visiting demoparties can be very motivating but motivation fades away fast in later days. Just before leaving the partyplace to go home, you are making plans of start working on a new kick ass demo or anything, but then what happens? The passion fades away.

What is the thing that motivates you to be active in the scene after visiting demoparties? It is that you suddenly find several people like you, who love to talk about demos, coding techniques, old hardware, the community, etc. You realize again that you are not alone, you see other people working on stuff, everyone is "wasting" his time on making demos, you feel that you are a part of this big community. What happens when you go back home? You are alone again. Real life steals some time from you. You are resistant to give some of your time to demomaking all alone when nobody can understand what you are doing. You might not even have a single person around you with whom you can discuss demos and not bore them. That's so demotivating.

That's my situation. While I have some programmer friends with whom we can discuss about coding in general and then watch some recently released demos, they are not much involved in the demoscene and definitelly not as obsessed as I am. Needless to say, even if my demo passion has deteriorated a bit from my side too, I am still feeling more into it than any of my close friends. Sometimes it's hard to even find a single person with whom I can talk democoding specific things, especially when it has to do with retro machines. This is only possible with email contacts from around the globe and yet they are counted in the fingers of my left hand.

I had been reading some stories (or maybe interviews) concerning some classic demogroups, how they were working together and the regular meetings they had. Well, it's always better if your groupmates are living close together, preferably in the same city. So, these people were like a family and they held regular meetings ((bi)weekly maybe) where they would work together or just go for a beer and watch some classic or recent demos. It didn't matter if many meetings didn't result into planning or working on stuff. Even a meeting resulting in jerking around would still be enough to spark motivation.

You wouldn't have to push things, just gather together people enthousiastic about demos so that you don't forget there are other people like you who love these stuff. Remember demoparties? Motivation is inversely proportional to the time passed since the last day of the event. Let's boost motivation another time by visiting another event after two or three weeks. But who has the ability to visit demoparties so frequently? (maybe people more obsessed with the scene than me :) So what was the alternative for the successful groups of the past. Private group meetings.

Another thing that is missing is the key members. I think there have to be at least two very enthousiastic people inside the group. It's understandable that people have real lives too and some might not be hooked enough to the demoscene or the group they belong and just be around for company. People also change, one might loose interest for what he used to love. It's quite important that there is at least one person who can keep the spark and preferably being accompanied by a second person who is also enthousiastic so that he doesn't feel alone in this. Imagine that all members of the group are lost into real-life matters or they lost interest in demoscene afairs. They would even forget setting up these private group meetings!

This has happened a lot of times. The alternative to group meetings when the distances are vast is usually to set up a private demogroup mailinglist, irc channel or similar. It's not nearly as good as meeting these people in real life but it's better than nothing. Guess what happened? When I finished a demo we were planning together with a group from a set up mailinglist, I focused on another project and forgot to even post something in the list. A month has past and the mailinglist service had closed our group. In an older list we have created for a PC demo we never finished, the same had happened after two weeks of speaking about our great plans. Suddenly a silence. There is a missing link here, it's normal of course, when people have other real life work and they are not as obsessed, imagine that even myself as the most passionate scener then, forgot to keep the spirit up. Initiative was missing.

For me, a great group does not need to be an elite group, but it has to be a fun group of a bunch of people where there are many people who love demos and would be willing to meet with each other or love demomaking. It's understandable that people have real lives too or have their minds in other things too, but there has to be a way of frequent communication just to keep the spirit up. It's not even necessary to push things, just give people a meeting place of inspiration. I think that would be enough to keep some creative flow in the group without making things hard for the individuals.

From all the groups I was into, only Dirty Minds was close (but still not enough) to the optimal. The reasons being that there was at least another one really enthusiastic scener, Voxfreax. There was a period when we had set up a mailing list (or maybe it was just sending group mails), it was me, Voxfreax and Rex. We have been working slowly on the sequel to ASB then. I was working in a real life job too, yet I would come back late in the evening to continue coding and communicate at night about my progress. Our work suddenly paused when I lost my job, strange as it is. Meeting Voxfreax at Amstrad Expo recently sparked the motivation and we were planning working on our demos when going back at home but of course real life took this away. We talk about this from day to day but communication is rare. I am thinking about setting up a new mailing list. I don't know if it will work.

You see, it's even hard to do it correctly even if I get the concept of frequent communication. Things fail. I was speaking about the problem of not being at the same place with your groupmates, but in at least one of the groups I belong there is another coder in the same town. Do we need an organizer? One that can bring the group together? Or one doesn't have to push things? Sometimes I wait for graphics or music from some team members and I am planning to finish some code so that I can send motivating previews but it doesn't happen. There are times where I helped a group member to finish his first demo and another time where we were in neighbour PCs and each of them coded his own demo separately. Am I bad at cooperating with people? Why all of my demos are entirely my own creation with just an additional track from a musician?

So, my first question is how to find a good motivating group with enthousiastic freaks just like the old times. My second question is whether I am making something wrong or I don't take the initiative to connect with people and motivate them in the proper way. I think though that most groups and most people are lacking the same spirit. Being part of a great group in the demoscene with enthousiastic people that spark motivation is the exception. I think..

Whyyyyyyyy???

2011-02-22T23:57:00.002Z

I spent an hour of debugging and trying to understand what the hell is happening and why on this strange thing:

// hit->distance = calcFirstIntersection(player, angle, intersection_type);\
hit->distance = 512;

printf("%d\n", hit->distance);

It was supposed to print 512 but it was printing 32765 and 34. I realized that something was going completely wrong because I have mistakenly typed the character '\' after the commented line (probably because those stupid keyboards have this character over half the 'Enter' key).

After trying to understand why that character even when it's commented have such result and what is actually happening, I found out that it cancelled my next line. Not exactly. It actually cancels CR+LF or something like that.

Simply, if I type:

printf("foo\
bar");

It is like I am typing:

printf("foobar");

So, the accidentally typed '\', even after a comment, brought my next line in the same commented line, thus I wasn't loading hit->distance with anything and my printf got what was on the init of this value or something random anyway.

I know I have seen this '\' symbol used somewhere before. When people write inline assembly in some C compilers. Oh, also in some code that passed a GLSL shader as a string. The whole thing was probably needed to be given in the same line but \ would make it possible to have it line after line I guess.

I know this is old story for some of you but the only reason I am writting this post is because I was sooooo frustrated and actually perplexed by this very very strange thing (it is strange when you didn't know it's use before and it even worked after the comment) that I wanted to write anything.

FUUUUUUUUUUUU

p.s. Ok,. back to code. Lot's of work was done in the wolfenstein CPC engine the last few days. I have something that works on PC, almost doesn't work on CPC and it's slow like hell. If I manage to make it work there, I will need another pair of effort to optimize it. It's gonna be a hell of a hard work.

Demo/Game remakes

2011-01-20T14:13:00.003Z

Just some little thoughts I had about remakes. Things like downporting some random popular demo/game on a retro platform.

I can't deny it, it's funny even interesting to run some of them. It's astonishing when you watch one of the most classic demos ever on a C64. Even the wild parodies of this demo were funny. It was extremely impressive to see Desert Dream on the C64 which was a quite good remake, much better in terms of quality and resemblance to the original than the SR port.

We used to dream about Second Reality 128, a rewrite for the Amstrad CPC 6128. I had this thing in mind, I would like to do it then, I even thought it would be fun and challenging to try to keep as close to the original as possible without sacrificing much speed. It would be fun to fit so many different parts in the limited CPC memory. Someone also told me that it's an easy way for making your demo famous. Second Reality 64 was a top C64 at Pouet for a long while there were much better demos even then. But that wasn't the matter, I loved the idea and I still love watching funny conversions from other sceners. But there is something that is missing..

Somehow I feel like I wouldn't like to start such a project today. Why try to recreate a classic demo for yet another time when with that effort you could make a big CPC megademo which will also be at least more original. I thought in the past that it would be interesting, I feel like at some points it will be boring. At least it's still funny to see other people doing this. I am not against demo remakes.

Another aspect is games. Everyone in the retro scenes is writting a remake of a classic game. Why? Because they love the original and they would love to watch it running on their favorite machine. But also it's more appealing to announce that you are working on a retro conversion of that classic masterpiece than any other random game.

I remember several recent Spectrum games found on World of Spectrum which were supposed to be remakes of classics. Mortal Kombat (and various versions), Civilization, Castlevania, Doom, Wolfenstein and others. Some were unfinished, some were too slow and bad. Some were at least impressive even if I wouldn't bother playing them.

There are also some interesting remakes currently being developed on CPC. Gianna Sisters remake, Elvira or R-type remake. Some of them are interesting and looking good compared to the original commercial releases. Yes, some of them are remakes of a game that already existed on CPC several years ago, games that were ugly ports from Spectrum and not rewritten entirely focused on the CPC color and hardware capabilities. Some of these remakes are trying to achieve exactly that, to show how a good Gianna Sisters or properly programmed R-type would look on CPC today. That's another case, taking an old game concept and rewrite it in the way it should be if the programmers weren't lazy. That's interesting.

But not my thing. I also had these dreams, how would be a remake of Metal Slug, Castlevania, Eye of the Beholder or say Grand Theft Auto (someone thought about that actually :) on the CPC? Another funny side is to take a game from an older platform and rewrite it for a modern computer. How would ghost n'goblins or commando or gianna sisters look like if they were coded for a modern PC? Some of these remakes make more sense and I have spent time playing them, not just because of the better graphics/sound but mainly because the gameplay and controls have been improved from the original.

For example take a look at Zub for Windows. This is a remake of an old Speccy/Amstrad game I didn't even know in the past. After I finished the remake I thought it was a very nice game and decided to download the Spectrum or CPC versions. The control sucked, for example when you jumped you couldn't change the direction on the air, a feature that exists in many modern platform games and makes it easier to control where you want to fall. In the Windows PC version you had full control of this. Another nice remake I enjoyed both on PC and gamepark handhelds is Giana's Return which is not even a remake, but a new game with different levels and graphics and sounds. This is another funny thing for a remake, to try to make for example Fruity Frank 2, Kung Fu Master 2 or Eye of the Beholder 4 for example. An imaginary sequel of an original game or something like that. I would enjoy this.

But personally, I am not even thinking about this anymore (I was thinking about Kung Fu Master 2 personally, because I have played the first so much). I think if I start working on a game I will be focused at creating something entirely on my own, not a remake, or a game based on a popular franchise, because I feel like doing something more original. The only thing my game will have to the classics is inspiration. I might like to make a game that has some similarities to a classic but with additional ideas and things done differently as I feel they would make a better and more addictive game. I am also interested in using some impressive tech in my future game projects for CPC.

I have been playing with a wolfenstein engine on CPC (just vertical wall span rendering at the moment) recently and the first thought that might come on your mind or people might suggest is, go make a port of the original wolfenstein game. But as I said no, it would be boring to just recreate the original maps as perfect as possible (also, things wouldn't be the same, maybe many textures, objects, too much memory needed) and then wolfenstein is a bit too straight forward. I was thinking about mixing wolfenstein action, scenario and some adventure elements. Just a first thought. But the point is, why just make a port of wolfenstein and not your own game with some interesting or impressive elements not found on the original?

That's how I think about it. If one don't want to code a precise wolfenstein or second reality port in his retro machine, at least he can do something different, more original and maybe even more impressive than porting the already existing stuff.

p.s. Work on the wolfenstein engine has been seized for a while. I have been busy with real life crap and other stuff and I didn't even worked for one day. Although, I am about to port it from PhrozenC to SDCC compiler soon. There is a possibility something (not a full game) will be released in few months from now but I don't promise anything.

Moving away from demo making

2011-01-05T00:39:00.005Z

I have been talking about this issue a lot with my friends and maybe I gave a glimpse of my decision in some online forums but this is the first time I try to explain fully my view and the reasons of this sudden change.

It's been over ten years I started making demos and there was an obsession since the beginning which became severe in the sense that it made the whole process not fun and brought the opposite results than what one might want from a hobby. But that's not the main point here and it's also something I resolved by keeping a distance from the community and trying to focus on being creative for myself and not for the scene.

It's not the sole fact though that I was demotivated because of my obsessive attitude in the scene. There was something else in the process of making demos that could naturally demotivate you from being productive. While the half piece of making demos which is coding the effects can be interesting and fun, there is another part that can be tedious and demotivating. The fact that you have to connect all effects together in a specific way just to show off what you have done in order to please the community. You would also avoid releasing these effects as they are because the scene wouldn't appreciate them if they are not in a demo.

So, the half part is about pure creativity focused on the process, the joy of coding and experimentation, but the last part is solely focused on the result, working hard not because it pleases you but for finalizing something in the way the scene would appreciate it. Someone said that the scene is like a role playing and this part of demomaking reminds me of this. You stop thinking about coding, you stop focusing on pure creativity, you work hard so that you reach the point of releasing the damn thing without any interest in the creative process anymore but only the obsession that you have to be active in the scene or the reception you will get from people who will see your demo.

Let me give you a little example. My recent experiment of coding a wolfenstein engine for Amstrad CPC (See a first preview here) was following my newer view of how I want to be creative. It wasn't made for a project (especially not a demo one). I was motivated purely by my curiosity to see if I can make a fast wolfenstein renderer and how it will look like on CPC. At one point I decided to release a preview of it on youtube (inspired by those "look, my wolf engine on C64/Atari/Spectrum/your platform" vids). I initially blocked the idea because of an unwritten law in the scene. Well, mainly the CPC scene and any retro scene where brand new effects and world firsts count. It says that one shouldn't release a preview of his effects because it might not be fun/a surprise later when it appear in his demo if people have already seen it in the preview. And then I said, what the heck, first of all I didn't made this for a demo, then why shouldn't I show my work?

And then I thought, why coding demos for a much smaller audience, working hard with the sole motivation that maybe ten people (that is on CPC) will appreciate your work, also been affected by the unwritten rules and the mentality of the scene which tells you how your demo should be and what you should do or not do? Why losing focus from the pure creativity while being mentally stuck in this role playing game called the demoscene. Why not code the same things but for a greater audience? Why not moving to coding for other projects where you can totally focus on the process itself rather than doing it for a community? Why not games and apps since they are also more interesting and complete.

Let's talk about the last sentence. What do games or apps have that demos don't? Check what happens when you finish a bunch of effects and then you decide to connect them into a demo. The code is a linear script of which effect after which transition after which effect to show. It can be a rather tedious work with only motivation to release (get rid) your leftover effects and show off to the scene. Before starting your next demo production. A vicious circle. Also, it's dispensable. Since you know that when you finish the demo you abandon this code, this part of the code is the most ugly and unorganised ever. You won't need it after all in your next productions.

One would say that also a game has some interesting tech and then the boring part. But it's not that boring in my opinion. The game logic which let's supposed it's equivalent to games as what part scripting is for demos. It's more interesting though because here it makes sense that this part is well written and organized and you do this having in mind that this is an engine that you can reuse in future projects. While the linear demo scripting is dispensable as long as you release the damn demo. Except if you make an engine for demo scripting. But most people like me write the demo script in hand each time for a new demo from scratch.

Most parts of game making seem to me like a more interesting process where you don't think too much of the final result and the reception but every day you write some code it feels like you are building something that evolves and makes sense. In a demo, even if one enjoys the demo scripting process, it doesn't feel like something that needs a strict structure, definitelly not something that makes sense, e.g. after the plasma comes the rotozoomer and then a 3d scene, you can't easilly put these things in a structure as you can think of a game with it's entities, enemies, items where each one is connected to the other. One thing, I kept wondering why didn't I moved to C++ coding soon enough and kept writting mostly C code. I realized something, that demos didn't need a strict OOP design! It's just a serial show of effects, not something that would need structure, like a game with it's entities and rules. In demos you throw away your effects in a presentation in order to please a community. In games you build something that evolves into a big machine. That's the big difference that makes me want to code something else rather than demos.

The most funny thing is that I used to be a very enthousiastic person thinking that the demoscene is the holy grail but now my view has taken the opposite direction. I hated listening to people saying "Why make demos? Demos are useless? Why loose your potential on something like that instead of coding games or apps?" and I still disagree with them because one shouldn't define what he cannot understand as useless. But it's such an irony that at least I now come to their words. Not because I don't like demos (I still do), but because there is a whole new world out there, technically more interesting, more motivating and also a bigger audience to appreciate your work, while I have been sticking for so long in a small unknown community with it's own rules and it's "release next demo to be a scene super star" role playing game.

I am still a part of this community though. I still like demos even if I lack the proper motivation to be part of the whole process. I keep looking at demos, adoring what the community does from time to time, having a different perspective though. I will be keeping a distance from demo making except if I am really motivated to work on a demo (because you never know, moods are changing), I might still visit some parties, talk to some people about demos, take some part in the scene but less frequently and never if I am doing this without pure motives. From the time I started having this shift of view and applying it in my creative moments I was happier and felt I resolved my dissatisfaction with the demoscene and my obsessive nature with releasing demos. I now want to move on.

The demoscene is a small village. A nice village indeed. There is a new world outside for me though. I need a change.

The old times - normality and computing

2010-11-29T13:24:00.006Z

I remember during 199x when I was confronted by a teacher about the use of a computer as an everyday hobby and a girl in the class asked me how many hours per day do I use it. I didn't really kept a record of use but it wasn't much since we were pupils and I couldn't just sit in front of a computer all day in the strict family environment I have been living. Well, I estimated and said about 3 hours per day (I am preety sure it was quite much less for the reasons I just mentioned) and she shouted "Wow! Isn't that too much?" (Of course it was a first impression from a person who didn't even found necessary the use of a computer at all those days). During that moment I spent part of my time in programming, among playing games or using other software. It was quite a creative time and I still had hours left to do other activities. Still, what I was doing then was considered extreme, think that very few of us had a computer at those times and some hadn't ever used one ever in their lifes. It wasn't common. Being a computer geek was feeling like messing with the electronics of your fridge for hours. They'd say, the function of a fridge is not studying it, but only providing the necessities in life. Who does that?

I see the irony when I am examining modern life. I will start with the image of the internet cafe stores full of people playing WOW or watching their facebook profiles 24hours long (an image that is not present in some other countries I have travelled so far because net cafe are different there than here in Greece, but substitue "net cafe" for "from their homes"). Those people are "worse" than what I did back in the past and yet playing MMORPGs or being active on facebook is considered "in" today. It is amazing how things have changed! Today I spend way more hours in my gaming, programming and other computer activities at home than in the past, yet nobody cares because everybody is doing it in their homes or the net cafe stores and everybody is discussing about it. It could be even considered "out" if you don't have an account on facebook. I hear some stories of people failing to meet their friends on a particular day because they ommited reading the meeting announcement in facebook and so they missed it. Compare these two different times together and wonder how my own activities were extremely abnormal in the past yet now I am overshadowed by more extreme net-cafe MMORPG lurkers or people who want to check their facebook account wherever they are. You don't understand the absurdity of it and neither do I because these things are also "normal" for us today because we got used to them.

I imagine in the future that there will be Virtual Reality machines, more like plugging your brain into electrodes and stuff sending you signals, letting you live (dream) an alternative reality while being in a coma-like state for weeks, battling monsters in another plane of existence and when something important has happened in real reality (your house being bombed or your sister got married lol :), your mother will send you some kind of mail through the system that will come in the virtual world as a fairy bringing you a message from the earthly plane of existence or something so that you reply to your earth people whether they disconnect you or not yet. Describe such a vision of the future to anyone these day, will there be even a single person that will say this could be considered "normal" in the future? Yet it could be! Even this thing! Given some time, it could be like what is facebook and WoW today. And some people in the future would look back and say, how simple were the things back in the times of the old world wide web? How more mature?

Do you understand the analogy? This is how I think about these things. The most extreme things today might be considered normal tomorrow. Also, I don't see this shift as a decline of the youth, socialization, society or whatever. I like to see it as an evolution. If these trends of the new generations are really "bad" then they would hit back like a boomerang and maybe people would wake up and evolve. But the change wouldn't be necessary a backtrack to the older times but an evolution of what we already have. There is no meaning to look back or forward and say that things were better or are getting worse when we are part of this evolution. If the people really thought that WoW or facebook is "abnormal" or "evil" then they would just have to unsubscribe from it. But people want this. If it makes them more sad than happy then they will learn and change some of their habits. Nobody else needs to tell them. I don't believe in these absolutes of "bad" or "good", "normal" or not.

I can't wait the time when those virtual coma brain machines will become a reality. I'd like to observe the reactions from people and how the youth might adapt to such environments as if nothing is wrong. I like to think that even the most extreme could be considered a trend in future times. I'd love to see the controversy. It's gonna be fun! :)

p.s. This post was inspired by another in anisixos blog which criticizes the classic saying "the old times were better", though it's not specifically focused on computers and also is written in greek.

Orthodox file managers

2010-11-13T01:27:00.005Z

I remember when I was at elementary school in the computer lessons, we had XTs there (raah lovely for a Computer Hermit like me :) and I was learning to use DOS. Some guy told me "What are you doing? Try cd norton and then type nc". I am surprised now that he knew that thing because he didn't seemed like the person interested in learning what we did in the class. I didn't know what Norton Commander was then. I couldn't even imagine. I am curious about the cultural shock I might had then when I switched from the black DOS background to those two blue panels and never had to type DOS commands again (though I was pretty good at that already).

