Something Odd!

Gotta do some study, update in a week.

openGL code updated on projects page.

6 exams next week and I’m updating this stuff. Does anyone read this anyway eh?
This update I added a page with some of my own code, under the projects link to the left. You’ll find some stuff about openGL, graphics coding using Cross-ELF (cross-platform Linux lib.), a motif program I did a few weeks ago, and a simple UDP sockets assignment I had to do last month for college.
Nothing much else, I’m still disillusioned with the demo scene, people try and limit what a
demo ‘is’ and they alienate a large proportion of the ‘net.

Updates on lots of the pages, including the addition of the projects page to hold some of my own stuff.
Check out the .plan for info.

Since the Quake guys have .plan files on their homepages I’ve adopted the idea for my page here. Mail me at the link below if you like the idea.
I’ll post observations on the demo and Linux scenes here as well as other tit-bits that catch my attention.

Little rant about the demo scene:
Many years ago before the advent of electricity and.. oh, not that long ago, but during the glory days of the C64 RAM and storage space was expensive and usually difficult to work with or incompatible with most of the applications available.
Probably because of the above constraints demos coded then had to be highly optimized works of art. Nowadays, the situation is completely different. It’s a much friendlier environment to the coder.
Maybe because of this demos nowadays appear to me to be just movies that one plays back without interaction _at all_ !!!
Demos never were interactive but older demos had scrollies and usually had options to change various effects inside the demo..
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos there’s been much talk about demos on various platforms and arguements about proper demo coding techniques and why Windows sucks, DOS rules etc etc.
I think that defining the demoscene by it’s platform and by the coding language you use is fundamentally wrong and harmful to the spirit of friendship the scene should have.

Enough .. I’m distracted… cya..
Xeer.

I moved from Indigo, my ISP to Xoom mainly for two reasons. Indigo is slow to access (fast to use though..) and also I can’t update my page unless I’m online at home. Since I’m in college most of the day this is a major no-no. 🙁

This site is now being watched by The Linux Web Watcher. You can check there for updates to many of the most popular Linux sites on the ‘net.

Read my psuedo .plan for a some personal observations on demos, Linux and life in gerneral.(Life will be added later!)

I heard it first from Denis eccp Fuenzalida that Bomb released a patch for their excellent demo, State of Mind, but The PC Demo Fan Club provided the link to Skals’ page where you can download updated files. Jer got the link from Error 404 which looks like a very nice scene site!
Denis also has a remix of an old Spectrum game, Rex. A Linux version is available although I haven’t tried it at this time.
All the c64 demos from The Party ’98 are now available!
Links should now work for MSIE users. Sorry about that.

New style page.
Some demo links added. Want your site linked? email me!

I had a few reports of Install-Sendmail not working. Make sure you have localhost defined in /etc/hosts and if you are using RedHat Linux make sure you have the sendmail-cf RPM installed.
A few days ago on the ILUG mailing list someone mentioned they heard that the Riva TNT would be supported by Mesa. There’s a posting on the Mailing List Archive about it.
Very cool indeed!

I still remember seeing the intro to Microprose Soccer way back in 1989. I can’t even remember who coded the crack intro now, but it and the other intros I saw that year and later gave me the inspiration to try my hand at the amazing graphical effects that were being done. The irony is that a lot of the intros were techologicaly more advanced and better looking than many of the games at the time.

About two and a half years ago I first stumbled across a free version of Unix called Linux. At the time I installed it, a friend of mine installed it to do some mud coding, but we were working on limited hardware. I had a 2 speed CDROM which wasn’t supported (Win95 didn’t either, so naaahhh! 🙂
It didn’t last long on my system but then RedHat 4.1 was given away on a magazine cover and I installed it on my new P133 and I haven’t looked back since. I’m downloading
Star Office in college right now and it’ll hopefully be finished by the time I get into college on Monday. Once that’s installed the only reason I’ll have to run Win95 is Quake2, and once a bug fixed version of that game is released for Linux.. the sky’s the limit 🙂

The attitude in the Linux community is to share and spread your source code so others can contribute and help make your programs better. It works too. Take a look at The Cathedral and the Bazaar for an insight into this mindset and a different way of developing software.

Unfortunetly the demo scene is nothing like this. Although there’s a huge amount of documentation on demo effects, with plenty of source code, it’s a much more competitive environment to be active in. Source code for demos is rarely released, and coders jealously guard their work. The demo scene of course doesn’t lend itself easily to the Linux/Free Software philosophy, but it could.

This site is going to be all about code, algorithms, tools, compilers & cross-compilers, innovative ideas, and more.

Initially I’ll give you links to my favourite sites on the ‘net for coding and most of them will be directed more towards Linux/Unix than DOS/Windows. Thankfully there has been a major effort on the part of Linux coders to create portable code and apps so there should be something for everyone here.