Well, I found about Norton Commander later and got used to it and loved it. I don't remember when and I don't remember my shock. I probably have missing memories. Much later I installed Windows 95 and so I was using the File Explorer. A friend introduced me to Total Commander (Windows Commander then) and since that time I can't live without it. I learn now that the whole concept of such a file manager is called an Orthodox file manager and there are a lot of managers in the similar style today. I think there is one or more in Amiga and there is certainly one in SymbOS for CPC which is called of course SymCommander :)

Not many people are using Total Commander or something similar. Of course it's hard to get into it when you are used to Windows Explorer. But I was already familiar with Norton Commander in DOS and the way I was using the arrow keys and TAB to navigate and all the other shortcuts, copying, moving, deleting, decompressing stuff in a frenzy, such way it would be not possible to do with windows explorer. I always hated when I had to open two windows explorers and move and resize the windows so that they don't overlap and drag and drop stuff with the mouse, which becomes a more cumbersome action especially if your mousepad sucks and you take a long effort to move stuff around. Ok,. it's not that bad, but when you are used into playing with the keys and copy/move stuff around and organize your directories and stuff so nicely and fast you can never go back.

People are crazed when I install Total Commander in their PC just so I can do my job. Some people hate it. I don't know why. There is even a group in facebook called "I hate Total Commander" but it's not a programm about which everyone talks, it's not a thing that is like a propaganda. It's a programm that very few know. How can they hate a thing that nobody cares about? The boss in my first job was surprised positively that I was using Total Commander and I was the only one there using it. Other people near me hate it, someone was afraid something was wrong with copying file because I wasn't using the explorer but that thing. Doh?

I thought about writting this post after reading a post in doomworld. There, people where asking how big is your Doom folder (with WADs and ports and stuff, mine is 4.5GB :). Someone said something like 20GB but he said his folder was a mess and there were many unorganized stuff that might be there twice or more. Anyway, he even asked for fun if he could pay someone to clean up that enormous mess. And then I thought, how do you organize that thing? Total commander of course. If you see how fast I can navigate around left-right panel, create/delete directories in one side, to copy stuff from the other side, make extremely organized folders/subs to copy stuff there and move stuff from where they don't belong you can understand how helpful is this for organizing messy files on your PC. Of course you can do this with explorer too but I imagine it would be quite more annoying. My other thought is, people who have a mess in their PC (desktop with random scattered files) might be too lazy to take care of this mess in the first place anyways. Total Commander makes me navigate like crazy around and organizing stuff. It comes naturally.

I am a maniac for organizing my folders. Sometimes I don't do it. Sometimes I also have mess in my desktop (but very few). I organized project folders, game folders, demo folder, all with sub-folders categorizing by various criteria (year, group for demos, genre for games, finished/unfinished projects, etc), moving old games/project/demos/etc to those folders in a speed frenzy. Love it!

p.s. I am curious, for someone who might know. Is there a file manager where you can put additional keywords on the folders? So I have my demos organized by groups and not year. Could I put a keyword of the year at each of the demo folders or also other keywords (e.g. this demo has 'plasma', crazy :) and have a file manager that you can see the folders as dir but it could also use the keywords as additional virtual folder structures to move around? Now that would be something for the folder organizing maniac like me :P

p.p.s. Oh, I used the word 'folder'. Shit! I hate it how it's not called directory anymore but got used to it. Nah..

I have a great idea, WE will become rich, YOU will do it!

2010-11-08T23:51:00.014Z

I hate this attitude. When someone insists on telling me that with such smartness, implying that his idea is such a goldmine that it's most important to abandon anything else I am doing and focus on his awesome idea. Especially when that person has nothing to do with the scope of the work involved. When he sees your own work as an opportunity for money and fame, which he thinks that you don't take.

It would still be ok if that person boasted about his great idea while he started working on a prototype of it, or already having an interest or past experience on the subject. But when people not being interested in the creative process behind programming come and insist on using ME, because they think I spent my time in creating useless computer software (demos) for obsolette platforms instead of grabbing the opportunity to work on their awesome idea, that's where it really gets on my nerves. If you cared at least a bit for the creative process behind my thing..

The other common misconception and overration from their side is the belief that their so great idea is enough for the eternal success, such that they will be instantly famous and rich and they won't need to work ever again in their lives. This is such an exaggeration and not only. What we use to say is that it's not about the idea but the implementation. Everybody's got a great idea for success. But nobody wants to spend several years from his life to learn the necessary skills and then take some more time and planning to bring his idea to life.

And this is still not enough. Do you think that even the greatest idea fullfilled after truly hard working would never have any chance to fail? First of all, it's the proper implementation that matters. You may have the greatest idea, even spent time from your life to do it yourself, yet being poorly implemented. Secondly, what about marketing? Public relationships? Good timing? An unpredictable market? One can think of so many good pieces of software, websites, quality stuff, honest attempts that you would respect the work behind but somehow they didn't catch up. While at the same time a fart simulator on the Iphone makes some guy rich and famous.

Not only isn't your great idea that you want another person to do it for you enough for eternal success, but even if you did it yourself and it was good, you wouldn't be able to tell the outcome. One thing I'd like to add, even if your idea happened to be succesfull, you wouldn't be so rich so that no more work for you for the rest of your life. Whether you would make 1000 euro or 100000 euro, you should still have to invest on that to continue with your next piece of software and move on slowly without big expectations. What makes you think elsewhere? How naive can you be? Or how far does your impudence go? To even imagine the possibility of eternal richness with some idea you think it's great, yet you don't even want to work it out but insist that others should do it for free, is such rudeness if not the ultimate hybris!

And this doesn't end here. Let's see it from my own point of view. Think about motivation. A person cannot just take on your plan and start working on something like a big programming project that needs dedication and great will, just because you think you are persuasive with your glorious idea and promise of glory and riches. Personally, the attitude I described, especially when you despise my programming focus on "useless" stuff and only focusing on the outcome, makes me dislike even thinking about working with (not for) you. I would only work on your own idea if you paid me and that's not even certain. Secondly, even most of my own ideas for stuff I would find great or interesting usually go to the recycle bin because of lack of interest in the long term. If I can't be always motivated and hard working for doing my own beloved stuff, how would I be for your own ideas that I might find irrelevant at the particular time? What makes you think I would spare my time and effort because you had an idea? If you are so obsessed and enthousiastic of your great ideas for riches and fames then it's YOU who should start working on it!

Think about your "me sitting, you working, I rule" clueless attitude. Think about your lack of interest in the domain and sole focus on the outcome. Think about the need for a good implementation, marketing, luck, unpredictability. Think about you should also provide something yourself (if not the work, then the funding). Think about motivation. Remember that you can still fail. Don't be so clueless and arrogant and show understanding to what we are doing here. When we were burning our remaining neural cells focusing on some obscure tech hobby like programming, you were there mocking us for our dedication on "useless" stuff while boosting about how your clever ideas can make you an instant success without any effort.

Hey, I have a great idea for a book but I am not good at writting and I am not interested in it, will you write it for me? Doh :P

p.s. Needless to say that most of those "genious" ideas are just laughable stuff. Cluelessnes win! Also search for "How can I make the ultimate MMORPG/Facebook website and become rich?". You find nowadays a lot of queries of this kind on google :P

H4CK TH3 PL4N3T!!11oneone

2010-08-25T05:20:00.005+01:00

The title's only purpose is to drag your attention.

Whose attention? Mostly the attention of those so called hackers, hax0rs, lamers or leets, black/white/yellow/green/turquoise hats who get horny with such leet language and concept.

I decided to announce you here that everything I have written in the past about hacking (hacking as in security breaching) 1) had a radical tone, 2) is still my opinion, 3) yet is something about which I shouldn't be so obsessed.

I might still be laughing with what people think about the definition of hacking today, still be frustrated (or maybe not anymore) with the distortion of ethics, I might still be amused or annoyed by the most popular ideas and misconceptions with this, but it is neither my concern nor my purpose to argue whether one should be involved in this activity or not.

You definitely have your own reasons to want to hack the planet, deface the world, fight the system and feel like computer superheros. You might just seek for knowledge, be curious, creative and whatever image is presented in that so well known hacker's manifest. I might be wrong and the world could be right. Who knows?

You are into this thing for a reason. I made my choices in life for a reason. Hacking might lead you into something at the end and whether you made the "right" or "wrong" choices, you will learn. It's your path afterall not mine.

This is a conscious choice, helped by the philosophy of zen and seeing the light.

p.s. I am not saying that I or anyone else doesn't have the right to say his own opinion or he doesn't have the right to criticize individuals. I am still amused while reading my old articles about hacking, loving the ideas yet finding too much obsession and anger with something that is not my own world. With most things and most individuals in the world I am too open, but I still don't know why I was so hateful with hackers, who in fact did the same thing at a young age as me, following some dream, an illusion about using their computer knowledge to boost that low self-esteem. Both the demoscene and the hacking community is full of egos, fights, dreams, marvels and vanity. Even the nicknames have to be cool or scary sounding. It's just that the geeks from the demoscene resemble more the artistic and creative computer heros while today's image of hacking is that of an angst ridden youth and rebel computer heros.

Final Project OMG

2010-08-12T22:47:00.000+01:00

There is no much time left till the deadline for the handling of this final project. The subject had something to do with volume rendering in OpenCL (although I have also a GLSL version here, from where the screenshots come).

Some days ago I tried to mix my 3d dot box effects I had here in some old posts with my volume rendering engine. At the moment I just upload them in a 3D texture every frame, which runs at 20fps except when my laptop gets hot and drops at 5-10fps (happens very frequently when I run this code), and then with a key I pause the effect update and spin around and near the volume still to adore it's looks.

I have so much to fix (normals for lighting/reflection, more proper alpha blending, implement bilinear in the OpenCL version, port the effects in OpenCL and more) and... oh, I should choose something for my final project and start writting it. So, I may leave the experiments at the moment and try to concentrate on the main thing. Normally I was supposed to have a look at data structures like octrees and such stuff to accelerate the process and I hope I still have time for that. No matter what, I will start writting the report, implement what I can and see from there.

But finally I love those pictures (And still there are some buggy parts). In the past everything was wrong. It's the first day I see some interesting beauty. At least I might do a demo with this if I don't manage to get my degree :P

Massive blobs CPC

2010-07-13T22:24:00.000+01:00

I had a long time since my last post here. Well, I am coding more stuff than posting a blog about them. Although I do like teasers and previews (I am a demo-consumer) what would be the meaning of posting teasers of every thing I am doing? Not speaking about time. But once in a while I might throw out something.

In my last CPC demo, Chunky Chan I displayed 5 big blobs (2d metaballs) of size 24*24, also in some linear mode of one byte per pixel chunk (so do they call them I think, say a 4*4 dithered pixel block, although scanlines removed because speed still sucks). Anyway,. I wrote the code for this part in a very short period while traveling to Amstrad Expo. So it wasn't optimized, it was straight forward. Read the value from blob bitmap, add it to the background, check for clamping (if it overflows above 255 keep it 255, a jump with carry check) and then write back the result to the background.

I already knew a more optimized version with unroll codes for every pixel of the blob, I just didn't have time then to make it, so I wrote the straightforward code. But now I tried an experiment just out of curiosity, to actually write those unroll codes. So, there is a 7*7 blob now, with unroll codes for all 49 pixels. It gets in HL the starting address it should write the upper left pixel in the chunky buffer and then works along like this:

A regular value from 1 to 254 should be:

LD A,nn ; directly the value in A as number (blob pixel value)
ADD (HL) ; add value A (blob) to the contents of HL (background)
JR NC,P11 ; if not overflow go to P11
LD A,255 ; else clamp to 255
P11:
LD (HL),A ; write whatever the result to background
INC L ; move to the next X position

As you see, we don't need to read the blob value from one buffer, increase it's pointer, etc. Since it's unrolled code for every blob pixel, the code can directly have the data inside. Many cycles gained and one more free register (as if we would ever need it here :)

Now, the nicer stuff. Since we write the unrolled code for every pixel of the blob, we know in advance which blob pixels are 0 and which are 255. So we write these:

If the blob value is 0 (usually near the four corners of the blob bitmap):

INC L ; Nothing to write. Move to the next on X.

If the blob value is 255 (close to the center of the blob):

LD (HL),255 ; no comparisons, nothing. If you have 255 anyways
INC L ;and you add it, you will certainly get overflow or 255.

So, imagine a big blob of the size I had in my demo or more. A big amount of the pixels would be 255, some would be 0. The above cases take either 1 or 4 cycles (It's 3 in my code. I write an LD B,255 in the very beginning before rendering each blob and much later in every case, LD (HL),B. Also I replace LD A,255 in the clamping loop with LD A,B to gain 1 cycle. I just didn't put it here in this code to make it easier for you to read). The original version took 10 (with LD A,B) per pixel. It could be averagely 3 to 5 depending on the coverage of the white or black areas in the blob. With the 7*7 blob there aren't many though (just 13 out of 49 pixels).

I did this code to test something that I think it will look very impressive. At the moment I just want to render a lot of blobs (96 in the picture) with this new engine and stare at the pictures. But what about using them to render particles, make a small slow rotating galaxy and other fancy stuff? Move them around. The chunky buffer rendering of 64*36 tiles on the screen now takes 2VBLs (I wish it could be faster), I can render 38 of the 7*7 Blobs in one VBL, I will spend few more to move them around or make them explode. It's not going to be something less than 3VBLs or 4 but I think it will be enough (Divide 50fps / number of VBLs for the frame rate, for those who don't know the CPC terminology :).

And maybe I don't need to render 96 or 200, an explosion with 32 will look cool enough, or a comet moving around with say 50. Of course I want full particles, velocity, acceleration, life fade. I have unroll codes also for smaller blobs (5*5, 3*3 at the moment) which also darken their color, just to fade out the particles as they die. I have done particle animation in 8bits before with few sprites or dots, 8/8 fixed point in 16bit regs, ADD HL,DE/BC, it won't take much cycles to move a small number.

Anyways,. cool! I gotta finish this little experiment of code and I really love to see it working and who knows, put it in a demo coming one day it would hopefully look great on the CPC!

Antivirii

2010-03-19T12:56:00.001Z

I am not sure why I can't get into this link.

I am not sure why the link to this story from slashdot has zero comment (the date was somewhere between yesterday and before). I even posted a single one wondering why.

Wait!!! I just tried to search for this link and it's not there. Wait no, I found it. Look, it's just me!!! LOL. (Maybe I won't be tomorrow)

They forced the pages go down so fast? A damn conspiracy? Or am I just paranoid?

Say I don't care,. I will write something else here.

The last time I got a new laptop I uninstalled the damn antivirus that came with it. It made my system crawl like hell (also it still does because it runs Vista :P). It bugged me with false positives (any antivirus does it and imagine you want to get some people interested into the demoscene by showing the marvels of 4k intros. An antivirus just drove them away :P). It just annoyed the hell out of me at every action I tried to take!

And then someone comes and tells me, yeah antivirus software is just like that, but there is this or that one (name) that was amazing and not just like the others. And then I discuss it with another friend about the same antivirus and he tells me, what? This is the worst ones, crawls your system, etc, etc. I guess it was an older version that was ok? How do I know that the best antivirus won't be a total crap tomorrow?

I don't know but every time I install an antivirus in my system I am in doubt. My brother told me that antivirii are the real virii here. They clot your system, annoy you with warnings, at least they don't delete your HD yet. I might be sounding like those people who refuse to take vaccinations. I am probably gonna pay it in my system one day..

And all these because of the stupid people who think it's cool to write a program (or copy it from someone's else source most of the times) that destroys our computers. Hell,. I am gonna go back to CPC where nobody makes any virus anymore (do they even exist?). Wait,.. I can't :P

Ok, I guess when I have a virus I'll throw one of these programs, kill the threat and then uninstall it again. I did this before with spyware kind of threats and it worked :P (Yeah, yeah, I know. Those programs also protect you before the bad is happened, but I still like to uninstall the when I don't need them)

I totally don't make a sense. That's because I am a computer hermit XD

p.s. Another one with the story that is up atm is here

p.p.s. Actually the original link came back. I know I am paranoid here :)

Where are the real programmers?

2010-02-27T01:03:00.000Z

In the past, everybody using a computer was subjected into learning how to program. Most notably in 8bit home micros which came along with a basic compiler. Of course you weren't subjected into professional programming, especially low level (except from those who decide to move from basic to assembly in the 8bits) or object oriented programming but this was a start and I believe it's a skill developed at an early age. You know, programming sometimes look to me like a savant ability, something that it gets hardwired in you brain in an early age because you like to play with computers instead of doing sports or going after girls. If you sometimes wake up and think of algorithms or dreaming of code and hobbyist programming projects you want to do while waiting for the metro then it has become a part of your life and you have become too efficient in this.

So, real programming doesn't mean to me having a degree or having read the textbooks. It means that you breath this stuff everyday. A friend who has a degree in computer science told me about his first interview which was truly terrifying, when they gave him a piece of paper and asked him a simple question. To write some code in his favorite language that calculates the area of a circle. He was stunned and couldn't think of anything for minutes till he wrote something that was probably wrong. He told me that when a white piece of paper is given to him and he is asked to write a program from scratch, he just can't. He would prefer to have the solution in front of him so that he can study and understand. Needless to say, seconds after he told me the question I already had structured the whole thing in my mind but that's a very easy problem anyways.. (I spent more time in doubt to figure out whether the area of a circle is 2*pi*r or pi*r^2 (I always confuse these two for some reason :P))

I understand him. I have the same problem with maths and I have a degree in maths. I admire or tend to be puzzled by some people who have the talent to be given a mathematical quiz or even a question to prove a theorem we haven't done in the book yet and while I am stunned and can't think of anything for minutes, they have already come with the right way to solve these out of the numerous wrong paths you could follow and end up in a dead end. I don't speak about straight mathematical calculation problems or obvious things but things that few people can solve in almost an instant even without having read the solution before and the more common mortals may take half an hour and still need to scrap everything (this cost me a lot during exams, I had to either memorize hundreds of solutions of various problems in my mind or have that talent, neither which happened :P).

I have noticed the same situation when I was doing private lessons in programming to a computer science student. He was curious many times how I could be given a problem that they were just handed in class and tiny moments after looking at it I would already have an overview of which functions, classes, variables and methods I need to write and use. I had a talent and I didn't even noticed, one that non-experienced computer science students had to make me notice (one's ability is another's disability and vice versa). But it's the same kind of talent that puzzles me when I am unable to solve mathematics in a small frame of time while others have the cryptic answers in their mind already.

Of course, I can understand mathematics and use them for practical applications, so it's not a big deal for my job that I am not good at solving problems fast (you would be wondering how did I got a math degree while not being good at it), while a computer scientist not being good at writing code is a different thing. Of course, it's not that my friend (and many other people) is incapable of solving very simple programming problems. Given time even in front of a piece of paper they would be doing something. In the same manner, I would be able to solve any mathematical problem if I was interested enough and I didn't have to do it in a limited timeframe (like exams). We are not incapable, just not talented.

So, what is the think that makes someone a real programmer (or talented mathematician)? It has to be your life. I tell you, first of all since my eighteen or even before (that must be 1996-1998) I got that obsession about being good at one thing that most people see it like magic. It just happened. I just got the virus in my mind and started thinking about programming. It was the same time I met the demoscene and found my focus there. You know, demoscene had that thing (apart from fun or creativity or friendship), the feeling that you were a part of a unique community and you would be honored deeply if once you could make a great demo to inspire next generations of coders. It was the driving force that kept us working hard in endless nights of coding for nothing. One friend told me this particular phrase that I like: "Fame. It's the money of the internet!" (of course demoscene was existing before internet was introduced, but you know the draft). Imagine now how focused I was into this for ten years with what enthusiasm and that I woke up every day and thought of algorithms and code.

If I was so obsessed with mathematics, if I woke up and thought about challenging problems for endless years, then I wouldn't be so bad with it. But those where just studies, something I had to work with just to get my degree, not a passion, not a hobby or a way to gain self-esteem. Remember how many people may have chosen to start a computer science degree because they think it's the future, or they wanted to create computer games or become a hacker, without following a similar route like mine in the past. Of course, even if someone hasn't been self-educated in his youth, I still believe there is a hope for them if the focus to the new goal is huge. But how many of them were so much focused like I was that they ignore common life and become hermits? Most of them end up failing the courses and wondering what they are doing here.

I will tell you something else now: I am currently going through an MSc that involves both my hobby of programming and computer graphics and it's true that my performance is far below than what I thought (but I am surviving and sometimes doing good at courseworks). For various reasons I am much worse when I have to study these stuff than when I am doing it for a hobby. Also, most students I know (not from this master but mostly undergrads) doesn't seem to be the dedicated people or burned out with programming in the past as me but rather the lay off lazy people who aren't truly interested in the subject outside their job. How the hell are these people going to have real experience with the subject when they finish a master of one year if myself with ten years of experience and true love on the subject isn't focused enough (I am a lay off lazy person too and I am feeling guilty about it :P) when studying this stuff? A computer science undergrad who has finished his studies with the same "love" I have taken the math degree, could he possibly considered experienced in the field after getting a master in graphics in one year? (And don't tell me that not failing in the master will prove that he knows his stuff. There are various "alternative" ways to achieve "success" and you know it..)

Real programming is a way of life. You don't just learn it in universities in one or four years. Look at me! I have a math degree. I suck at solving math problems (in time). Usually I am too slow at reading the mathematical language. I can just apply them and make calculations. I have not a degree related to computer science yet but I can be more fluent in programming than most of the students coming out of computer science departments. A question is of course, how do you make someone becoming self-interested in the subject? Most probably you don't. It just happens to some when they decide for any reason to follow this path instead of doing what the rest of the people do. Another question is, how do you create the ground today for trying this in a world where there are plenty of multimedia, movies, games, social sites and other time wasters and the programming world looks so boring in comparison to these marvels (unlike how glamorous it is portrayed in movies). Of course there is a hidden creative magic in programming in the same way there must be in maths. Maybe schools or universities rarely manage to open the view of students towards the good non-boring side of these subjects. But then there must be a true focus from the individual, which would resemble more something like a true life dream rather than just the essentials for a job. But what about this uberinformation and glamorous world of computing today? Too many users but very few real programmers.

p.s. Part of the randomly scattered thoughts written here came after reading this post on Coding Horror (a lot of interesting stuff in this blog btw). It discusses stories of lead developers interviewing hundreds of computer science graduates and finding out that they can't solve even the simplest problems. Just read the post by yourself to find out.

Water3D

2010-02-26T05:19:00.000Z

One day I have to study a bit how the math for the classic 2d water effect were derived so that I try to do the same for 3d. Well I did, but almost. It's just taking more neighbors in 3D space and changing some shifting values so that it doesn't flood as it usually happens with this effect. I found something. But it didn't worked perfectly I think. I just slow it down to 25 frames per second so that the dropping ripples can be seen. The moving ripples are much better.

There is actually a running executable if you happen to be a member in DBF forum. Here.

Fire 3D

2010-02-23T01:08:00.000Z

Don't ask me why I try to do all my old classic effects in this 3D grid of points. I am just curious to see how they will look like. I am not releasing any source or executable at the moment but maybe I will use them in another demo or something..

Computer movies suck!

2010-02-14T19:02:00.000Z

After watching six seasons of 24, I wondered for another time, why is computer science so badly represented in movies in general? There are some so common obvious mistakes like huge sized letters in received e-mails or IPs with 10bit pairs that you'd think they would know by now how to avoid them. And then there is so much random tech jargon that in the ears of a computer or science illiterate sounds plausible but if you are into it then it can be fucking hilarious at best. Apart from the classics like "You should try to reverse the polarity!" or "Have you tried to extend the parameters?" (I don't know why but I have heard this so many times in 24), one of my most favorite I have read about (it's in transformers, I haven't seen the movie) is "The signal pattern is learning, it's EVOLVING on its own, and you need to move past Fourier transforms and start thinking quantum mechanics". I don't know if I want to laugh or to cry :P

Another thing I have noticed is the way all the user interfaces look and act like. Every little click makes a futuristic sounding blip. When someone tries to search in a database, the results appear slowly letter after letter with a continuous bleeping sound. If they have to search for a subject, hundreds of photos are displayed rapidly on the screen. Little windows of data pop up with bleeping sounds which if you pause the movie and try to read it's contents, it can be everything, from random hex or binary codes to senseless mixes of php, html, C++, Visual Basic and some random assembly code. Needless to say that the user is typing like a lunatic while all these things appear on the screen (He even types frantically while shouting "Come on! Come on!!!" at the screen as a download bar progresses, like he could push it faster or something :P).

Of course, a lot of these things might be intentional. Mostly done to add a special futuristic effect, something that I guessed correctly. As for the rest, filmmakers don't care enough since most of the viewers won't notice. But something funny I was thinking, when comparing with movies about doctors or lawyers or any other profession. Mistakes happen there too (I usually don't notice or care about, e.g. in House M.D.) but in my opinion the mistakes and senseless tech jargon concerning computers are so much worse and more obvious than for example movies with doctors, that if the same bad mistakes were happening in those kind of movies, we would hear a patient saying "Ahh,. my head hurts, I think I broke a cancerous nephelim!" while touching his foot and the doctor replying "Don't worry! Your thyrormone is in an upscale. All you need is a metastasis of tuberculosis on your blood vesel. It's all about hormones! I will give you a CT scan and you will just be fine.". Yes! That's how a doctor's movie would be like if it carried the same absurdity of mistakes and jargon as computer movies.

Is it just me or are computers badly represented in movies? Also, don't forget to check Computer movies suck for some more hilarity!!!

p.s. Oh, a friend also told me of a movie (I think it was the new Knight Rider) where KIT's memory was stolen and he said they need a supercomputer to download it and one child accidentally downloaded a portion of these data from the internet (of course, if you download files from the internet, they disappear from the server :) and it all ended up playing Halo on the X-box to acquire the missing file which appeared like a glowing orb. What The Heck? (Gotta see this movie, just for the hilarity! Or maybe not :P)

Plasma 3D

2010-02-02T01:35:00.000Z

Just a little experiment I had after I watched a similar thing (but with much less points) in a NDS demo. I always avoided trying this because I thought it would be hard to visualize a 3d plasma since the inside would be occluded (although I thought then about alpha too) and it would be hard for the viewer to recognize and enjoy the 3d effect. But seeing that the NDS demo gave me somehow the impression that if a box of 16*16*16 non-blended thick pixels with 3d plasma coloring would work, then this experiment with more and blended would work too. Their version also reminded me of all these videos.

My next curiosity is to try out and see how the 2d water ripples version would work out in 3d. I am very curious about this. Probably like expanding spherical ripples that fade out by time. And maybe I could use the final result to also do displacement with the background? (because that's that's the standard thing I did in the old 2d effect too). How would that work? Also, I have first to add the effect of alpha per dot, because now all dots are additively blended by the same tiny percentage on the screen buffer (I also don't sort the points from back to front) and apply it on the plasma so that you can see some plasma bands appearing and some not being there, instead of a full blown box with more color in the middle. I am not sure about the result too but I will try..

p.s. Btw, my final project in my MSc will have to do with volume rendering in OpenCL and possibly fluid dynamics. I love those stuff and I hope I will have something here soon with nice teaser screenshots (and maybe youtube videos).

Little moods of coding.

2009-12-05T17:13:00.000Z

Haha, I am in good rare mood for coding!

Funny, especially during the time I was supposed to work for my university assignments and not for personal fun projects. I don't know why I have so much mood for hobbyist coding right now (maybe I should do a demo?) but I hope it keeps that way. And I hope to finish my courseworks too in parallel (although some of them require coding too).

Ok, as you can see in another blog, I just got a dingoo and tried compiling something for it. Although my attention swifted to Wiz. It's funny, I had bought Wiz for months but I didn't tried to develop something on it because there wasn't a proper windows devkit. Later I installed Ubuntu just for that, although I didn't used it. Recently I read somewhere that actually, the older GP2X applications can run directly on Wiz sometimes, if the SDL libs are compiled dynamically. It's so compatible that games like Flesh Charmer just run in Wiz by trying to execute the old GP2X file. And 2x/3x times faster of course. Although the vast majority of GP2X apps are simply compiled statically (there was a problem with dynamically compiled apps, some didn't worked, maybe if you firmware was upgraded, so it was better to have SDL libs inside the executable even though the size was getting bigger for just a simple thing).

Anyways, I found out that the only thing you have to do is to use DevkitGP2X for the old GP2X to compile something with options for dynamically compilation and this will run perfectly on WIZ too (you also have something that is compatible with both the GP2X and the Wiz, wow!). And so I thought, when in the past I avoided getting into burden, that nowadays if I can compile GP2X stuff, it wouldn't be so hard to do it for Wiz too. I then found a devkit in a chinese site that installs a devkit on windows with an example and it does it automatically and also uses DevCPP and dual compilation, one windows that you can see the results on a window and one gp2x, so you could even take some old SDL code from PC, compile and run it properly on windows project and be sure that you could just compile it with gp2x switch and have it ready. It's so portable and easy that it makes me cry! I took a voxel plasma SDL effect I had done on PC and with almost no modification I had a gp2x version in fifteen minutes. Wow!

Then, I got some strange mood to start coding a new rasterizer. I had a discussion with a friend and I decided to start the new one from scratch even if with rasterizers it's scary because they are complex boring beasts. Normally I would avoid coding a new one especially if I lack motivation, but yesterday I had so much mood that I actually started. The focus here is to code carefully and try to make it as simple as possible. Because usually, my last ones were bloated. The very last unreleased version suffered from some bugs and still was big enough even if I wrote stuff in easier way and it was two times faster than the old on PC (haven't tried on GP2X or Wiz though). It also uses a way they say it's bad for the cache but I will just try and benchmark both versions on my Wiz or even GBA. My focus is to carefully make one as simple as possible at first (with only flat shading for the beginning), benchmark what is the best and gradually upgrade it. I want it to be a suitable simplistic and fast as possible rasterizer for old hardware, especially the very slow GBA. I want to make a very simple tiny 3d engine and not the last beast I was trying to make last time (very organised or bloated). Who knows, maybe I'll do a GBA demo with this one..

Ok, going back to? Damn,. I have to do courseworks for university..

About demo limitations

2009-12-04T23:57:00.000Z

What do I like and what I don't:

256b: They are nice because it's a good opportunity to spare some time on the old good assembly. I used to advocate assembly coding in the past but today there is no way I am doing it again, not on PC, not even in gamepark handhelds, maybe not even on GBA (although I am curious about the speed improvements on the good old slow GBA). I am too lazy. But in 256b intros you have to do it. And usually a simple intro can be coded in 1-3 evenings. Also good for small demo releases. Unfortunately my new Vista don't run the 256b intros anymore and dosbox is too slow for the good ones.

4kb: Also an opportunity to make a fast release if you are lazy to code a big 64k or demo although this time you don't need assembly. With the various frameworks around the web, you can have a simple empty template in 700bytes and start from there. The negative is when size is too restrictive and you end up writting coding in different ways, inlining your function in one big ugly pile of code and generally screwing things up. Just so the compiler and cruncher gives you 20 missing bytes to reach exactly 4096 and not be at 4116 or something. I don't like this. Also, in 256b you have an excuse for not having any music (even a very bad and ugly music is considered a must) but in 4ks it's an additional burden for me. Especially when I have only the gfx and it's already 500 bytes below the limit and I know I can't crunch enough without removing scenes.

64k: The best of the best, even if one needs to work harder to create them and there is no excuse for and not having a music or having a shitty one (although you can just play a nifty chip tune that sounds cool and fits into something like 10kbs or 20 there). The interesting thing there is that there is enough space if you love to do everything procedurally. This is the most interesting part of all those tiny intros in my opinion. In 4ks, even if you did stuff procedurally, you would be very soon sort of space, just by code. But in 64k, you code and code and code stuff and you still can't reach the limit. I haven't code enough of them, maybe just because they need more effort. I have produced 256b and 4ks which I like less than 64ks for the same reason. 64ks is something to check in the future.

Source limitations: I haven't seen one in the demoscene but when I was into the quickbasic forums, there were those compos where you had to write stuff fitting in 3 lines of code without semicolons and one had to write bloated pieces of code or reduces all his variables into single letters. I don't like killing my code just for source code size. It makes no sense. But this is just supposed to be a fun or senseless enjoyful competition. Even if it doesn't appeal to me. Also, similar methods are used into squeezing shader code for 4k intros.

Graphics limitations: I am mainly thinking of ASCII demos. Each year there is a competition going on and each year I am thinking of maybe entering but I am not even starting to code something. It's fun to watch them but I am not motivated enough to code something like that, because it's just like reducing the resolution into something like 80*50(???) and coding the same effects. (Actually I have a ridiculously slow raytracer that would run perfectly smooth in that res ;) Ok, maybe there is a challenge, trying to do things look cool with text (because it's not just the resolution, it's also the character and color you will choose to shade your graphics differently). Actually, some graphics limitation compos are interesting. There was one at DBF interactive forum where you had to either have blocky pixels or 4 colors only or both, and I even made three entries for it. Sometimes it's fun!

Hardware limitations: This is just very interesting to me. Someone will say, what's the meaning of limiting yourself, like when you have a PC, why try to code a raytracer on the C64 or something? Remember, I said before about 256b/4ks, if my extremely tiny programm is 257 bytes, why bothering with 1 byte? It's still extremely tiny and fully procedural so it's getting boring and senseless to kill those few bytes. But there it makes sense. You don't have a hard drive with only 256b free. You have plenty more. If your intro is 300bytes it won't matter for me. Ok, it's only for fun and senseless competition here. But the same doesn't exactly apply on hardware. You have the CPC and you want to work on the CPC and there 4Mhz Z80 is just what you have. Of course you can do the code on the PC, but your focus is to code something for a specific hardware. There is no even point to code it for an emulator that overclocks the machine since you want it to run on the real thing you have home and watch it and be proud of it. Although sometimes it can become too restrictive too. 8bits are too slow and you better code assembly there and their video modes are pretty weird and unfriendly. Opensource handhelds are my favorite hardware limit because they have a middle point of power, not too lame, not too fast, most coming without 3d accelerator, so it's like having an old 486 with 320*240 pixels of glory :)

Other limitations:

Simplicity.

2009-10-03T17:31:00.000+01:00

I started this post after thinking about simplicity in general. It doesn't have to do with the theme of the blog except when those thoughts escalated in computing. I will start by giving some short examples starting with life and then computers and programming.

I was walking down the road thinking about what I need to buy for household needs (as I am now a foreign student who recently arrived in London) also worrying about things I bought and maybe I will not need at the end or foods that might rot in the fridge. I also tried to understand the reasons I sometimes buy more than I think I need.

One reason is that I very frequently confuse the "must reason" with the "need reason". For example, I first thought I should buy a set of plates and utensils because a house "must" have all the essential. But then I thought, what the hell, I am just a student in a student hall with a shared kitchen. I don't usually cook (even if I should) I just buy something outside or make a sandwich with pure bread and salami. I would just need one of each kind (fork, spoon, knife) and maybe those paper plates (and one plastic bowl for cereal) but not a complete set. I also bought a bread with the thought that I "must" have some bread but now I didn't ate from it at all and I preferred some toast bread I bought later for my sandwiches. It's hard like a stone now and I doubt I will touch it. I didn't thought naturally here about the most practical food I will need but just that I need some bread because a household always needs some bread.

Immediately I started thinking at other aspects of life (not only about buying stuff but also organizing your time and choosing the essential while filtering the things that are a waste of your time) and how the laws of simplicity applied to everything and could also be a great savior of time and could make my life easier. Actually, one grand rule of life or programming simplicity looks very similar to occam's razor. You should avoid what is unnecessary, unneeded, redundant.

I still concentrated on thinking on the reasons to why I want to do something in my life or if it's not necessary to spend time on specific things and concentrate on others that are more close to what I need and less to what they told me I must. Using this tool could be a nice way to review my demoscene and other hobbyist activities and maybe find better solutions that both gives gain in time and happiness.

Yesterday I installed Ubuntu. I almost never have Linux in my system and I get those curious looks and comments. "But you are a geek, how can you not have Linux installed?". This is a "must" motive. I think that some people have Linux just because it's geeky or it's a rebelous thing or they MUST. I have no problem with that. But when they ask me why, I have my answer. I never needed it. Of course, some things in Linux may have the simplicity I am talking about (if you tell me that the linux API is simplier than windows I tend to believe you because the windows API is a mess (although I have just tried to code some MFC applications, I don't know how things are in the core)) but I got used to work fine on windows and it has everything that I need. Why change it (except from curiosity)? So what was the reason I installed it this time? A "need" motive of course :). There is no gamepark wiz devkit released for windows yet. Although till I start a true project on wiz they might have done that already. I just couldn't wait :)

So, the rules of simplicity are helping a lot when you start thinking what you are supposed to need for your computer and what apps you should use and which operations are necessary for a user or even a geek who just wants to do his job and doesn't currently have the curiosity to look deeper. And the most interesting thing is when you try to think about an application you are developing yourself. Or an API you work on to use on your future programs.

I have bumped into the question several times when I tried reusing my own demo framework that I started from scratch since my latest demo Quantum Retrofuture. I am currently trying to redesign some stuff but I think I will have to seriously stop programming for a while, take a piece of paper and a pen and actually ask myself: "If I was scripting my new demo right now how exactly would I want things to work? How would I like to set up shaders, load textures, models, move the camera, sequence the demo parts, time the transitions, call the music player? How simple can my functions and structs (or objects) be so that maybe a programmer newbie could script a demo out of it? How easier can it be for me to reuse this engine to script new demos during a strict deadline? All this simplicity without sacrificing the functionality of course."

Needless to say, currently to load a shader or initialize a texture from an image I have to edit at least three different source files, two header files to enumerate an ID for the shader or texture and the location in the disk and at least one to load and initialize it if not two for the image to texture case. Of course I had organization in mind when I designed this framework and so I had one source file for image loading, one for texture management, etc which is ok but somehow trying to be more organized than you think you can be can be messy sometimes. Maybe if I made a wrapper with simplified functions that did things directly using the non-simplified framework would be a solution but I'd prefer to think more about a new solution from scratch. The same complicated was my newest software rendered that I stopped working on it because of the complexity I wanted to integrate with different source files focused on an hierarchy of 3d meshes connected to objects connected to scenes connected to worlds connected to a screen struct for viewports and all these interconnected with other things. I had a big time of thinking to imagine this one. Maybe I will create from scratch a tiny 3d engine based on simplicity and live the other one for a bigger project (this was originally planned as an engine for GBA or Gamepark demos that need a fast software renderer).

I keep bumping in this question and each time I fix something although a redesign might be needed. I am not into object oriented programming yet, it's all pure C mostly and one question is whether I would need to create some classes and move more towards OOP for my next demo or I could nicely stick with C. Personally I think that with proper planning and having simplicity always in mind, also keep down the keyboard for a while and carefully plan in a piece of paper, a very easy to use demo framework could be feasable in C.

Why complicate things when you can easily make them simple?

Computer magazines and new generations

2009-08-27T19:52:00.000+01:00

I am holding a greek computer magazine (PC Master) in my hands which recently celebrated the twenty years since it's initial release. Except from the massive articles on the history of the magazine and the software and hardware technology evolution since 1989, a PDF of the first issue of the magazine is offered in it's DVD. Browsing it's pages brought back a feeling of astonishment and made me wonder how things have changed during the years and the magazines aren't what they used to be.

My astonishment is not on the technological changes but on the shift in contents of the greek (and I suppose foreign too) computer magazines since the beginning of home computing. The phenomenon that I will describe can also be seen in other greek publications like Pixel, User and others (I am just browsing some of them in a forum archive on retromaniax website).

First of all listings. I remember several big listings of programs written in basic for various 8bit computers in Pixel magazine. The only bad thing with these listing was that they were given without explanation and you just had to type them trying to be careful not making any typos or you would get Syntax Error messages (at least on my Amstrad CPC) and not being able to know what the mistake could be (because you wrote the code blindly). Not a good way to learn programming but maybe that's where I got use to type so fast and blindfolded on the keyboard. But the astonishing thing was that the magazine devoted something like 30% (if I am not mistaken) of it's pages on programming listings! Nowadays magazines might spend two pages on visual basic programming (if they bother to have a programming column at all) because they need all the rest for game reviews and what hardware to buy advices. I will get back to this (even if the reason is obvious).

The first issue of PC Master (and the following issues for several years) except from the main articles on news, hardware and game reviews (which didn't take the majority of the pages) had at least three programming articles with a good amount of explained code (at least as much as it possible in few pages) in Basic, Pascal or C and an article explaining some DOS commands among others. The quality of code was more advanced than what you can find today in the two pages visual basic article when a magazine bothers to include one.

What astonished me even more was the column with reader's letters. The vast majority of the readers were asking things about weird DOS commands, batch file making or programming questions. What astonished me was the quality of the readers. Many of them were people experimenting with their computer. Compare this with a common type of letters in the same magazine after twenty years: "Hello, I have just installed Crysis but it's too slow on my GF8600. Should I get a GTX?". If it's not about games then it's something stupid like "Hi dood, I liekd your H4CK TH3 PL4N3T column. Ona day I wanna be the best haxor in teh world! Greetinx, Cyberg0d!!1". Oh yes, I have just noticed that they have a new column called "Hack the Planet". But no columns trying to revive the old good programming curiosity..

What is the thing that changed? It's rather obvious. First of all remember that the people who had a computer and spent hours with it in the past were mostly geeks. Computers were not mainstream, it wasn't everyone's business. The majority of the readers were more than gamers. Many of them might have started from the early 80s when most of the 8bit home micros of the time were coming with basic at boot. It was inevitable that out of curiosity someone would try to code something in basic and there were even big chapters in the manuals that came with the machines, dedicated in basic programming, system calls and maybe even assembly. Later on the PC, the environment was a boring black screen and sometimes you even had to change your CONFIG.SYS manually to get that desired free memory for running a specific game. Still, an operating system not attractive to the majority of the people.

And when computer graphics became more attractive, the operating system more classy and internet was a commonality, that was the moment where what consisted a computer user changed. Actually nothing has changed from the side of the geeks and hobby programmers. They still exist, you can find even exceptions of younger people getting interested in real programming instead of just playing WOW. What has changed is the majority of the readers. Today, most of the people who have a PC and spend hours in front of it are playing games, watching movies or youtube videos, surfing the net, updating their facebook status, downloading MP3s or just composing a document in word. Most of the people who might install a compiler and write a programm for a while are doing it in their studies or job. And only very few of them are also doing it as a hobby. It's quite logical that in our modern days where the majority who is interested in computers prefer the mainstream and fun stuff instead of programming, that the magazines of the same era will prefer to cover the same subjects that will motivate most people to read them.

So, the shift of the subjects covered in the new magazines compared to the ones two decades ago, mirror the change in quality of the majority of the people that own a computer. Also, the very few true programming geeks (that are lost in the swarm) do not need to read a magazine for their needs since they can find everything on the internet. Hobbyist programmers that remind me of that good old feeling of the old times, do exist in underground communities like the demoscene, linux, homebrew console developers and other communities. I just felt for a while an awe reading that first issue of 1989 and then a disappointment. But it's to be expected..

p.s. Another subject that I would like to write next time is about programming and the youth. Is it harder for the new generations to get dragged into programming than in the past? Is it odd that whenever I have a conversation with students of informatics here in Thessaloniki, most of them confess that they dislike programming? (even those who have taken their diploma). Or that (as a friend told me) most males are bragging that they are great hackers while they know shit about programming? But this phenomenon is to be analyzed in another post..

Little drafts of coding

2009-08-17T07:59:00.000+01:00

I had fallen in the deadliest coding inactivity ever. Since my last demo on Breakpoint (that was April or May I think?). But it was a bit of relief from the obsession of coding demos for a while. Although I wasn't in the mood for coding anything else. Though I was making some applications for university studies and other stuff that occupied my time anyways. Funny thing is that between my hobby activities, job and private java lessons to a student, the last one was surprisingly the best coding activity I had. Yep, my job is 70% about picking up phones and teaching or supporting users of our applications and only 30% about coding. Make that 5% because the rest 25% is spend from my side on slashdot, pouet, youtube and blogs.

I got a little inspiration lately. I opened Shader Designer and made a Plasma. LOL! It's always plasma for a start for me. To stretch my coding muscles and remember what I didn't touch for more than three months :). It's nice that with such programms as shader designer you can play with little shaders for fun and then be inspired to open the compiler and try something more serious.

Well it's still 2D. I am eager though to go on 3D. I have some inspiration to try and see how the old 2D software effects will look like on shaders and what kind of difficulties I will go through. I already tried plasma, polar plasma, radial blur and box filter, fractals, etc (those on my first shader demo).

I retried plasma and here I solved some mysteries I had about something. When I wrote the first shader demo it was very slow even in GeForce7 cards. And then I remember masterpieces like Lifeforce claim to be written on a GeForce5600 and running fine on my Radeon 9600 pro. I was wondering, if I write some plasma with only three sines per pixel added and it gets 30fps on my Radeon (when I did the quantum retrofuture demo I didn't had this old card, I had an HD3650 and so I didn't bump into much optimization issues). Which is ok but thinking about the heavy shaders use on demos like lifeforce I wondered how they could do shader demos on such old cards? I also tried something simple: Will the old techniques (sine precalculations, look up tables, etc) give an improvement here? I only had to generate the precalcs and load them in 1D textures. And they did. I got 300fps for the plasma and I got improvements in polar plasma effects too. Of course when running the same tests in modern hardware I notice that there is no difference there. 700fps for both realtime sine version and precalced sine version. So, I solved this mystery question I had, would lut and stuff from the past help to optimize 2d effect shaders for old accelerators? It was even fun to pass a big precalc lut for angles for the polar effect in one 8bit color channel of the texture and then see it's not enough (256 angles only for a big resolution, ugly angle steps) and then pass it as 16bit in two color channels and combined them in the shader for one angle value. Fun oldschool shader stuff :)

I also tried to do the 2d bump mapping and it works like charm but with things like fire effect (and hopefully soon the water effect) there are some strange errors (it doesn't just burn but the blur moves outwards the screen in perspective like a feedback effect and makes some ugly blurry rectangles) that I am not sure why they are happening just right now.

But after the 2d effects I am curious to final move in more serious shader coding on 3d objects, try the simple stuff first (envmap, phong, bump) and thing of more interesting shaders. Who knows, maybe I am working a new shader demo soon. For a little while I was into serious thoughts of cleaning up the code on my last demo framework, improving some things here and there and start working on a new demo. Even though my demo motivation is not very high right now.

The hermit and the stars

2009-08-13T17:42:00.000+01:00

I am sitting here outside my hotel room watching the stars. The view from the mountain is magnificent. I am one and a half kilometer away from the place where I have to work the next days. I came here by foot, following the road in the dark. Magnificent view of the stars where there are very few lights. Just one think I am wondering about. Where the hell is the milky way? I see a faint thing. I have read somewhere that it's very hard to see it clear in the modern civilization where the places are full of city lights. I have seen some photos (which I am not sure if they are illustrations or the real thing) where it looks magnificent. Where can I see it like this? How far away from the lights should I go?

Someone would say that I am far away from civilization. Someone else would joke that I am still not far away from it because I am just writting this in a laptop. Although there is no internet, nowhere here. The village has something like twelve buildings and maybe thirty people are living here. Some dreamy ethereal music is playing in my laptop while I am sitting outside alone, watching high for the stars as I am writting this (blind writting ftw :). As I am intentionally creating some kind of wannabe romanticism one thing comes in my mind.

AD ASTRA PER ASPERA

p.s. I am wondering what has became of this blog and where is it leading. So far I like my posts. It's just that 90% of them have to do with my despise of the modern hacking culture. Which has totally something to do with the main inspiration that initially made me open this blog. My dislike of some mainstream aspects in the computer world accompanied by some kind of romantic feeling about the old times when things were just starting and were pure. The modern hacker seeks a target to attack just because it's trendy to deface websites and write a manifest or do anything stupid. Not many people understand the programming creativity of hobbyist communities and these same people speak of the best words about how they adore hackers who do stupid acts. Although I may be too obsessed with this anti-"hacking" thing (it shows) and I am thinking to shift to other subjects that still have to do with the good old things and how they have changed. And keep that romanticism (Don't take it seriously (I don't), just flow into it and dream :)

Cracker --- goes good with cheese, smoked oysters and possible caviar.

2009-07-09T09:14:00.000+01:00

I just read that line and cracked in laughter :)

Finally some random forum in the web where someone addresses the predictable "hacker not cracker" argument and most people bring it to some good jokes, actually saying who cares how they are called, the fight for the meaning of the word "hacker" is lost and all those people are idiots anyways. Yep, the majority in that message board just didn't cared and cracked some nice jokes about it.

Why can't you find other places like this on the net? Maybe they were so pissed off by seeing their favorite community site crumble to nothing that just wanted to punch in the face anyone who comes with the silly "crackers not hackers" argument? Seriously I was positively surprised that the majority there addressed the definition and ethics problem differently that in several other sites. This usually doesn't happen!

As I address it in a post at the same forum thread, once the hackers where the programmers and hardware gurus but today the term has changed and nobody can do something for that. When you create a new term "cracker" to differentiate from the programmers, most people still understand "hackers" as the good security breakers and "crackers" as the bad security breakers. The myth perpetuates and now if some stupid person breaks uninvited in a computer and does anything questionable (even a simple website defacing is not ethical in my opinion) he claims to be a hacker (the good guy) and not a cracker. But as I said, it's like saying "I am a hero, not an asshole". Who would say otherwise?

I am currently reading a classic book by Steven Levy, Hackers, heroes of the computer revolution (1984). There are the early computer programmers of the sixties, the hardware gurus who build home computers and the early game developers and software copy protection crackers presented in this book. No mention of anything resembling the modern media definition at all. But today, saying "hackers" we mostly mean the later. And that thing is that has to be demystified or else more people on the net will create senseless havoc and even think they are heroes by doing that. We have to show them that it's not ethical, it's not justified and it's not the right spirit.

I even started programming at a very late age where the meaning had already shifted. I never called myself a hacker, it's demeaning. I called myself a programmer, coder, demoscener or geek. Maybe that's because I simply don't care for the preservation of the old definition of the term because it existed several years before my time. But there are tons of great hobbyist and underground programmers just being creative in the old sense with the "hacking spirit" as described in the book. Not calling ourselves hackers doesn't change the fact that some of us will always show signs of the creative spirit, the insight, the programming enthousiasm, the cleverness in computers, science, arts or any human discipline for all ages to come. We just don't need yet another idiotic definition, some kind of honorable title to mask our true intentions and justify questionable acts. We are what we do and we do what we are.

Apparently 45.652 people get it on the internet..

Garbage on the web

2009-06-25T11:58:00.000+01:00

It always makes me mad.
I like the feeling of being off-line. Away from the junk.
It can still be fun if you like to be in control of your computer.
Programming little things and little machines. The real thing.
Real and respectable computing. Alone.

I received another one of those emails. Someone I knew send it to me. He probably didn't know and he thought it was the right thing to do. Microsoft and IBM said one of the most dangerous computer virii is on the loose. Even CNN had that story! The virus can burst you hard disk in flames. It can also steal your email and your id. They warn you to close your PC the following days. Maybe it will be better to do so with that pyramid email shit floating around. Sigh...

It's common. It's nothing to be angry about. Pyramid emails. Stupid hypes. Annoying Spam and pop ups. Pseudohackers spreading virii and defacing websites. Stupid flaming and hip websites. Boring social community sites. Internet for the masses.

I recently heard the word "darknet". I immediately fell in love with the concept. A private network for the few ones. Maybe it's a bit elitish. Maybe someone can't easilly get into. I don't even know where do they exist and how they look like. I wish I knew more about computer networks. Although they remind me the old times of BBS. I never had the luck to join one though. It was past my time. Maybe some people are still running them for the nostalgy. Private networks. Somehow it's appealing that besides the all well known internet there are some unreachable places out there. There is something in the concept that is so inspiring till the mass discovers it and it becomes mainstream and spoiled. But who is the mass anyways? I might be a part of the mass too :P

I heard another even more appealing word . It's called "off-line".

I never understood 'hacking' and I never will

2009-05-27T17:40:00.000+01:00

When I was at puberty I made this insane thought: I had to become a great programmer to distinguish myself from the average joe operating a computer.

Maybe it was my lack of self-esteem and general feeling of misfit at school that forced me to take that decision. I believe this is one of the forces (and one of the curses) behind trying to become a master of any art there is. The quest for fame and honor.

At first I was bothered with school exams that were needed to be selected at a university, that didn't left me much time for seeking this dream. I didn't do much back then but the thought kept breeding in my mind. Later, as I became a student at the university and got an internet connection in the university lab I discovered the first traces of the demoscene community. I had already seen some demos from an old magazine CD several months ago but didn't know anyone near my place being involved in the community. It was the time I made my first attempts at democoding, spent a lot of hours in the computer rooms happily communicating with other people interested in demos and also managed to be absorbed so much that I totally fucked up my studies for the next eight years :)

I really don't remember much about the so called 'hacking' trend at the time, I actually don't remember that this thing ever attracted me. Maybe I have heard something about it even before I started having this dream of becoming a good programmer. Everyone knew about it from the movies. Even if I could not imagine at that time how one could possibly invade in a foreign computer without 'touching' it, this activity never inspired me. Maybe my initial interests were focused on graphics programming and not computer security penetrating.

For someone seeking fame and honor desperately, it should be a number one choice. Everybody said great words about 'hackers' and the whole thing had become a myth. Of course most of them were thinking of 'hackers' as portrayed by the mass media. But it never touched me! I am not sure why but one reason might be that at that time I found the actions and attitude of the so called 'hackers' quite dumb.

During that time (it was 1998-9) there existed a greek 'hacking' site, hack.gr (It's history now). I remember that I was posting a lot of ugly texts in it's forums concerning my view on this 'hacking' trend. Even then, when I was a lame programmer (making 2d stars and scrollers in quickbasic :P) and didn't know much about computers, I could not feel any respect or reason for what 'hackers' did. It was neither impressive nor creative. I still don't know why it never touched me, I still haven't answered to myself why I always hated it.

So, I knew about the so called 'hacking' community. I knew about their web pranks, their 133t attitude and the whole myth revolving around them. Fame and honor was also a factor that motivated me to start learning programming and make demos. But I never shifted my activities into 'hacking', the supposedly ultra-cool computer activity which would be ideal to gain fame and honor.

I was misunderstood. I tried to show several times that what can be accumulated in the term 'hacker' as people understand it today (security penetrating/malicious software/coolness, attitude, trends and the myth) is not to be respected. And they were replying that I am recycling the opinion of the mass-media or that the are good respected 'hackers' or that I am clueless. But all I wanted to blame was the modern so called 'hacking' community and it's false reasons. I didn't know that the term was also attributed to underground hobbyist and clever programmers who were the respected ones and had nothing to do with modern 'hacking'.

Later as I became more involved in the demoscene community I started an endless race of programming more and more demos with the wish to become famous in the scene. While it was a kind of attitude that became an obsession and almost destroyed the fun behind demomaking, it was also a motivating factor that brought me were I am today. But as long as I wrote the next line of code, as long as I coded a new effect or released yet another demo, it felt like I was putting my brain into creating something that I can later watch and be happy of my achievement. If I was given a magic lamp that would instantly create a great demo and make me famous in the scene then it would mean nothing to me. I wouldn't feel any honor, I wouldn't appreciate myself at all.

I had to put a great effort and create something, either it was a demo or a game or an application or anything. This was a bliss, especially if it involved some insane optimization techniques or a crazy idea of my own (later, I even dwelved into z80 assembly and coded some nice demos for the 8bit Amstrad CPC). There was hacking spirit (with the old meaning of programming cleverness) in it and I could totally perceive that feeling. I was inspired by unconventional coding tricks that could be used to optimize computer graphics in such old and slow computers. The same inspiration to find crazy tricks to optimize or code new 'impossible' effects could occure even in modern PC demos (It's not about the vast processing power but the spirit).

I mean, I have been involved in low level programming for years, wrote several lines of assembly and C code, I have created a lot of demos where many people wish they could do the same and even if initially I was struck by the same fame virus that you use to see in the people who wish they can be 'hackers', I loved programming and creativity and I could never understand the other side. I observed and lived the feeling of finishing another piece of code that does something clever, I have created a lot of demos to satisfy my need to be special, my road was somewhere between this obsession of becoming a well known good programmer and learning some real programming in a such creative and unknown community as the demoscene but I never understood the so called 'hackers'. They were just seeking ways to penetrate security so that they make cool internet pranks and become famous for nothing, while I was trying to create something because of my interest in become better at programming (even if one of my initial motivations was fame too). Such a gap between me and them..

I mean, even at the beginning when I was a newbie in programming I still didn't understand their motives and attitude. The so called respect was about the programming ingenuity and hobbyist underground of the old definition which I later persued. When I present some of the demos I created to computer illiterate friends, many of them are not impressed and they ask me the dumb question: "That's boring. Can you 'hack' instead?". That says it all!

Good programmers and clever people with a conscience don't call themselves 'hackers'. I am sorry, the H-word has died for me. It's only used to denote something I cannot feel respect for.

Demoscenes and mainstream

2009-05-22T09:30:00.000+01:00

After posting the previous article about the demoscene, I remember and rechecked something else and interesting or scary thoughts popped in my mind.

What happens if something like the demoscene reaches the mainstream? What could be the common misinterpretations from the average joe? Could there be some dangerous ones? Which elements worked out well as a connection bridge between the one who can understand it deeply and the common person who hasn't heard about it before?

Currently there is a kinda funny term misrepresentation floating around the web, which is most probably harmless (even though the idea that such a mistake can be passed so easilly by the majority without anyone inside the scene being able to correct this, scares me). Several people, are mistakenly calling the demos as 'demoscenes'. Phrases like these are floating around blogs and forums right now: "Hey, have you seen the demoscenes I sent you?", "The Debris demoscene is only 170k", "The demoscenes are wonderful graphical programms of small size".

Just for the records, the programms are called demos, people! Demoscene is the community of people creating them. There is no such a thing as 'demoscenes' (in plurar). Learn that!

Now, as long as the meaning of demos hasn't changed (people are still impressed by the realtime graphics and the small size of some of them) there is no alert that there will ever be a wrong interpretation of the essence of the scene as we know it. It's maybe not that important if people are calling them demoscenes or megascenes or whatever. It's just that chill on my spine when I think about the power of the mass especially through the internet. Even if the term 'demoscenes' is wrong, if I now visit every forum or blog that misuses the term and clearly state the mistake for all, there will still be people around the globe calling them demoscenes. I am powerless over the influence of several people using the wrong term.

Let's examine also some more facts. Why 'demoscenes'? I even remember the time several years backs when I met some other greek people interested in the scene, one of them being a good coder and knows the difference between the terms, although the very first time I explained him about demoscene and those wonderful programms called demos, he somehow used the wrong term and also called them 'demoscenes'. He even face-slapped himself then (lol, not exactly) for spreading the whole mistaken term to every other people in his village who never had heard about demos before. I never made this mistake when I explained demos to him or in some of my articles about the demoscene. Why was he confused the first time? What drives people to prefer 'demoscenes' over 'demos'?

A simple answer. When people speak of 'demos', a misunderstanding is happening because the same term exists as in demos of games or commercial software (limited, time-trial versions, etc). Maybe the people, not exactly intentionally, but to avoid confusion they have to speak of them with another similar term. And
'demoscenes' could be what jumped easier in their mind. I am not sure but I think that this is one important factor. Which of course was a problem even in the 80s but it's only recently when I saw the new lame term 'demoscenes' circulating around the internet. Maybe that's because the demoscene and it's productions became more known through the internet only recently. In this one, efforts for scene outreach (which one I am watching with a positive eye), big companies being interested in the demoscene and of course kkrieger helped it to happen. It's quite interesting for me to see where this path leads.

I once described this recent phenomenon as the good mainstream. Big companies, siggraph, software houses, conferences at demoparties, demos digged, game sites with a demoscene section, maybe this is something good for me when I mention my involvement in the demoscene on my CV and suddenly the computer world outside the scene appreciates it. But what about the scene itself? The good thing here is that demos are becoming mainstream to the computer literate outside the scene who is not exactly the average joe. The average joe speaks of hacking as seen in the movies and he is of course thinking of security breaking (which he finds ultracool), not programming (which he finds boring). The scene is about programming realtime graphics, pixeling/3d modelling, writting music and generally being purely creative with a computer instead of playing games or dreaming of hacking the pentagon :P. This is why even with this shift to the commercial computer world, the inner notion of demos and demomaking will never change.

At the moment, I am not sure whether this shift might change the scene in other ways (some people think it will miss it's underground spirit but I don't believe so). Nevertheless, I think I am exactly tripping at the point in time where such a shift could occure. And it is interesting to me to observe and analyze what happens. To see an important computer community dramatically changing (or possibly not) through history and make my own conclusions while living this history. I can stare and see how is it possible for something to change so much (if it ever does) as something similar happened with the 'hackers' notion but I wasn't there living in the historic times to actually observe the change. Interesting times for the demoscene.

Another point. A primary element that currently is making the demos interesting in the eyes of non-scene people around the internet is that of size. Currently, the most blog/forum posts describing the demos (and even calling them wrongly 'demoscenes') give mostly as examples the small and tiny sized ones, namely 4k or 64k intros. Of course. People cannot be impressed by the realtime graphics notion. Demos are traditionally non-interactive and the big ones that weight several megabytes could be mistaken for videos so they would be just plain boring (even if video captures of such image clearness and resolution would need hundreds of megabytes, not only 10-20MBs). Only a tiny sized file of something less than 64k displaying smooth crystal clear visuals and sound would make the average joe being impressed. Most people keeps in mind only the <64k category when refering to demos. Another problem I see here is that year by year the size of the traditional demos is growing up. People are also posting demos at youtube. If the video capture (even as a low quality divx rather than the crystal clear realtime rendered frames) reaches the size of the executable demos then what's the point? Will there be a schism? Most probably not because sceners appreciate the traditional demo category as they can relate to the fact that it's still an executable producing realtime graphics. But what about the mainstream who just discovered demos as impressive tiny sized executables?

Only time will tell. It will be interesting to me to observe any possible (good or bad) transformation through the years. How will the scene be in 2020 or 2050?

Digital canvas

2009-05-22T07:08:00.000+01:00

I have a cupboard with a lot of drawers in my sleeping room. On the top of it lies an old C64 monitor and the 1541 drive. Their cables are connected and the C64 lies inside one of the drawers. It's a funny thing, opening your drawers searching for clothes and finding the one with the C64 inside :)

I had a rare feeling one day I switched on my C64, ran a demo and stared at the pixels. Such a low res wide picture elements with only a very specific minimal color pallete, my eyes being able to separate them one by one and yet see the whole picture, lines of assembly code being able to say which of each to lit on with the specific color value, mathematical algorithms or few simple rules that describe what to draw for each picture element. I saw the whole image, I felt it, something that cannot be described by logic but it's a feeling of art and simplicity.

And then I understood. I understood why I can enjoy watching demos in even the slowest machine with the most minimalistic graphics. Why it doesn't make a difference to me whether it's 2bit in 160*200 or 32bit in 1024*768 resolution. I see the difference between how I feel and interact with a computer than the average joe who can't enjoy using or programming in his computer if it's not high tech.

I understand that for me the computer is like a digital canvas. I only need a framebuffer no matter how few the pixels and the colors and a simple programming language to speak with the computer and describe the minimal rules and basic algorithms needed to display something nice in the screen. I have a deep feeling of the connection of the mathematical input and the visual output and I could so much enjoy it even in a calculator.

I can also understand for another time what's so special with the demoscene. Why should I just do my thing and not cry out whether the scene is dead or whether I am not active enough. I have this feeling which cannot be described easilly. This total relation of the algorithmic simplicity and the computer screen, being provided with the least screen elements possible (the pixels) and just being creative and imaginative with them. I can understand demos.

Demoscene is something that will never became as destructively mainstream as what happening with the whole notion of hacking (it's meaning being transformed from pure programming leasure and ingenuity to the lame notion of security breaking). It just lacks the elements needed for the transformation pathway to reach the average joe. Most people find it meaningless and boring while also not ...illegal/cool enough (as in modern "hacking"). It's not for the many and it will never be. It is for those who can understand the inner magic and don't need high-tech and uber-trendy or destructively cool to appreciate.

Those who can also appreciate and actually enjoy oldschool demos, except from modern graphics that everyone can normally relate to, are meaned to get this special feeling. The demoscene is one of the greatest jewels of true mental/visual communication with a computer no matter how old. I can understand it when I watch another demo and I can actually "feel" the demo.

About this blog

2009-05-15T13:01:00.000+01:00

I could explain what this blog is about. Even if it's just another blog. Some of the things I am writting here could be expressed in another blog of mine. It just popped up in my head to open this one in an instant. Hopefully it doesn't fail to the category of the blogs that after a while I feel compeled to close. I won't let this happen..

One of the things that I really hate is when some beliefs I feel they are wrong, become so popular through mouth to mouth, that when you try to debunk them nobody listens to you and you even sound like an outcast, you even feel it's a taboo to speak otherwise. Of course, I would sound like an idiot if I just claimed that MY idea is right and yours is wrong. I try to keep an open mind. But there are some ideas so flawed up that you think it's not possible that most people accept them and yet they are so blatantly wrong that you want to SCREAM! Such is the power of common opinion that anything, no matter how stupid, can be supported and finally be accepted as the sole truth by the mass. And then you hear the same ideas from even the experts. It doesn't matter if Einstein said it or the average Joe!

And yet I have become so good in feeling that aura, that essence of when someone transfers a meme and says the phrase "Isn't that so?" and the other person is compelled to just nod his head because he is not left of any choice or there is a feeling of common connection, that he agrees with what all agree and that only makes the thoughts expressed to sound as true facts while they aren't always so. That feeling of common consceous. I can't explain that yet. But I can feel the power that makes even not exactly the right ideas dominate. But who can define what is right and what is wrong anyways?

I can't. Not only I am not so confident but I also try to be a little openminded. Or is openminded another excuse for the real fact that I don't want to be such a wuss? I like it when people are brave enough to say what even myself can't sometimes say. When the political correctness or politeness don't stop their way. Does it mean that they are always right? No. But they have to say something because usually nobody says something like that, because it is taboo or nobody should say so. Their opinion is more interesting to me because it's rare, because it's something you are not used to hear around you.

Normally, the things about human society or popular and taboo ideas on various subject would make it to my old blog. This one is more about the things I want to say having to do with computers and the community. These ones that nobody says or it's a taboo to say. Or to show up some popular opinions on computing which in my opinions are kinda wrong yet widely accepted.

One of them is for example the whole confusion/myth behind hackers (as portrayed on tv) and how much confusing it gets. I have written a lot of articles about it in the past. And there are a lot more that I want to write. Some people do seem to say something, like that hackers are creative and not destructive, that they should be called crackers, etc. but there is a point that even their sayings are not enough or they are still making some mistakes or their words are still not the same as what they might be thinking. It's such a confusing yet challenging subject for my constant struggle with the power of such common beliefs. Expect a lot of articles on this one.

Sometimes I feel like a hermit. But then I imagine a lonely guy in the corner feeling the same things as me and yet he thinks I am a dumbass just like the rest. I know. Maybe I am looking like the same people I speak about to the eyes of other hermits. But nobody is perfect.

Everyone hates the phone

2009-05-15T12:24:00.000+01:00

It seems to me that everyone hates the phone. Not just at work. But even here, why do they? I should ask them. I get a little anxious with phones but nobody else says this is the reason. But maybe nobody confirms that because it sounds a little wousy.

Do you remember the time when mobile phones were not in everyone's possesion? I can't remember this one. It feels strange. How the hell would someone reach me if I was out in the city? How did I managed to meet my friends? Maybe I don't remember that because I didn't have any friends at that age or I didn't went to the cafeteria or something. But it feels strange. What if I reached a particular point of meet and my friend didn't arrived? Phonebooths? Not sure..

Doesn't it annoy you when you don't want to be interrupted and you are interrupted? When there is no moment of silence? Sometimes I just close my phone and others expect me to have it switched on all the time. It might even sound strange to them. But they never asked me about it.

I might be in great pleasure closing the damn thing! But sometimes in anxiety in case someone calls me for something important. But I know I can, I know I can simply ignore the important thing. It might prove not that important or if it is sooooo important then he might reach me through other means. Or he might call again.

Should I throw the 300 baud modem away? No connection to the outside world? But I do somehow want it. Maybe only the good sites. Maybe the old usenet. Maybe the places where other people with old computers meet. Not the crap popular majority.

But you see, we are slaves of ourselves. I would throw the damn phone if I could. I would stay offline if I really wanted. Maybe this needs a different zen of thought.

My dream

2009-05-15T11:57:00.000+01:00

I become a hermit.
I travel to the mountains.
I am living in an old woden house.
I grow up my own food.

I have there an old XT.
With 8 inch disks.
And a 300 baud modem.
And a hercules graphics adapter.
And a green computer screen.

And I forget about the shitty mainstream world of computers.
Of pseudohackers.
Of gadgetmasters.
Of computer superstars and wannabees.
And politically correct computer heros.

I have a dream.

Not coding

2009-05-12T14:38:00.000+01:00

I am not coding a line these days. I wanted to start making a game. I am occupied by some other things I need to finish this week and I also got a job. Also, when not doing these, I am watching tv series or lame UFO documentaries or even playing eye of the beholder. I am not going to code any time soon. Even though I get abstract ideas of things I'd like to code while I get bored at job.

The spikeball below looks very ugly. It's not much better in my demo. I didn't liked my demo. I don't care.

Who knows when I am going to code a new demo and what would that be (I am thinking of some oldschool platforms again). Although I am doing this for ten years. I just figured this out. And the game or other abstract ideas I'd like to try coding..

I am waiting for the summer. I'll be a little more free and have fun. Maybe with coding, maybe with just gaming and being lazy. Whatever..

Hey there mr.spikey ball!

2009-04-04T21:41:00.000+01:00

LULZ! Just a lousy screenshot of some 3d generated geometry of my incoming demo. Of course this has to be textured, shaded, etc. It won't be like in the screenshot.

Unfortunately I was too busy the last week because I was occupied by some preparation seminars for a job (the good news here is that there is a high possibility that I get a new job right after breakpoint) and a lot of other things (learning french, teaching on private lessons, etc). So, I haven't done much since the last post. The finished parts are still only two which means that I have to rush for the remaining five days. My brother is also trying to make the music for the demo just right as we speak. But I think the demo will be submitted to the BP09 demo compo, although the final quality really depends on the limited time and my motivation. Certain ideas will or will not make it into the demo and other parts may not be as complete as I was planning at first. At least I will be there at the party and try to enjoy my time.

Little teaser

2009-03-27T11:10:00.000Z

Work on the shaders demo for BP09 is going well. This will be the second part but the final won't look exactly like the picture (I hope). It's not finished yet. I tried here to give an impression of the superposition from quantum theory. The demo will have references to quantum physics and retro feeling at some parts. It just occurred in my mind to have such a mixed theme. I won't reveal any more till the demo is released at the party :)

Satisfactions and dissapointments in my democoding activities

2009-03-10T19:49:00.000Z

4k is almost ready to ship! As a remote entry for Numerica demoparty.

87 bytes to wipe out. It's one of the few projects I enjoyed a bit. Maybe because it was easy to code in OpenGL and produce something that looks neat. Or because I enjoyed generating 3 textures and few polygons and have a final result that is satisfying to myself (concerning the effort and result). Maybe it's mediocre compared to the good ones (fewer parts that I wanted, shitty music, few ugly artifacts) but I don't bother about that. It's only important I am satisfied from what I do (and there are many factors that play a role in that) in the scene and this one is of the few times.

And now I am saying that, I think I'd like to make a list and consider which of my creations satisfied me or disappointed me during their creation and why? There was that incident some days ago at pouet where I expressed the usual stuff and wondered if I should be making demos or not. Then few days later I get good feelings by working on this 4k and even think it's gonna get fun to compete with the other entries and watch it realtime from the streaming. What's the fuck with me and my shifting moods anyways? Maybe I should just stop if I don't feel very well with a particular demo project and work on the ones that offers some satisfaction. There are times I get positive feelings from demoscene activities even if quite less than the negative ones. Maybe I should just regulate my emotions or shift activities when it doesn't go very well. Let's examine which where the ones with negative or positive feelings and why.

Let's see some demos from my Demology list at Pouet, starting from the past till today.

The Poor Freak (July 1999): It's too far back in time to think about. In away I have positive feelings but that's because it's my first. I remember I had a great lust then to release my first demo ever and the time was a bit hard though, I was small, I needed a time space when my parents wouldn't be at home to annoy me why I spent so much time on the computer, so that I feel free enough and not anxious to code this one. I got this space, it was summer and I was just returning on holidays (I had all time in my mind when to finish the holidays and go back to code this one and finally release it). I wouldn't say anxiety makes democoding satisfactory, but I don't remember. It was the start of all evil though, being anxious to finish the demo with the pressure against it from my parents and being sad for not being able to work freely on my coding dreams (I had that passion from that very first time). However I don't remember sadness or dissatisfaction from finishing that very first thing in struggle. Maybe I was too young and the negative feelings were not inside me yet. Also notice, even the title and the scrolltexts express that whole anguish I got for years from wishing to code something good and having my parents not letting me freely. Scrolltexts in some of my early demos are landmarks of my psyche at that time and shadows of my current psychology. (Also, I got some positive reviews in quickbasic sites, which made me even more happy)

Into The Fight (April 2001): Ugh! Even the title is something I hate. This is a good example of a good demo as a result (for quickbasic scene standards of course) with more negative feelings though. Remember, it's not the result but the equation of result and struggle to finish it that gives the final mark on the scale of how happy or unhappy I am with making demos. I can see that by remembering the times I did those demos and how I felt after. I was struggling trying to finish this with the same anxious thought, my parents arguing with me to stop doing this. And it was only my second big demo. How would I make really good ones after if that attitude went on? A lot of struggle went on to finish this one in time too. My first deadline. There was a competition called Qlympics 2000 in some website. There was a demo category. I wanted to do this. I really won the time race but with a lot of struggle and oppresion from my side. To discover that the site was a farce or something, or there was never a qlympics competition and no replies from the site admin or something (I wasn't the only one to fall into this trap though). The irony! (I just sent it to another compo later). I also made another mistake. I liked the C64 demos with noters explaining the effects and giving messages and so I spent most of the demo time (20-25 days) to write the noter text and only 5 days in a haste to connect the effects into the actual demo! Why the fuck did I do that??? (I even painted 88 fonts with my sprite editor quickbasic programm :). When I started it, I couldn't stop. I said I had to have a noter. I had seen I am loosing the race but I couldn't stop. I insisted. The text is around 250kb!!!!!!! (And don't speak about the lousy elastic boring to read writer). I realized it later and froze. I did won the deadline race, people liked my demo, but too much sorrow, too much oppresion with this one. And even the texts explain a lot of my sorrow (and my affection for demoscene girls at that time :). A great example of one of my most oppresive, sad works on the demoscene. Regardless the result, it didn't deserve that struggle. My psyche was at worse.

Atsou by Nasty Bugs (September 2001): The texts are growing big after each list item, I didn't expected it and don't want too much text but there are big stories to say. This one is the first time I get the satisfaction of watching my entry in the big screen at a demoparty. Mostly negative than positive feelings though. The same anxiety, not so much struggle, I was just learning C and a whole month was spent to finish this shit. Bad Sector helped me to connect the parts into an actual demo (but no music unfortunately) in a haste (he even had a headache after that :P) and we just had the nice opportunity to watch it in the big screen. Some struggle for lame result. Also disappointments..

Kefrens256 (January 2002): A good experience. For an online 256b compo. When the effort required is small (tiny intros coded in 1-2 evenings) then it's easier to enjoy it. And it was even my first, I had that idea of VGA hardware trickery and translucent bars (how have I chosen this for my first, in some aspects tricky hardware trick concept instead of a regular pixel effect for starters?) and succeeded making it work while at first I thought I would fail. My very first try at X86 assembly and ended up good. I have possible feelings from most of my tiny intro attempts because of little effort and nice results.

My two wilds at React 2002: My most disappointing time at a party ever. It was just right the moment something started going really wrong inside me, concerning my passion to make something good, my struggle, the obstacles, my anxiety and all. A landmark in time where my negativity really started growing on me. The first time I have those deep thoughts and sorrow about what the hell I am doing in the demoscene and why things don't work well. This is the very first time. I planned to do something good in the compo, brought nothing (I even was trying to partycode and finish my first CPC demo but of course that would be a bit impossible at few evenings under the noise). But instead I couldn't finish anything. And only released those lame demos that didn't make it to the demo compo but the wild compo (and finished last). I was also sad about other things, maybe didn't felt very well or confident with people there. I don't want to blame anyone, just trying to explain my psyche there. My worst party experience ever (not because of the party but because of my total disappointment with the scene and everything at that time)

Deedlines Sax (June 2002): A nice example of a creation with mostly positive feelings. Good for the quickbasic standards, ended 2nd(iirc?) in a nice quickbasic compo, not considering the quality of nice effects and my first 3d code, it also took me two good weeks of pure fun and no struggling. Did I have a clearer mind at that time? Did I not encounter negative attitude from my parents? A little period of positive energy? (I'll start to believe in astrology or other new age crap now :PPP). For some reasons I could not explain this one had a really really good flow of creativity (and I even still enjoy watching it :)

A Step Beyond (April 2003): The biggest milestone considering my dreams and my psyche. My first CPC demo. A lot lot struggle. Writing Z80 assembly for like 12 hours per day in a period of almost a month. Having unrealistic big dreams of a good demo in something like a trackmo style (not menus and separate scroller parts like most CPC demos) and I fuckin did it, and it was very very very unrealistic to bet on such a project at that time. I can't believe that my very fuckin first CPC demo (and a very first time I write something big in assembly, not just tiny intros) was that huge (for my newbie experience) thing. It hurted watching myself burning in front of my computer trying to finish this one while my parents worrying. I said to my mother to understand me and that I know now that this demo passion kills me, but I want to make a really good demo in order to persuade myself that I have reached my milestone in the scene and take a break. I would make this demo and then stop. Did I really? (Of course I didn't thought about ending forever but for a while) My mother would say no. I even organized a CPC demo compo at ReAct2003 where this demo was going to be showed (but since it was the only entry, it competed at the wild compo). And I had to show some CPC graphics and music entries too. I even got anxious about the entries. Organizers didn't left me a time window at first or we were bad at communication. It was done harshly with my angry, anxious, disappointed. And I'll tell you the secret after so many years I didn't ever told to the participants till today. There was never real voting. There was no time, I hadn't communicated well with organizers to make the net vote for the CPC entries too (and they didn't bother asking me or I didn't bother telling them, also I didn't planned well or knew) so after showing the entries, in my anger I shouted: "Who liked the banana graphic the most?", counted harshly the cheers and thought ah ok, what the fuck? "Who liked the first music?" People shouted me, me, the moody music, the happy music, the banana picture, no the alien picture. And I just made an estimation. That's how lamely I have gathered the votes. But I should have known it's for fun (although don't bother asking me for organizing, I suck at this :P). But then I think back on A Step Beyond. Biggest milestone on my whole psyche and mood shifting in the scene. However the result is good (and I can just think of it as feat) and I got very positive responds from the CPC scene. Imagine a new guy, his first CPC demo, and not be a lame scroller but this. Others release fifteen lame CPC demos before doing a milestone half of this. How have I allowed myself with my inexperience and early struggle at home to produce something like this? But I tell you, in overall value concerning sadness and joy, it's a bit more at joy (because of the feat) but around the middle. More positive points with deedlines sax or even a simple 256b intro than this. Good example of how one of my best demos doesn't give me much positive feelings regardless the result. Also, notice the electronic notes (with a noter C64 alike, coded by another scener) and the same passionate, desperate big texts that revealed my psyche around that time (how many times did I say the word psyche?))

My 0a000h 2004 releases: Tiny intros, easy joy. Also, the first time I release so many different things in a demoparty, the first foreign demoparty outside greece where I release something and have the fun to watch it on big screen, the first time to get a 1st place even with such a tiny intro and few contestants. The funniest thing is that while my joy was very positive with these releases, I was the opposite at the demoparty. I didn't even had a mood for drinking (which I always do at demoparties) and I just sat there with my computer playing quickbasic games! How crazy is that? Even the demoparty has stories of fun for me (like trying to carry alone a whole computer AND monitor from Karlsruhe to the party place). First time I bring my computer on a demoparty. And I met some nice people there too. Good response for my intros from Pouet reviews too (not that it matters much if I have purely enjoyed it and there was no struggle)

O.T.I.N.A.N.E. (May 2004): No fear of sorrow here. It was the first time I watched someone else being anxious for releasing his first demo the same way as I was at my very first demoparty with Atsou. Now, I was the helper so I had no sorrow just pure fun. The demo was so lame but it wasn't me to blame. I didn't even had the slightest anxiety. But I was happy that mentor released his first demo ever and I was there to help. Notice that the title reminds of my recent Otinanum farce. The root is OTI NANE, OTI NA EINAI, it could be translated to "Whatever it is" or something I like to call whateverism. How it doesn't affect you when you are just an external beholder of someone else's struggle to finish his first work..

Livetro (August 2004): My first C64 demo. Not a very important creation to analyze concerning the level of sorrow/joy. But there might be just some points here. First time to work with a team outside Greece. I remember some struggle with a lame bug (which was just a tiny jump of my DYCP scroll, only important to fix because of my perfection). Mediocre production, people being used to my pixel manipulation effects from CPC and expecting more. It was just a first release to show that Anubis is alive (but only then :). Nothing interesting. Good experience with C64 coding. Different kind of assembly programming than what I am used to on CPC and Z80. I think the joy/sorrow levels are at best mediocre. Neither too much negative or positive feelings. Not needed to be listed here but maybe a little milestone in my scene life.

My Pixelshow 2005 entries (A demo, a 256b intro and a wild): Mostly positive feelings. First time I release so many things at a demoparty and all are quite nice in terms of quality (and what I can do at the time). My first OpenGL demo even connected all together very nicely at the demoparty. Good successful partycoding even if under pressure (but like the one at home but that of time). Crazy wild people loved. Feels like a comeback of myself and a time of love for the scene. Good feelings.

Keftedes (October 2005): Mostly positive even if under a bit of anxiety. I think I had a fight with my parents at that time and I couldn't even bother sitting at home coding and them watching me without switching the power off and making a big mess. I wanted to finish this demo so this bad situation nerved me a bit. I did finished it at Antitec's house (all night coding in a laptop with shitty keys, great fun :). Production reminds me of the nice flow similar to Deedlines Sax in this one (although with a bit more nerve). I also finished part of it and an SDL port at a netcafe :). Keftedes is for the Keftales effect at the end. I always found the Keftales name strange and Keftedes means meatball in greek :). Also, the only entry at AAPs Freebasic demo compo, strange feeling, nobody bothered really to finish his demo, just me sitting alone in front of my computer and spending my time for something vain. But good times! (expect the bad atmosphere at home right that time)

X-Kore (March 2006): An example of a demo without much struggle (I think there was some frustration though) but giving me a feeling of dissatisfaction because of result. It's just the opposite example. Good code, lame design and converted gfx. I was very dissatisfied by some lame 1kb entry and unfinished gfx for the demoparty in the same DSK archive though. At least after so many years I felt I have released something on the CPC scene. Never do the same mistake with hasted releases though except if I won't care. But here I did. No other entry at the Forever CPC compo, so I felt the same way as the Keftedes demo, being alone struggling to code for vanity when noone else cares, although now the big fun was missing.

Led Blur (July 2006): A demo with good fun, a long but balanced effort (and no sorrow), that ended so well. From all my creations, my favorite demo, it's really the kind of flow of parts and oldschool flavor I really had in mind, one that I even enjoy to watch again and again. So many experience I got with that too (first 3d engine with polygons, first time to code in gcc, to have a makefile, first time to code for a handheld (GP32), to have to optimize my code like I was in a 486 with slow floating point, a lot of ports (by my friend Nuclear), etc). And then, at the worst time in the greek army, I get quite happy by learning this even have been nominated for a scene award. Me? Scene award? Impossible. It's when you make a demo and you just think it's mediocre (it was in terms of design) but you can't appreciate it as clearly as all the other people who watch it for the first time. The making of this took a very nice path and even the result was satisfactory. I should be aiming for more positive demomaking experiences like this with good results in the future. A positive milestone, just few weeks before I have to leave for the greek army and all hell breaks loose :P

Creep Tea (August 2006)

3 hours demo (December 2006) I did this demo while at the army. People thought it's funny that I am so obsessed with demomaking that I even find time inside the oppresive environment at the army (I did it in an office instead of working. In a haste. Now that's a feat :). No good feelings though. Lame demo but maybe my mood was down because of the army environment.

re-re-recycle (May 2007): Good flow, good feelings. Also, another time I have the good rare luck to have a demo already finished at home, not having to struggle with partycoding or anything but enjoying my time at the partyplace. (Good memories from that party too. Some nice people I met). The flow was good too. Newschool effects, GP2X experience (using the second CPU for an OGG replayer, mmuhack, etc), kinda slow for GP2X though. But finished and nicely combined with the music my brother wrote. Btw, that was between my army time, almost. I took 6 months release from my army duty for personal reasons. Like it was time to get back to democoding, in the positive way even.

Primary Star 2007 invitation (August 2007): First time I code an invitation for a demoparty. I almost forgot this because it wasn't on my Pouet list I am just looking (I will add now). It means something to me because of another (3rd? 4th? nth?) bad dissatisfaction from my side. Since my last C64 demo, I wanted to code something more than scrollers and sprites and char effects. I wanted to show I am capable to produced something a bit more interesting on this machine. Maybe just a tiny more interesting. I wasn't thinking of a huge think, just one nice effect for the invitation that is nothing of the usual. I was thinking of a little rubber bar with plasma (imagine the animated plasma on the surface of 3d bars from Krill but not on X-rotator but on rubber bars). Nice idea, doable, I was thinking this effect would go left right and reveal the invitation texts. Then I changed my mind, thought of something else, because I was struggling with something. Then back again. A month have past with nothing in my hands. It would be lame to not finish the invitation for the party and expose the organizers. So I finished this lame thing. I don't even remember how it took so long to finally reach this one (and being in a struggle). At least there was a positive response from C64 sceners at Pouet and elsewhere. Like they understood my sorrow then and told me to not worry. Notice also which of my productions in technical terms match which sorrow/joy levels. It's an important statistic to understand a problem and maybe at which side of demomaking I need to focus most to have joy. 8bit productions in assembly language usually get me the negative feeling. Assembly is fun and I like the feeling of writting some lines that work. But the effort! The hard effort needed most of the times lead me into finishing bad things under great pressure. But I love the idea of coding assembly for 8bits, although the struggle and dedication needed kills me. My least bad experience was maybe with a step beyond, which was still a very hard pressured experience I would never do that way again, but at least I produced a feat, something to think in awe and be fulfilled I achieved that at that time! Quickbasic was ok (not much people to appreciate your demo but pure fun), X86 tiny assembly coding was fine (VGA is easy, messed up nonlinear videorams on 8bits or even 16bits are cumbersome), even software rendering (something I am very well used to and doesn't look so hard or frightening to me as it would look to others) was fine and especially enjoyful in hardware that are neither too slow nor too fast and people can appreciate (GP32, GP2X, I can now consider NDS and maybe GBA in my future coding plans). Fun software rendering demos, with what I call midschool effects (something between oldschool and newschool, go figure :). OpenGL is cool too. Tiny 4k intros in C are a nice way to easily release something too. I don't know about assembly in 4k. I think it's the right way with modern 4k intros but maybe a bit harder for me. I might try once. Handheld demos with midschool software rendering effects was the most joyful level for me. I'd only wish I could also code an 8bit demo (CPC preferably) one day without that struggle and sorrow. All these comparisons though is a nice view of where I should move for less struggle and more fun in democoding though. Would that mean I would never code for 8bit again? No, I wouldn't like that. But I would do only if I resolve my bad psyche against that first..

Voxreen (July 2008): Last one for today? Too much text in the previous entry also. Good work, one week of code, initially wanted to code another demo but the time was not enough. I didn't even thought I would change my plans and succeed to release this. My first 64k too. What I like in tiny size intros or 64k intros most and what I find interesting is the algorithms to generate texture, 3d data, etc. I like the whole idea that everything is described by mathematics and not as raw data (well, in 64k a lot of things can still be in raw or compressed data though and it's nice to see a well painted logo for once in 64ks) I would be looking more into intro coding in the future, especially 4k and 64k. First time to participate in a big demoparty with 5000 viewers and to win a nice 3rd place with good prize money (I lost my plane to Spain before and I had to pay additional money to buy one, so this prize saved my ass :P). It was the time I stared (for the nth time of course :) with the mood shifting and thought I loved the scene so much (I should seriously stop doing this, I mean not the love but the mood changes :). I like the colorful nature of the demo and the (low quality :) voxel routine, even though for some strange reasons, I do not enjoy watching this demo of mine. Not much variation of effects that I can enjoy I guess? Even with the nice (ugly?) colors and music tune I love, I can't enjoy watching this demo as much as most of my demos. I don't know why. It would be sounding too lame if I told you that I did it for the money (and maybe I feel so, indifferent for the demo itself), so I won't tell you that (oops :)

Otinanum productions (beginning of 2009): Shame on me. And no comments.

Phew, that was big! It's a nice timeline of some of my most important releases and my thoughts on how they affected me and how I felt at that time. Good for a comparison of which elements, which tech, which times brought me joy or sorrow and know at which direction to head on if I want to receive more happiness than sorrow from my demoscene activities. And I must say that I should stop the mood swings because it makes me feel so ridiculous but all I say is a joke because I know that the cycle never ends.

Next time I should do a list of all the demoparties I visited and the joy/sorrow levels and reasons. Another insight, not on demomaking but how I felt at times with the demoscene community itself.

Funny

2009-02-27T22:39:00.000Z

It's funny how some seemingly impossible effects would require a clever yet very easy to code trick. It's funny how sometimes a coder with good ideas and a lousy programming language can overcome an unoptimized demo in assembly. I have been watching the demo Basic Instinct on my 386 and it's surprisingly smooth when also considering that it's written entirely in quickbasic. Most of it's effects were based on hardware scrolling and VGA trickery, yet there are some 3d dot routines and plasma effect that is quite good for Quickbasic AND 386.

This demo was the inspiration for me to try some other ideas in quickbasic. The screenshots are from my tests. I could never imagine that I could code fullscreen and full frame rate (with even several CPU cycles left for additional stuff) static mapping animations in quickbasic on my 386, provided the texture is no bigger than 16*16 (which could be much better looking than the tests in the screenshots).

Ok, the trick is simple, color cycling but I have never thought about it before watching an Acorn Archimedes demo on an emulator and while trying something the emulator and demo malfunctioned and revealed to me the trick on a big sphere mapping with small texture of 256 pixels. 256 pixels aka 256 colors. Precalculate a static 3d mapping screen with a tiled texture of 256 pixels (16*16) where each pixel of the texture has a unique color from 0 to 255. Just change the 256 color palette in such a way that would look like the tiled texture was scrolling and wrapping around itself. Handle the 256 colors as 256 unique pixels of the texture. The texture will scroll over the whole static mapping pattern producing the illusion of a real pixel per pixel mapping effect.

In fact, the same concept but with a 4*4 texture (with 16 unique colors/pixels) was used in the 2nd part of the CPC demo Backtro by Overflow. It's just looks and moves better when you have 256 paletized colors. And don't forget Unreal by Future Crew. I always wondered how could that great looking wormhole be so smooth on my 386. Now I know! Cheap tricks? Nah.. :)

Strange as it might seem to you, I had encountered such a great feeling of happiness when these (and even other funny mappings) ran successfully and smoothly on my 386 IN quickbasic. It might be stupid or a waste of time in the opinion of some but I had some great time with this. One of the rare times. As I explained in this pouet thread about my attention deficiency while democoding there are only very few rare times where I am not just coding trivial stuff but am doing some very curious or interesting experiments with coding where my focus and motivation are really high. And later everything drops down. This one was one of these times where I was really productive and happy with the process and the result.

As with shaders. The first time, they were something new for me. Of course I haven't written any real shader code yet. But after having a first good look into something new, I don't have the inital motivation or energy to continue at the same pace. Ok, I have seen how shaders work, maybe I will finish a lousy boring demo for BP but there are a lot of trivial and boring stuff in the coding process that make me lazy or loosing my focus. Unfortunately very little things really motivate me in democoding.

I remember a CPC coder who had coded some impressive effects as previews and they asked him why he doesn't release them in a demo. Because the most interesting and motivating part is over, to make a good effect work and use as much trickery and cleverness possible to optimize it or fake it. Then the most trivial, boring and time consuming parts is to connect all the effects in an actual demo. I can understand him. It's only the social consceous of the scene that asks you to combine your effort into a demo while you know that releasing the effects standalone would be lame or won't receive much attention. Sometimes I adore the quickbasic/freebasic scene where most people release standalone effects (without even good colors/design of the single effect sometimes) and it's all ok or even gets praise. Of course it's not just about the attention, but myself knows that it would be a pitty to throw away some good effects instead of using them in a good demo. Which although is the part that renders my attention span for coding sorter.

Other than that, there is a little progress with my 4k OpenGL intro. I am not sure if I wrote anything about it before but except from the demo for BP I was also planning a 4k. However, it is going so well and there are so few stuff to be done (although I am afraid about the music and also reaching the limits of 4k too early) so that there is a slight possibility I am releasing it at Numerica demoparty (as a remote entry). My brother is going to write the music. He might use Buzzic for that (no time after all for me to try coding music synthesis as I initially wished). And then I hope I will continue with my BP demo (whose project planning and concept has changed a lot in my mind since then, also because the initial concept would need more work for the limited deadline). No screenshots from the 4k here, just keeping it as a surprise :)

And then I wonder, why do we code? :P

Shaderzzz!

2009-01-18T03:40:00.000Z

The last two days I was working on the new OpenGL demo framework and I am happy it's ready. Today I was reading some GLSL tutorials and I am very happy to finally have managed to code something that works. In the screenshot you can see an ugly plasma and a distortion. I don't think I will use them in my planned demo of course (enough with the plasmas :) they are just tests to check how things are working. Yey!

I am impressed by the shader power, that plasma was several lines of random sines, floats and divides and it just updated at far too many frames in my ATI. You can write a lot of maths per pixel and don't be afraid about speed. I am wondering what is the real bottleneck with shaders and if as a careless programmer I could reach it (since I remember demos with heavy shaders being too slow here). Another thing that made me happy was a program called Shader Designer. It was so easy to use, I just changed some values and I could instantly see the result. Really helped me coding anything without wondering what happening and nothing gets rendered.

And there are still a lot to see and understand about shaders. It's a bit different logic than what I am used. Now I'll just have to think of a theme for my next demo and start planning about the scenes and effects. When? Hopefully at Breakpoint..

What's next?

2009-01-02T10:53:00.000Z

2009 is here. I might find a job really soon. I'd also like to find a mood window (eh? like we say time window or something) to kick ass in the demoscene again :)

One thing is sure though (and will be 100% when I buy the tickets). I am coming to Breakpoint 2009. This makes it half sure that I might bring a demo too. It's already planned, it will be PC accelerated and the theme is already decided. I just have to start. As for my other abandoned projects (CPC demo and anything else) I don't know. Time will tell..

I will update this blog with screenshots of my progress soon.

Unmotivated.

2008-11-27T16:12:00.000Z

It will take a long time since I will become active again. I currently feel a great burden, again that old feeling, wishing to be creative to give a meaning in my life but being too lazy. Sometimes I say how cool it would be to have a lot of free time and not having to go to work but it seems that you get more lazy when you loose your job. I know, you people will tell me to find another one but I don't want yet. You don't have to tell me. I know how it kills me, yet I want to be able for a while to wake up and do nothing. I can't even code demos or anything because I feel I have other responsibilities to fulfill first. I have no motivation for nothing. I keep watching tv series. I wake up at midday. You will tell me that the solution is to shut up and do what it has to be done. I know, but I don't want it so fast. I want to find an alternative. I want to be able to be creative and happy when I don't have to wake up in the morning, where there is no job to keep me on track, I want to somehow be lazy and creative at the same time. Maybe I ask too much, but I won't follow the other choice (of just doing what the rest do and find a job) for a month or so till I find my answers. Which I won't. So I will rest (I never cared about the supposed missing time anyways).

I need to finish 1-2 things in a week though. Scene and real life things. But it's really too hard for me right now..

Progressing..

2008-11-01T21:01:00.000Z

It took me 2+ frustrating weeks to integrate the 2nd part of the CPC demo I am currently working on and one evening to finish a rotozoomer effect for another part. Things are so arbitary when coding. Sometimes you spend a whole week to find a fucking bug and at other times you have such inspiration and clear mind that it all goes well and there is something to see on the screen after few hours of coding. I wish I was such productive (or maybe lucky on code) every day. And I even love the code I wrote today for the rotozoomer, so clean, so nice, with nice tricks (yet not the most optimized thing I can get).

I think that the effects for the intro are ready now, I just need to integrate them together, sync them to the music, do little fades and design details here and there and then I go for the big thing. The main demo. I will build this from scratch, being more careful with memory organization and taking more time on optimizing the effects and fitting all in memory. It will be something like a new step beyond and we are planning (or I hope) to release it till the end of 2008. Most probably it will take longer though because that's how projects come along. Also I am trying to not pushing it hard, enjoying the process and even not be too harsh on release but take the time to make something slightly more designed than my previous CPC demos.

I have a week since I stopped following the project list in the previous post. I also rewarded myself on my CPC effort by throwing a 1d20 dice and donate 15 stars to the inactive projects. It hardly works with 5 or 6 projects running low on stars. I need to mainly focus on one. Though I will keep the app running and try various other schemes. It will depend on my creative mood and which projects I would slightly like to take care for a little while (except from the primary CPC project). I try to keep a good balance in my real life and scene life projects and I am slightly content with the results.

Multiple Project Planner

2008-10-21T15:44:00.000+01:00

And there you can see my current projects, either the ones I have already started working on or those many pending for the future. Some people might say that having so many things to do instead of focusing in only one is what demotivates me and frustrates me. While it partially makes sense, say you are thinking of the various projects you want to start and then worrying about starting with one and leaving the rest you would also like to start, it's not the primary force that kills my will for creativity. I think that even with one project (and there were periods that I was focused in only one) I would still be the same lazy and thus frustrated. There is also an advantage of having multiple project, in that if you get bored of working on one project for a long time you can switch into something different and this can increase your motivation to be creative. In fact I have noticed some points to where I get bored or deny starting to work on anything but that's not with working on multiple projects. Maybe it has to do with daydreaming about multiple projects or it's simply laziness. Still, in the place is the hard decision of which project to start with. That's where this new project planning app and actual experiment seems to be an interesting way to overcome it and motivate me on working on anything. I just need to go on with it for a month to see the results..

Let's talk about this application. First of all I am playing strategically here. From my experience I know that every attempt to "robotize" myself, I mean to make a strict plan and say that at certain hours I will code this and that, simply failed. Even the lighter attempt which sets that I should work for few hours on some project but make my schedule elastic. Well, elasticity is still the way to go (and I use the concept in this app) but it wasn't enough because I would simply deny going to the schedule or forget the whole concept. Also, the idea of either using scheduling software or even coding one was out of the question because I would have to spend a lot of time to learn how to use or make the software while multiple demo projects were running. In fact I used the hard approach here but with a strategic thought. In the past I was thinking about of coding a big application with database, statistics, app uses per hour, etc which I never managed to start of course. But this time I had the rule to find the shortest way to make something, unfinished, very alpha but which can start me up. For example you can't use the app atm. The values are typed inside the C++ IDE and when I want to change those * and @ or set a different status (color) to a project I do it manually. Because it would take a long time to make an interface. The idea was, ok I will do a pointless schedule like app to start helping me with my projects, but what kind of thing can I do in 2-3 days of code? That if I want I will only evolve later, but atm it will do it's job manually from inside the code. Just a project struct, some font rendering and lines, loading static values from the code inside and voila.

And so MPP was born. I can also easilly set sub-MPPs for running project, e.g. if I have a critical project (like a demo I want to finish before a deadline) and I want to make another list of parts of the demo I want to finish and define some time and status for how they are going. I have already done this for our incoming CPC demo. Of course this sub-MPP app is a different DevC++ project with copied files and changed subplans.

Some explanations. The green are active, the red inactive, the grey are OFF atm (and there is some dark orange or brown color for OnHold). When projects are active, they have one @ per day. The yellow mean that work has been done, the dark blue means I was lazy that day. In some inactive projects I wanted to start soon, I have the white stars in the third row. Each day the project is inactive the stars decrease by one. Projects I initially decided to not start soon (e.g. the C64 or GP32 projects, because currently the CPC project is more important) I have put more initial starts. Also if an active project is idle for 3 days it becomes inactive and the stars start decreasing again. If the project is finished I put a white color text and the Working minus the Idle days multiplied by 2 are new stars I can share with other projects.

There is this specific problem, say for some reasons I was idle (it's not only laziness but real life too) and the stars and idle days of various projects are coming down. Or you may not be motivated to work for a project that has reached zero stars. There is an option to exchange stars, e.g. to steal some from an inactive project with many ones and give it to the project you want to avoid at the current time, thus postponing it for the next days. You can also finish a small project to get new stars to share with the rest. Yes, a bit pressing condition watching the counters decreasing like monsters and wondering how you can work with five projects the next day. And I am currently near this situation. It's interesting to see what will happen. What is the entropy? Will the stars decrease faster than I can sustain a balance? Can I cheat by starting inactive projects for a day, being idle with most for less than 3 days and work the other day again? (remember, when active the stars stop to decrease, unless you are idle for 3 days again). Can I cheat with other ways? Do I miss the point which is to actually being motivated to be creative and not chase some counters? (though it's a nice game too that keeps me focused on projects I would forget for months otherwise and a different perspective to be creative too :) Will I have to switch and adapt to different rules that fit my own pace? I believe that the sets of rule will slowly slowly evolve. It's interesting and I will know in less than a month..

Another bet I set to myself is if I can succeed this time. Always, when I started planning a demo and visualized it in my mind it never end like I have wished and I was even frustrated near the end to finish it harsh. Now we have a CPC demo in my mind, one that if this predictable phenomenon doesn't occure this time, it will be something really great that I will be very happy with. It might be the first demo for me that I will be really really satisfied with. And I want to win this bet because it will change how I see things. When you have failed for 10 times, each next time you know that the predictable result will be to fail again. And you get dissapointed so much that you are not motivated even to start. If this doesn't fail this time I will have broken the ice and a lot will have changed with my psychology of how I see myself and demomaking. Each next time I will know that it is possible in once to dream of a good demo and make it a good demo without having to kill it and make a harsh release. Well, I think I said similar things in "A Step Beyond" too, that it was the first time to break that ice (and it was but several things weren't exactly what I wanted and there were only 2-3 effects and no design (for this one I have great plans :)). But I know that the bet seems like putting myself too high, being unrealistic. However a lot of parameters have changed that persuaded me that now is the time to set the same bet again to myself and truly succeed this time.

Recently I have evolved into a being that might easier and without much frustration as in the past finally make his dreams come true. For projects in general I have first of all evolved my psychology of how I view things concerning demomaking, my frustration, my laziness, what motivates me and what demotivates me, what I really ask for and methods I could follow. Even to stay calm in case of bad times. Also, I have experience. I have build some nice frameworks that are not yet finished but evolving. I have learned to play strategically, e.g. coding the things I can finish fast in order to show something, to motivate me and have a start. In top of all is this MPP application which reflects some of my ideas. I have learned to persuade myself to work for 1-2 hours and not go for 8 hours full (except if I am really into it) because I wrongly believe that without hard work a demo can't be done, to work for 1-2 hours slowly slowly, then make something else and have patience. And I still try to evolve my attitude towards how I plan and work on projects and my life too because it's dynamic. I still find times where I loose my patience but I regulate my feeling better now. Other than that, with the CPC demo I have great support from Rex and Voxfreax this time and we really hope to finish something before Xmas. At least I hope but if I don't I will keep the project still for the next year if my schedule gets out of proportion.

All I need is faith and a lot of courage. Patience, good psychology, trying to regulate my feelings even in bad times, understanding of what I am and what I want to do or where my flaws are. As long as I speak about it and don't code I have this feeling. But I'll have to break the ice this time. I have to succeed and well. Step by step..

The hacker, the cracker and the scener

2008-10-17T16:15:00.000+01:00

It seems that my anti-hacker posts will never seize to appear. In fact I am really motivated to get more into it in any way possible :P

I will just make some comparisons now of the average person in three different communities. And two funny analogies too.. (my favorites :)

First, some distinctions have to be made. I will be shortly talking about the hacker, the cracker and the scener. I will define their meaning at least as used in this post. I need to be sure that no misunderstandings will take place because of a different understanding of the same words and that my point will be understood.

The hacker: I know that you don't like the use of this term to describe these electronic pranksters as seen on TV (Neither do I). In this post though I will use it as it is (even without the quotes) and I will mean only the definition as portrayed by the mass media and adapted by our own culture. I will not mean in this post by the word "hacker" the hobbyist programmer, the computer enthousiast or the computer pioneers of the past. Please understand this is just for the purpose of the post and as means to be understood even by the illiterate.

The cracker: Be careful to my definition of this term for the purpose of this post! This is not the term used in hacker ethics to differentiate from the programmer to the electronic prankster. It does not mean the bad hacker or the script kiddie here. It is about the software cracker, the dude who managed to overpass the copy protection of commercial software, makes serial number generators or even makes those nice cracktro screens with gfx/music and sometimes (maybe in the past) option for infitive lives/energy/etc. While piracy is also ethically questionable, in my opinion this guy has not much to do with the hacker as described in the previous paragraph in my opinion.

The scener: Some people say that the demoscene has it's ancestors in the cracking scene (as described in the previous paragraph). Some of the software crackers except from removing the copy protection from the commercial software, also did code some sort of a graphical screen with some music, a logo of the cracking group and a scrolling text with greeting/fuckings to various other crackers and other messages. These are the cracktros accompanied some pirated games which some of you might remember a lot of years ago even though they are not too frequent today. Some of the crackers who liked doing these intros stop their cracking abilities and just released similar cracktros (later called intros or demos (from demonstration)) purely for artistic purposes. When I first got involved in the demoscene I had no idea about the cracking scene. I just liked to code demonstrations of graphic algorithms synced to the music and release them to the public. Demoscene has nothing to do with "illegal" (as in piracy) cracking activities except for the roots (how the cracktros evolved into the scene demos of today).

In a nutshell:

What my terms mean here is:

Hacker: As seen on TV and understood by most. Illegally granting access into computer networks for any reason. It's totally irrelevant with the meaning of the computer enthousiast or the programming pioneer in this post.

Cracker: Nothing to do with the defintion of a black hat hacker or a script kiddie. It is the software cracker who breaks copy protection schemes of commercial software, codes serial key generators and all that stuff having to do with software piracy.

Scener: See for yourself about the demoscene community. They have their roots in the cracktros that crackers coded but their activities are entirely irrelevant.

The hacker is mostly caring about the reach of his goal which is to get access to some server in order to make some supposedly "cool" act as defacing a website, spreading a virus, stealing some private informations or maybe make a political statement. The primary force that drove most of these dudes into hacking could be because it sounded "cool" or maybe they thought romantically that they are heros fighting against the system or anything. They don't really care much about knowledge or programming skills as they just really dream for the time they make a cool "hack" into the pentagon or something. 98% "coolness" / 2% soul in my opinion.

The cracker mostly cares about the challenge of breaking that copy protection scheme, reverse engineering the algorithm behind those serial codes, disassembling commercial software and make few improvements here and there, etc. They get commercial software from suppliers and send cracked versions to the warez dudez who are responsible for spreading the pirated (and cracked) copies. Sometimes they code cracktros attached to the software and run before it starts, to claim how leet they are. The cracker may not care whether software piracy is accepted or not, they are more driven from the challenge of bypassing the protection against piracy and they feel very proud if succeed. Not much code or work is needed to achieve this but they know what a disassembler is and use it regularly for example. Funny thing is that I have met two crackers in the past and they both ignored or even snobbed my demoscene involvement while bragging about their cracking activities. There is a feeling of leetness in this scene but at least it's not about pranks on the internet and those dudes know a bit about programming and love the challenge. 70% coolness / 30% work (always in my opinion).

The scener in his first days had watched some demos done from older scene veterans and for some reasons he really liked the graphics algorithms, music and programming effort went into it. He actually liked the demos alone for their feeling and creativity and thought he'd really like to learn how to create something like that. He is in a great need for being creative with his computer and show that he can do something cool rather than spend time gaming, chatting or watching porn. It's hard at the beginning, needs a lot of effort to learn good programming, optimizations, mathematics, graphics algorithms or even how to choose the proper colors for his demo, it's even hard to organize this one with other sceners who are willing to paint computer graphics or write some music for you and put all things together in a nice presentation. Ripping a demo and presenting it as yours is more than lame in the scene because the whole purpose of what we are doing is to work hard and create a pleasing realtime demonstration of graphics algorithms, art and sound, the creative road taken is the soul of demomaking (entirely opposite from hacking, where someone can even succeed sometimes doing a "lucky" hack in a website and brag about it strongly). Of course there is a bit of a feeling of leetness in the scene too, we use cool sounding nicks and group names and argue with each other too, as in cracking and hacking, something that happens in a lesser or greater degree in every other community now I am thinking it. But the greatest motivation to join was initially to create something like the first demos we have seen and loved, no matter if some of us needed that for curing their low self-esteem too. (I am talking about myself here :)) 20% coolness / 80% creativity.

And now my favorites!

A scener is someone who walks several miles to reach his destination although he enjoys the walk. A lot of obstacles and problems are to be passed on his way. There is a great prize at the end for the good effort.

The cracker needs to jump over a protective electric fence to get to the other side. There is a ramp there at the right position and he finds a broken motorcycle. With his tools he manages to fix it and jump on the other side. He finds the switch to turn off the electric fence and cuts an opening in the fence with his tools for others to get through.

The hacker enters into the back of the car of a careless driver who stops to take a piss. The driver gets back and drives to his home. The hacker gets out, gets into the driver's house without to be seen and starts writing messages with spray over the wall. Sometimes he leaves the place, sometimes he breaks some furniture or beat the crap out of the driver too. And at the end he brags about it, thinks he is a hero and even some people congratulate him for his acts because they have heard it's to be respected.

Another one. What if sometimes even sceners or crackers seem to be engaged into hacker's activities? Why would that happen in any of these cases?

The scener is a scientist who except from his primary expertise also happens to be engaged into lock picking as a hobby because it's a tricky thing to do(like Feynmann for example). At best he finds a safe target just to experiment, not someone else's house.

The cracker is into lock picking sometimes. It's a similar technical challenge as his primary cracking activities and gives him back some more of the leetness that makes him feel special. He tries lockpicking and maybe breaks into some house. He maybe steals some food to eat or supply to other people who need it.

The hacker most of the times cannot even bother to lockpick but slams the door with a kick and gets inside. He either writes some messages with spray upon the walls or furniture with texts that mock the owner, sometimes he may steal some money or only in rare situations breaks everything apart or kills the owners. In the end he things he is a great respected scientist, a brilliant mind or a hero of the revolution because lockpicking is what Feynmann is into also. Most of the people think that these dudes are like robin hood and praise them. When you have a different opinion they blame you of being ignorant or working for something they call "the system".

I said things as raw as I could. Trying to be as exhibitive as possible. And you have seen nothing yet..

Now, to the people who still think I shouldn't be using the term "hacker" to describe what I am talking about in this post I have to say this. Nobody is using or understands the distinction term "cracker". (with which definition I also disagree because there is another scene of software crackers that have almost nothing to do with the new hacker definition (in either color of hats)) It doesn't show the real problem here. We, computer enthousiasts and hardcore programmers are not called hackers anymore. Our image to the average person is of geeks rather than revolutionary heros as seen on TV. And the new definition is deeply into our culture and only confuses things if we try to both keep the old and new definitions or even try to put different titles, not understanding at the end which activities we praise or blame given the words used.

If for example I started by saying that hacker is defined as a programming pioneer of the past that is bound to be respected and then tried to either use the same or even a distinction term (like your bad hacker "cracker") to describe it, people would still click to the well known cool sounding of the word "hacker" and further attribute the good things of the old definition you describe with their liking of the new definition everybody understands. What we would have here as a result is people thinking that illegally attacking or taking access into computer networks is to be respected and it's called "hacking" and it's done by computer gods and think that your distinction talks about the difference between good and evil hackers who both invade into computer networks but for different reasons. This is why I insisted only on the new term definition, because this is what people think either ways and I really wanted to make it clear to them that this one is not romantic or heroic but purely lame.

I thought about the term "neohacker". If you speak to people that people who invade computer networks are called "crackers" (or anything else not using the synthetic word "hacker") they will not understand. Nobody calls anyone cracker outside the world to mean anything like that. It's not deep into their culture as the romantic or heroic sounding word "hacker". And you will confuse the things more. I thought that "neohacker" still having the synthetic "hacker" into it would drag people's attention but make the distinction nicely. "Neo" refers to the new definition of the later generations. "Hacker" with the quotes wouldn't make it because if not written it sounds the same. But "neohacker" would still drag attention and yet not being forgotten as "cracker" and also can easilly make the distinction.

In fact neither "neohacker" would do it because those electronic pranksters and wannabe rebellions would still think they are called hackers and that only the bad sides of their activity is called neohacking. Where they would still think that defacing a website is on the good or accepted side (since it doesn't "destroy" anything, hell yet in my opinion it kills a lot of the precious time of people behind the website or the admins, frustrates people and is simply childish :P). But I will use the term more frequently in the future. Not much that can be done when something enters our culture and stays. But we can forget these terms for a while and just concentrate on criticizing these not really to be respected activities. If only meanings wouldn't be distorted because of the words used..

Teapot mess 2

2008-09-17T19:53:00.000+01:00

Here it is and my gouraud shading is not working well yet. Strange that I start from scratch and there I am back at the beginning. There are a lot to be done and I am still messing with 1993 alike treedees ;P

I did more than you can see in the screenshot. And there is still more to be done. Will it ever be a righteous 3d engine?

Teapot mess

2008-09-15T20:24:00.000+01:00

Just an ugly test. Some polygon pushing test. To do some speed checks.

I am rewritting my software 3d engine from. Currently I am working on the PC version but there will be ports for GP32, GP2X and GBA too. I have totally rewritten the triangle rendering and setup code, quite different than the old crappy renderer, seems twice faster on PC (I am wondering how well it does in gameparks) and it's organized so that it helps me write various shaders in the future. However there is no clipping, it's buggy with the interpolation, needs subpixel accuracy and a lot of other stuff. Various old data structures are rethought and rewritten, new are added that will help me to easilly define worlds with sets of objects, materials, cameras, etc. Half of the stuff are written and there are a lot to be fixed.

I hope I will finish with it oneday because as it seems, it needs much more work than I originally thought. I am not so much thinking how to optimize (except the triangle renderer), but more dwelling into how to organize the data structures, the functions, the whole logic in the best way possible so that it's easier for me to show stuff with this engine easilly. And everyday I discover a logic that I would prefer from what I have now. And then change my mind. And it's still a bit confusing. And the renderer is buggy and needs a lot of code :P

Maybe I will return back to CPC soon. I totally stopped working on our demo since I started with the PC engine but I needed this as a change. Now I need the CPC as a change :P

CPC nostalgy 2

2008-08-30T16:45:00.000+01:00

I wonder why I named my first entry cpc nostalgy and not something like CPC ribbons alike or CPC curves or new CPC code or something? So this will be number 2 but the title might not be oh well..

I will just post another screenshot here and maybe take a long time till I post another preview. It would spoil the thrill of the demo if I was about posting preview shots all the time.

This one is my attempt to try something like antialiasing (or WU pixels Mode 0 where only DY counts for one up and one down pixel, but DX takes no part in the filter). It looks ugly at some places but I still wouldn't think I would make something like antialiasing so easilly on the CPC. It's just the fractional part of Y and some look up table (or not even that but you get the example). Oh,. and forget the bad thing with the lines stopping after some X in some parts. It's not a bug, just some rendering going looping and out of vram but not checking..

Maybe oneday I will leave CPC and also try making that OpenGL framework I was talking about. Mmm,. I wish I could make both at the same time :P

CPC nostalgy

2008-08-24T21:52:00.000+01:00

What I was doing these days was, coding the CPC, playing some old CPC games, drinking tequila, more coding, more tequila, dreaming of CPC, coding the CPC, playing some old games and coding the CPC.

It was good. I am working on a demo but I really wish to code a game next time. For some reasons I am really obsessed, really dreaming of coding some games for the CPC. I won't be thinking of the state of the art all the time, at least the first 2-3 titles will be simple stuff focused on gameplay and decent speed. I mean, I will prefer to have small sprites and no tens of tricks and big sprites and the controls to work well and smooth. Maybe I'll have some cpu time to add some nice mode 1 rasters or something. Anyways,. I have two simple games in my mind as first developing plans.

Whatever, what I coded was not exactly a new effect (what I have now is the mathematics for drawing curves) but something I will be using with various ways, the main routine of the demo. The screenshot is an ugly representation that it just works (almost). But the most important code was some functions that help me to build new objects with data structures, providing things like adding new objects in an array, iterating through each object, taking care of memory or the max limit of objects, etc. Things that make coding much easier. I couldn't believe that I would create something that tries to look like C/C++.

Well, not exactly. There are a lot of things to be done (maybe some real memory allocation functions which split the memory in 256b blocks and a table to tell me which are reserved and which not, maybe more). But it just happened. As I code, I ask myself how some things would be written nicer, more organized or more practical for further use. And I just come into this. It's great, it will make game developing on CPC in the future much more nicer, but now I will continue with the demo and maybe leave that part and concentrate more on the effects.

But it's nice that I am building such a system. I'd really like to see how this makes life easier in game and demo development. Of course if I had to write, e.g. a dot record, I wouldn't make a call for the next object in the array list for each dot. But I would rather write an ugly unrolled code specifically for the effect. But for more general stuff that don't need much speed, this is great!

Till next week I will try to make the curves look nicer (maybe with something like WU pixels from a precalculated table) and maybe I'll need to start messing around with CRTC hardware for this demo. It's getting harder and more challenging. I am hoping to finish the demo in maybe 3 months, because I'll be coding for other things soon too, but most probably it will take some more time. At least I am coding. And happily! :)

Love the scene..

2008-08-14T18:41:00.000+01:00

..it was reviving. To finish a demo that doesn't suck too much (a 64k intro actually :P) and present it at a demoparty with lot's of people.

I have more than a year since I last finished a good demowork. The same long time applies since I last visited a demoparty. Yep, somewhere between the army period, a mediocre slow and ugly demo for GP2X, still with new effects I enjoyed coding, and two nicer GP32/GP2X in August 2006 a month before visiting the greek army. Two years of some kind of inactivity, two years that many things have changed (finished studies, army, got a job, etc.). I have done more things that I feel like during this period.

I am enthusiastic for the scene again. It's not just an aftereffect from visiting Euskal. It's not just because I was there in the prize ceremony with four thousand people around me, getting some kind of scene medal and praise. Maybe it's these factors too. But I think I am changing. The demoscene is not a reason for my sometimes unbalanced mental condition. I think I am able manage to regulate my emotions more now. There might be more times in the future where I hit the blues, I know, but I am able to struggle for a bit, accept it and then revive back. The demoscene is good, it is creative, I even persuaded myself that it's better at the end to code something (even if a random thing) for 1-2 hours than play games for the rest of the day. Of course when I want to relax I can leave myself take some day off from my hobby, but moderation works better and I try to remember that it's worth it. Demomaking is worth it. Slowly coding sometimes because of the job but worth it.

So, I am back!

I already have in mind what I will be coding next. There is a lot of unfinished code and a lot of projects and ideas. Currently I should be starting my new CPC demo and hopefully here I have support from two over enthusiastic and active greek sceners at the time. I shouldn't miss this! Unfortunately more dedication is really needed to write assembly for an old platform especially now I might work for 2-3 hours at times. Opening a C compiler for few hours in the evening to write a new effect for fun or experiment with unreleased sources is possible and might give me feedback on the screen easily. Assembly, especially on an old 8bit, might not give me any feedback that evening and I may feel that my evening was spent without getting something. I am slow with it and spend time figuring out how the hell the videoram or char memory works and why I see black or everything crashes (the last time I tried to code something on C64, I had to read docs again just to remember how the complex screen or char ram works). So it's really hard but I do think possibly for the CPC demo with these dudes. I wish I can also find an opportunity window to start writting my first good C64 demo. Not something extreme, just few midschool pixel effects to show that I can do it.

CPC and C64. Assembly. CPC maybe soon, C64 maybe later. Both need a lot of dedication for several hours per day, not few evening hours after the job. C projects work better for the latter.

So, about C projects. I think it's time to get into 3d acceleration again. Some people argue that I am choosing the wrong hardware for software rendering, I am also thinking that maybe I could create some neat things in OpenGL and pixel shaders. I should try! I am already planning to start coding a new demo framework with just the basic things (hopefully also a demo scripting engine to make my life easy). Lately I am more into coding little frameworks and organizing my code snippets into bigger things and I even really enjoy it. In the past, each new demo was a unique ugly code just for the demo. Now I am more organized and I am trying to do it this way so that it will help me in the future. The big thing is OpenGL framework now. I will be just evolving my latest framework and 3d engine from the software rendering world into the new accelerated one. Each time I write a new demo I notice some things I could be doing different. I want to give time to myself. Maybe I'll release something small in between (4k/64k?), maybe not, but for the big OpenGL demo I am planning for Breakpoint the next year. I might be visiting. 8 months. A lot of time..

And then there are various C projects lying around. My evolving framework, more organized software 3d engine I just checked now after several months, little coding for gamepark (GP32/GP2X) or nintendo devices (NDS/GBA). More little projects that stand around or will come in my mind. Unfinished X86 asm tiny intro. A lame abandoned attempt to code a X86 emulator in C. Some little game experiment. Maybe flash. Little fun with DBF interactive competitions. Maybe I start with 68000 AtariST. 386 demo. Quickbasic code. Evolving my just started engines (raycaster, raytracer, voxel). Lot's of ideas I have in mind. The small stuff that come and go. You'd be telling me that I should concentrate on one or two things. But I am doing so. I have one or two plans in mind (CPC demo maybe soon or maybe not, OpenGL framework and demo till Breakpoint) that I will primarily focus on, and the new prescription that seems to work = when I hopelessly procrastinate with the primary goals, switch to coding for any of these small ideas you currently have in mind and wish to code at the time for fun. It works because it makes me happy and maybe motivates me to work tomorrow. Instead of procrastinating with games, procrastinate with smaller projects you find more fun than deadlines, and at least you have plenty of random code left in your HD that you might find handy in the future. And being content with still being creative even if not working for the primary goals!

I love the scene. I even love code even if it is a bastard sometimes :)

p.s. And till the next crush, I think I can handle it...

Ready to ship!

2008-07-24T08:08:00.000+01:00

See you at Euskal!

Tiny code marathon

2008-07-22T08:28:00.000+01:00

It's easier to motivate myself to sit down and code hard for 3 days before the deadline than doing it for a month. At least I had in mind that with little effort something could go for the big screen at Euskal. Instead of coding something entirely new, I threw my old effects on a plane of voxels (aka heightmap). There was no time and the plan was nice because some effects look neat on this setup, the music is sweet and the colors are ...err (but there is nice morphing/transition of colors and heightmap from one part to the next). It's done in a haste but it's better than I thought for 3 days of work. Now, if I only can port it on tinyptc and make use of minifmod, this can be easilly crunch to be presented as a 64k intro rather than a demo. I will probably try this today. But whatever happens I have at least a demo ready for the big screen and I am quite happy about it!

I'd only wish I could take the time to build a true framework for demos instead of meshing around with unorganized code. Something to make life easier when scripting sequences of demoparts and syncing to the music. Well, I already try to improve my demo framework(s) slowly slowly but there is more to be done still.

Long time have passed since my last code marathon. This one has lasted for 9 hours.

Failed coding - vacations

2008-07-18T08:09:00.000+01:00

I haven't written a line since the last post. But it doesn't matter much or I try to not care really (still trying to regulate my feelings). Afteralls the reason was not procrastination but social occasions. I had gone to the beach with some friends the last weekend and it's gonna happen again. It's good. Just no time to finish a project. Then four days but half of these days I am gonna be meeting friends. Maybe I'll try to do something today in the evening. But what?

I abandoned the GP32 demo. For the moment. No time for Euskal deadline. But today I was thinking of maybe doing something else, something smaller with old resources in a tinyptc old framework with tinyfmod maybe. Going for 64k? If it gets larger I will just release it as a demo at Euskal. Of course the bigger possibility is that I am not making it. Then I'll just enjoy the party and my holidays in Spain and forget democoding for a while. Maybe I'll go back to my CPC projects again.

I know, jumping from one project to another. But I try to be happy that I am sometimes active and not care about release much. Afteralls I am not doing this 8 hours per day anymore..

More boring news

2008-07-08T07:03:00.000+01:00

It's going well. All this with regulating my emotion and coding for a little while. Slowly but working. Better slowly without big expections and seeking for the fun of it than getting anxious and frustrated.

The NDS democoding is postponed. I lend it to a friend so that he can play the new Super Mario :)

Afteralls I need more time to get used to it. I also need to make a port/simulation of some basic functions and vram addresses on the PC so that I can debug the demo effects there without needing to pass the code through the microSD every time I compile a change but test my demo only after several changes that happen to work on the PC port simulating the NDS lib functions that are used. I tried the similar technique with my first GP32 demo and now I code again for the GP32, I used the same framework.

It's funny how there are some programms which could help me so greatly if I knew them before. And in the past I would be all about whining "I don't need any additional programms to help me coding, it's a waste, I have to spend more time learning the actual programm". In my job we use several apps for code management and while there is no team working on my demos, one particular program was exactly useful for what I was doing back there with GP32. Yesterday I tested Araxis Merge for my old GP32/PC framework in my new demoproject. It worked like a bliss!!! You know,. some changes are C code and algorithms, but some others might be in source files that bare little difference between the GP32 and PC version. And in the past when I couldn't remember the changes I'd copy the PC source file onto the GP32 one and get few errors. But now I can check with Araxis the differences one by one and do my work greatly and fast! Who would believe that code management tools would help me in a demoproject? If I knew this years ago maybe my work on Led Blur would be much much easier..

Other news? I am also working on a X86 intro. Slowly. I had some idea, I wrote half of the code and the other half needs some careful thought. If it works it will be cool. But maybe I am even releasing this after I finish with the GP32 if not between, because GP32 is the priority now.

Current news

2008-07-04T23:26:00.000+01:00

I code again (enough with the K(ode) meme :P). I said that before. Perhaps tomorrow I won't code. But I don't care since I am trying to change the mood. I didn't planned for this change but it involves a lot of experimental coding or trying out things, no strict deadlines, thinking of fun, even trying to code something for half an hour if I feel bored and tired and then I can relax if it doesn't grab me into. And regulating my feelings about all these. I didn't plan it. When I plan something I never fulfill my initial wish. It came after my frustration, maybe something was planted in my neural cells and it's just happened. Even if I code very few hours but at least I code something just for the occasion instead of being inactive for a month and crying about it. My neural cells change and see it's a bit worth it. And I really need some proper stimulus like being focused into something creative as code, in order to forget my existential thoughts for a little bit. So I am coding. Again.

What I am currently doing. Trying to code in parallel, either for GP32 or NDS. I was planning to do a demo for each. The NDS demo was planned since a long. I was thinking to finish something for Assembly but my plans changed and I am not gonna visit Assembly this year. Not that I am not going to continue coding a NDS demo too. Although I will be at Euskal demoparty and will probably bring something.

With both demo plans, I haven't even started. I've just ported my new demo framework from PC/SDL into both, almost finished with making the music player to work and maybe I'll start tomorrow. I'll probably be too late for Euskal but the GP32 demo would be much easier to finish while I have more idea on the NDS and I need to know the screen modes more so it needs work. But I don't bother with this thought, even if I miss the deadline I'll have a half demo. And I'll try to enjoy the process rather than the goal.

Generally I love to work in the GP32 more. Ok,. the screen mode is vertical, there is a sound bug, but there is something I also like in this machine. Maybe it's also more challenging than GP2X (and doesn't eat my batteries so fast :P). I really love the GP32, even more than the Pandora when it comes =)

Terraforming...

2008-07-01T18:27:00.000+01:00

I have decided to walk through madness to koding. Koding is the kure. The kure for my madness. And now this blog will transform from mindless crap to anything related to kode. Small things I am doing, koding news, koding thoughts, demo thoughts, plans, projects, wishes about koding, philosophy of koding, dreams of koding, etc, etc, etc...

Yey!!! I sort of finding my way in kode with a bit of regulation of my feelings about koding, the scene, the "real" life and kode. It works... in a way!

Afteralls, life does not have a meaning but programming has logic.

This is a koding blog from now on (till I flip out!)

"Hackers" and words

2007-07-17T21:22:00.000+01:00

What comes into your mind when you hear the word "hacker"?

Even if you don't like the new definition of the term, isn't it what still comes into your mind? Isn't that what you are expected to understand when most other people use it and expect to be meaning when you use it in your everyday life?

Once upon a time there were some people who called themselves hackers because they either enjoyed computer programming or being really good at finding unconventional solutions to algorithm problems and add here every old good definition you may think of. Even before that, you didn't even need to sit in front of a computer to be considered a hacker. Hacking was the true spirit of playfulness, cleverness, creativity, invention and exploration regardless the kind of the activity. You might get it by also reading this article.

Nowadays, it seems that any computer activity that has enough coolness factor is capable of acquiring the "hacking" title. And usually what feels like "cool" to most of the people has something to do with criminality, destruction, arrogance, rebellism, etc. As a result, your modern hacker has to especially be a network security breaker but sometimes (for some people) also a software piracy cracker, maybe a virus writer or anyone else who engages into similar activities I haven't mentioned here. The motives and ethics don't make any difference for my definition here. Whether it's a script kiddie, some 1337 d00d, a network spy or anyone who thinks that he is fighting some sort of system by defacing websites, they are all activities bearing the same big ammount of "coolness" and actually controversy. And hacking is the act of performing those "cool" things. And there is a scene specializing into computer network security breaking which calls itself the "hacking scene".

When you hear the word "hacker", the thing I've just described in the previous paragraph would come in your mind first.

Even if you prefer the old definition what do you understand when someone comes and tells you "Do you know how to perform hacking?". Axing a furniture? Showing some programming tricks? Nope. The guy awaits that you break into some computer network and hopefully even replace a webpage with some sick prank telling jokes about the administrator's incompetence.

And even if you try to preserve the old definition, how would you describe to your boss in few words that some intruder broke the network security on your computer at work? Wouldn't that be something like "Shit!!! Someone hacked on my computer..".

The new definition is a part of our modern culture.

I have to admit that I wenr through some kind of fixation with the whole hacker definition controversy since a long. And someone would wonder why do I care? Pioneers of the early computer history who use to call themselves hackers because of their cleverness and technical expertise WOULD have to care because people would misunderstand them thinking they are "computer criminals" or something. These people breathed the spirit in hacking and it could be quite annoying to observe the history changing when the narrow definition were popularized through mass media in the eighties. I was only 3 years old when the deviation begun and only in the late eighties I bought my first computer. By then already, I would have only known and heared the late definition. So, since I never went through both channels of history, why am I still obsessed about it?

Because I had the sense that something is terribly wrong here. And I didn't need to know that there was an original definition of "hacking" to understand that then. Reading the history of the true hacking pioneers that had absolutely nothing to do with security breaking activities and how the whole confusion arised, was only a nice piece of information to clear up some things in my mind at that time. But there was something else bothering me. The thing was how could someone ever feel respect about the so called hacking scene with the modern definition of "hacking" at mind.

I could actually never get it. What would be so "cool" and "respectful" about breaking into computer networks with the main focus to vandalize a website, talking with leet language, saying naughty things about the administrator's mother and thinking it's all done for the sole purpose of fighting some sort of system or showing your friends how leet you are. Why producing such chaos and stupidity over the internet? What was so.. so.... respectful about that? Why was everyone talking about "hackers" and adoring them so much? Why would I ever have to feel respect about these acts???

The power of language.

The answer in a small sentence. And the fact which annoyed me (especially when I've learned more behind the term "hacker")

The breaking into computer networks and vandalizing webpages activity formed a community. It has it's own history. They called themselves "hackers" because in the early eighties the mass media decided for some reason to use the term to describe only a narrow side of the whole meaning of hacking, this of "illegal computer activities". Some youngsters were attracted by the new image of the "hacker" and used the term for their computer security breaking activities. A whole new culture was born. Having nothing to do with the old definition and history of it. BUT..

..they acquired the old respect and awe of the old definition. Just by using the same word for naming theirselves and their activities.

A nice analogy would be that of anarchy. I don't know much and haven't read anything about it but I think it came into a theoritical state at first. Some people wished to be individuals, not following the mass or depend on religion or authority or whatever is the meaning of anarchism is anyways (as I haven't read much to know). What comes into your mind when you hear the word "anarchy" however? Maybe that every sicko can decide when it's time to stand up and break stores and burn cars in the city to enrage in a fight without any true reason? That's what I think. Even though it might not be what I think about anarchy, I simply can't feel any respect and tolerate such actions whether these people are called "anarchists" or whatever.

That's what I felt about the so called "hacking" scene and the "hackers" as we all know them from the movies. Can you see the analogy? I didn't cared if anyone baring the label "hacker" was supposed to be ultimately respected. It felt so blatantly wrong to feel respect about someone who brings chaos on the net for no true reason. But everyone was talking about how great these bunch of people were and how they were fighting about ideals and stuff. Was I blind? No. It was the history of the true hacking pioneers, misused by the new definition, adding a fraction of coolness and rebellist destruction that everyone seems to adore..

It was dissapointing to argue about that in the past. And since I wasn't yet aware of the different meanings of the term, I meaned different things for some with the use of it. Someone even accused me that it was me who helped raising up the confusion and supporting the false image of the mass media about hacking. When I said "I don't like what the so called hackers do here. No respect about breaking into security networks to do their dirty works. How can someone adore that mess?" they understood "I don't like the activities of those computer enthousiasts experimenting with things and acquiring knowledge. What they do is illegal!". Obviously it's just words and how everyone understands them. Now see the deviation in understanding words brought.

Whoever controls language, controls the future.

Words can do more. They can create a new culture. A whole new generation might grow up with the feelings they afford. They are stuck in our heads. They change the way we see the world forever. Even if words are just identifications of what is really there, removing the word would be like forcing a whole generation to remove their feelings about the thing that is.

Two little stories..

In a little country just above Greece, some people decided to call themselves Macedonians. Though, Macedonia is a greek region of land known from ancient history. Long before their version of history. Of course, this brought up several reactions and only greeks still disagree with the name and use something like FYROM or Skopje or whatever. Once upon I was in contact with some fellow scener from that little country and decided to ask his opinion about this matter. His answer was rather interesting but what he insisted on, is that Macedonia was the name of their region of land since a long and even older people than him had been living with that in mind. How nice would it be if someone suddenly disagreed with that and forced you to remove the name and thus the feeling and definition you have been raised with?

Instanbul was once the capital of the Byzantine Empire. It was called Constantinopole before it was captured. Since I was never been raised in the city, my early life and feeling never connected with either the old or the new name of the city and so I couldn't care less. There are two greek soccer teams named AEK and PAOK. K stands for Constantinopole really (Ok,. in greek it's K not C). I only laughed out loud by some request from Turkey to change them to AEI and PAOI. Who would dare to force me undo from my memory the way the greek soccer teams sound since the first time I ever watched a football match?

I am not going to judge whose side of story is right or not here. The most important thing is how the sounding, feeling and definition of certain words remain in our subconscious forever. Imagine being born among them. Imagine them having an important meaning in your life. Imagine someone trying to remove them or their definition from your mind.

Now imagine someone who was born in the nineties. For some reasons he was amazed by the new so called "hacking" community. For other reasons, he didn't felt that something is very wrong here as me, but thought it was cool to be called a "hacker" and take part in "hacking" activities. It was a way of life for him, to make pranks, deface websites and think how cool he is. He needed self-respect, admirance, to feel that he is doing something unique and different, maybe escape from (or fight) reality. It had an impact on him, the way the mass media portrayed it had an impact on him. And calling himself a "hacker" was everything! Manifests, hacker ethics, hacktivism, a whole new culture that formed his personality.

Imagine me arguing with him that this shouldn't be called hacking.

Now imagine the early pioneers of computer history, grown up with the definition and spirit of the word hacking, not as a specialized community but as a diferrent way of thinking, experimenting, inventing, problem solving, analyzing, learning, enjoying their activities. And imagine the time when everything went to hell. When someone for some or no apparent reason posted something or released a film on TV that created mass hysteria and popularized the network breaking security trend. And then several youngsters, not aware of the old history of true hacking, used the term as it was first presented on TV in their own new fashion, new culture. Calling themselves "hackers". Imagine how pissed the pioneers would feel about this confusion. Being unable to do anything to change it.

Those are the two sides of the story. Would you force anyone to change their definition? The one that was grown up in their mind and feelings since youth?

It's a dileema. And with this one I've decided to quit. I can't insist on that anymore. The "hacking" scene with the new definition exists. It has it's own history, ethics, culture, community no matter if I find their acts controversial. In fact I cared more about the later rather than the name itself. The name just added into the confusion. And I respect the old true hackers with their one unfortunatelly lost definition. They still are true hackers.

Whatever the name for anything is, there is true spirit in hacking and true controversy in "hacking". One word for two different worlds.

It will take so long since I'll get fixated with the same matter again. I feel like this article says everything I wanted to say in a way I like.

p.s. Strangely enough, after searching for similar terms in wikipedia, I encounter one splitting hacking in 3 parts. The breaking security hacking (new version), academic hacking (old pioneers of computer history) and hobbyist hacking (younger computer enthousiasts). I am happy to see the demoscene community mentioned in the last one :)

My beloved 386 and the fire effect :P

2007-06-04T10:54:00.000+01:00

Yey!

My newschool desktop PC motherboard is severely sick. Searching in my old junk for the possibility to find at least a Pentium 2 or better motherboard&CPU so that I can continue working on modern compilers, I stumbled upon my old 386. It still has a Gravis Ultra Sound in it! I watched some demos. I even reconsidered my old dream, to optimize some effects and maybe code an oldschool 386 demo. I guess, I'll just have it there and during my free time I'll give it a go.

I even have some old code of a fire routine there in the HD. Done years ago when I first wanted to teach myself X86 assembly. The old code was predictable,. and slow. My friend Antitec helped me optimize it in an old Pentium in the gas station where he was once working. It was fun! A bit later (still years ago) I tried a neat trick I thought which is simply to do the blur algorithm with 32 bit registers, 4 pixels at once. I suppose that the pixel gradient goes from 0 to 63 and so I can safely read a 32bit from memory and add three more of them without overflowing to the left, shift them by two on the right for the division by four and then AND the 32bit register with 0x3F3F3F3F so that I zero the overflow on the right. 4 pixels at once!

; out of inner loop
MOV AX, Blurbuffer
MOV DS, AX
MOV ES, AX
MOV EBX,0x3F3F3F3F

; inner loop
MOV EAX,[DI-1]
ADD EAX,[DI+1]
ADD EAX,[DI-320]
ADD EAX,[DI+320]
SHR EAX,2
AND EAX,EBX
STOSD
; Unroll inner loop for 80 times (one scanline)

It does the work for 4 pixels at once and still looks like a per pixel blur! It actually works well!!! (Originally, I thought it would just produce junk or blocky pixels and would be hard to maintain). This way in my 386DX40 with a Tseng Labs ET4000 able to display 320*200*8bpp at 85fps, I got this fire somewhere to 35fps (exactly two frames, I haven't implemented a timer yet to now exactly, rather than the lousy raster CPU meter).

Taking in advance the data alignment, I tried to both experiment with code alignment (doesn't gain too much) and data alignment. Normally, it would be great if the DI-1 and DI+1 would be DI-4 and DI+4 in the code above because it really gains some speed, but this produces a little garbage near the pixels. I tried other variations and keeping only one with -4 or +4 and the other as it was original, worked a bit better in how it looks with just changing the direction of the fire a bit. My last one must be DI-1, DI, DI+4 and DI+320 and the fire goes upwards and maybe a bit to the right iirc.

Anyways, that's not the matter. I have another good idea to try. To have another buffer in memory that describes the condition of pixel blocks. Let's say for blocks of 8*8 or 16*16 pixels. When I'll be having some bobs moving on the screen, a flame or a burning wireframe cube for example, not every region of the screen has to be blurred. While writting a bob or line in the blobbuffer, I could also make two shifts on the coordinates of the pixel I am writting to know where in the gridbuffer it is located, then I will write a non zero number there. To indicate that in which block of the blobbuffer something has been recently written. Only the blobbuffer blocks whose grid number is currently not zero will be processed for either blurring and writting to the vram. And at each frame, I will decrease the value of every element in the gridbuffer. So, if a pixel of the bob was there in that buffer, it will set a defined number (let's say 16), and we suppose that if it doesn't return to that block, decreasing each time the number, after 16 frames that aera will be totally blurred and be black again. It's hard to explain and maybe it produces some artifacts (except if I put a bigger define than 16) and also you'd say is slower (but if I write few nicely blurred bobs or the few line pixels of the wireframe cube, for very few pixels I'd also have to write something on the grid buffer, maybe gaining more than wasting) but maybe this way I expect to achieve full frame rate (70fps) for this. Maybe I could just show a fire cube in a smaller screen area but I want something moving all over the screen and looking like a fullscreen blur (but not necessary updating and blurring the same screen blocks all the time :)

Other than that, I was thinking of some other assembly optimization ideas or parts where I can improve things, but they won't gain me much speed more than a good trick ;)

I also tried this 32bit at once trick on other effects were possible. Like a software per pixel plasma to get a bit more than full frame rate, even though a bit less if I have to make the plasma looking a bit better or more complex. But it works for the moment, I'll just have to fix that or use some ModeX tricks and go for a fake translucent one!

Maybe the next thing I'd like to code is a 3d starfield or a rotozoomer. And a precalculated spherical mapping too. Always wishing to make them as fast as possible.

But I am dreaming of my first oldschool PC demo (I am wondering why isn't there an oldschool PC coding scene as there is a C64 or CPC scene). I will use the GUS. Found some players out there. For the little 386, I need not to loose speed on some lousy Sound Blaster player. First time I have seen Second Reality running so well on a 386 and that's because of my good VGA card and the GUS gaining a lot of speed in that. I'll prefer to use GUS for an old PC that needs some power and SB for my 486.

Maybe it doesn't make any sense to you out there, but I simply love doing this. Optimizing oldschool PCs was an old dream of mine that I only recently had the chance to fulfill. A waste of time? One day I'd like to write an essay called "The meaning of useless." =)

More about "hackers" versus the true hackers.

2006-11-20T20:06:00.000Z

An english article this time. Most possibly, it will contain similar thoughts to my greek article about the stupid trend of "hacking", but in fewer words..

Another article I've found, that contains my confused thoughts on "hacking", presented in a much nicer, brief and entertaining way is: On hacking by Richard Stalman.

Some thoughts here. First of all, I am really curious to search back for the first time when the term was coined up and find out precisely at which points in history did the confusion/deviation from the original meaning occured. I need more evidence in historic reference and elements that show off changes in attitude/meaning of hacking through each era. I am more interested into researching that part in detail..

And yet another way to explain what I feel about the "hacking" matter:

When I started getting into coding, I was astonished by the demoscene community and the wild coding tricks that were required in order to present smooth and complex realtime graphic algorithms in my old 486. It was the time in my youth when I made a dream. That was to become a great programmer and imagine the most wild tricks to further optimize demo effects in oldschool machines! To impress with my code! To show to people that nothing is impossible really! Such stuff still astonish me and I find a great interest into thinking a new possible wild trick for optimizing parts of my algorithms. I've mostly felt this while coding assembly for my Amstrad CPC demo effects and I have several schemes of wild ideas on paper that are yet to be written in a working piece of code. I can't explain the astonishment of achieving something impossible, breaking off the limits, writting some clever unpredictable code that does things the machine was not supposed to do. It happens in the demoscene (Some say it mostly happened in the past but not much anymore with modern powerful hardware where you don't need to optimize much, but that's another story) and it totally amazes me how ingenious some of the coding tricks are! There is a hacker value in the demoscene, in the true sense of the term.

In Richard's book, hackers do not only exist in computers. Hacking doesn't have to do with a specific field, it's just a special way of thinking, analyzing, experimenting, doing something unpredictable, something that your tools were not supposed to do and enjoying the whole process/trick/cleverness of it. In my book I totally agree with that and I also want to say once again (even if Richard already pointed that out) that "hacking" as we know it today is a very strict definition that even isn't very close to the true meaning of it. At least the reason why it's so popular and why most people want to get into "hacking" is because of it's coolness, not because there is any true hacking spirit in it.

The coolness factor is the key in "hacking".

Sometimes I wonder why the demoscene doesn't get the fame it deserves. It lacks that special factor: COOLNESS.

As long as I started getting into democoding, being totally motivated by the technicall stuff and cleverness behind demos, "hacking" never touched my heart. People around me found out that I like programming and maybe I am good enough at it, and the first things they asked me after I have let them watch my demoworks was if I know "hacking" and if I could show them some cool "hacks" on the net. I giggle during such questions. They even dared to claim their dissapointment and asking me 'why am I not into "hacking" which is the true thing!'.

They could be more impressed by a kid making pranks in a nearby PC, using Netbus. Because the coolness factor would be way much bigger than some boring graphic demonstrations that are worse and less interesting than the videos from Starcraft :P

But that's the thing revolving around today's definition of "hacking". That's the thing that gathers most people's interest around "hacking" itself. The coolness factor!

And that's the thing the demoscene is missing. (Although, some of the latest stylish/designish demos might have their own coolness factor (artistically though), however that's not cool enough for mass media ;P). And the reason most of us sceners got into demomaking is because we were really pleased by the idea of coding something as clever as the most classic demos out there.

The reasons behind coding demos is truly to demonstrate the creator's abilities in making something visually impressive alone. And maybe showoff that even the older hardware is capable of more things if the coder is clever enough. While the starting reason for "hacking" is because it will make you look COOL no matter the means. At least that's where the so called "hacking" scene mainly revolves around today.

So, there wasn't any sense for me to be involved into "hacking", since I was already getting the true hacking feeling of achieving something clever and unique in the demoscene alone. I even don't find any motivation or astonishment by the idea of getting into that thing as it is supposed to be today. I've lost my respect about those "hackers". Even their acts of defacing websites, fighting some sort of "system", revolting to free some random "hacker", and then defacing websites again (or even spreading some stupid virii out there, ugh!), is not only so UNCOOL in my opinion, but can only be a senseless burden for the internet that leads to nothing. For me it's similar to "anarchists" who are into it for breaking stuff and beating people, feeling like they are revolting against something they don't even know what that is. Bogus!

P.s. I have used the quotes around the word hacking to diferrentiate the 'breaking security type of "hackers"' from the true hackers that have totally nothing to do with that and can be found in fields that would never feel "hackerish" enough. That's to not misunderstand me.

P.p.s. Richard has used the term cracker as an alternative for what I write as "hackers". Maybe my own way of defining them is bad, maybe I should find a diferrent sounding term, though I have a little objection to do that nobody seemed to argue before. I don't like the term cracker as Richard defines it.

Crackers are also the hackers who broke the copy protection of early software (usually games) and put a nice introductory screen (cracktro) before the pirated programm started. It usually had options for chosing infitive lives and similar shit in cracked games, if you recall from C64 or Amiga games. They even were the ancestors of the demoscene, who later started coding those graphical intro screens without any cracked software connected anymore (evolved into demos). I am not into the cracking scene either but I respect them as they were the ancestors of the community I am involved into. And their activity, while it maybe had another coolness factor in it (because of piracy), it involved a true coding challenge too (Studying clever copy protection schemes, reverse engineering, etc). Maybe one that is sometimes more tricky than demomaking itself.

That was before the term 'cracker' for the malicious "hackers" was found up imho. Some people put the old crackers and the new "crackers" (malicious "hackers") in the same category because they dislike both of them. It's all confused. But do the terms really matter or the whole confusion and stupid motives behind all these? Anyways, I can't do anything about that, now the term cracker has been set for the malicious "hackers", ignoring there is another definition for the software piracy crackers. Ugh!