悶컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴悶 윱 Freedom CD Questionnaire 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Handle: Aquatic Nuisance Name: Ryan Mahoney Age: 18 Affiliations: The Coteric Continuum Location: Brighton, MI - USA Address: ryan.mahoney@tssbbs.com Describe yourself: I am a very logical-minded perfectionistic individual. I suppose that has a lot to do with my obsession with computers. I tend to notice details about things that most people can't even notice when it is pointed out to them. I tend to keep somewhat to myself when with people who don't think like I do, but I really enjoy talking and interacting with other intelligent people. In addition to my overall tendency toward computers, I also really enjoy doing things outdoors - especially in the summer. I love to water ski, go for bike rides, and other fun things. For money, I work part time as a computer technician for a local computer store. Our first 4k intro, in fact, is a BBS ad for that computer store's BBS. (and no, I didn't make any money from that.) Working on computers is infinitely more enjoyable than, say, flipping burgers; but I'd rather be programming for money than working on nasty, toasted, obsolete computers. I have run a BBS - Sound Bytes - for about three years now, and being a sysop is getting old now that the callers in the area are little more than d00dz that care about nothing other than their precious online games. Education: 13 years of the finest public education that Brighton has to offer. I'll be studying computer science at Michigan Tech starting this fall. Of course, where computers are involved, I've learned almost all of it on my own. They just can't teach logical thinking in school. And they certainly didn't offer any assembly language classes. Heh, the top of the computer division at my high school was a class oxymoronically named "Advanced Basic". And, because of the school's computer class requirement, I was forced to take that pathetic class. The big project of the class was to write this really simple database program, and since it was so boring, I spiced my nice GWBASIC program up with spinning cursors, arrow-key support, and all sorts of things that we weren't "supposed" to do. Oh, well - it was a time to relax after chemistry. Hobbies: Computers, computers, assembly language programming, music, electronics, water skiing, bike riding, computers Favorite TV show(s): Star Trek:TNG, ST:Voyager Cool movie(s): ST:Generations, Apollo 13, The River Wild If you could have THREE wishes, they would be: 1) that all the stupid people who think that Windoze *is* their computer would just go back to using typewriters and stop negatively influencing the PC scene 2) I wish that I would have won a Freedom CD in MC3 3) mov [numwishes],0FFFFh ;of course! :-) Career Plans (what do you want to do): Well, I'd love to use the things I learn at college combined with all of the things that I learn by doing so much with the demo scene to get a coding job with a "cool" company - it'd be cool to design the software for the latest sound card from Advanced Gravis since that has a lot to do with coding *and* music. Craziest/Stupidest thing you have ever done: Well, one day I was transporting my computer system somewhere to work on a programming project. I had just bought a UPS for the computer, and I had that in the car as well. It occurred to me that I had about a half-hour that I could use the computer in the car, so I hooked up my GUS to the car stereo and played some S3M files. It was rather pointless, but a cool thing to do anyway. :) Good advice for others: When you lame code from tutorials, released source, etc. -- make sure you know _what_ the code is doing and recode it yourself for your project. You get so much more out of that than just copying blocks of code from other people's work. Something OTHERS should know: I've never been to a demo party :( But I would desperately love to attend one as soon as possible. Computer(s) owned: � Homebuilt i486DX2-66 540 MB Western Digital hard drive 450 MB Western Digital hard drive 8 Megabytes RAM 5�" and 3�" high density Teac floppies Trident VLB SVGA card w/1MB (yuk! - getting a ET4000 Sony Multiscan monitor series card soon) Honeywell extended keyboard Microsoft serial mouse 2.0a Gravis Ultrasound with 1MB RAM Sound Blaster Pro Infotel 14.4K Internal FaxModem Zoom 2400/9600 FaxModem WatchIt! TV capture board Conner 250M tape drive Iomega ZIP-100 drive Sony IDE 2x CD drive Canon BJC-600e color printer (soon to take parts from this beast and build a P90) � Commodore 128 � Convergent Technologies Workslate � Macintrash LC Soundcard(s) owned: 1 meg GUS revision 3.7 Sound Blaster Pro Music you like to listen to: classic rock, modern rock, tracked music, They Might Be Giants, lots of other stuff Music education (for musician only): I learned a lot just playing with keyboards on my own, plus seven years of "formal" music training in the school's music program. I play saxophone in school bands, and have an old Yamaha keyboard that I use mainly now to get ideas for tracker music. Music style (for musician only): I don't know if I have any definitive style, but I tend to be less oriented toward the hard-core "techno" music and more toward orchestral music. Favorite Utilities/Programs: Norton Commander Norton Utilities TASM Aurora text editor QEMM / Desqview Telemate Scream Tracker 3 Cool Wave Edit Favorite demo(s): Verses, Second Reality, Heartquake Favorite intro(s): TSSBBS.COM, ASM-94_2.EXE Favorite tracker music(s): It's so hard to pick favorites, especially since I don't have the FTP access to be able to get and listen to all the great new stuff that's been coming out. At the risk of sounding lame, I'm not going to choose any favorites because of my limited selection. Project(s) planned: We've been working on a GUS S3M player, and now that it is in a usable form, we can start making real intros and such. This last year has been an experimenting and learning stage, and all the work is finally paying off - we just released a 4k intro with adlib music, and it is so nice to make a real production without any ripped code or libraries. What you hope to accomplish in the Demo Scene: Unfortunately, we got into the scene a year or two late, so even as we rapidly learn things, we're still always "behind" what's going on. Goals for the near future include such things as learning the secrets behind protected mode, releasing some decent intros, and attending a demo party. Ultimately, it would be nice to progress far enough to be recognized as a serious demo group and assemble a "megademo" or two :) But that still seems a little bit in the future for now. Personally, I'd like to take the time to do some really serious music composition and perhaps release a musicdisk. Who knows, there are so many directions that we can still go, but I do want to stay very active in the demo scene in as many ways as possible. What missing from the demo scene: I have only heard of maybe 2 girls in the whole stinkin' demo scene. A few female coders would be nice... I've also noticed that c.s.i.p.d doesn't contain as much traffic as it would seem like there should be. Aside from IRC and such, is the demo scene conversing elsewhere, or is there really not that much inter-group discussion? The parties are nice and all, but it seems like there's so much competition that there's not enough cooperation. Now that DemoNews is back, I can't complain about it being missing - I was very sad to see it go, and I'm happy to witness its reincarnation. Other than that, the only other thing that I can think of that is missing from the scene is *us*. The Coteric Continuum is rather isolated here in Michigan, and other than e-mail and c.s.i.p.d, we have no way to reach out of here. Once college rolls around and we have the ability to FTP and use IRC, we'll finally be able to actually release things beyond the borders of our cheesy little community. Demo Scene 10 years from now: This is hard to say, since the scene as we know it hasn't really been in place for 10 years. No matter how much GUI they throw at us, there will still be a group of people who realize that instead of "increasing your productivity", high-level GUIs really limit what can be done with the computer. These logical-minded people are the core of the demo scene; and although the uninformed masses may drift ever farther from our ideals, the demo scene will still exist. It is so hard to even think of what computers in general will be like 10 years into the future. PC in the near future: Ugh. August 24th will mark a dark day in the PC's history. Microsoft's latest scheme to moronify the computer is going to, unfortunately, hit it big with the people who look at a computer as a business tool instead of a computer. After seeing a beta copy of this nasty Windoze '95, I am scared for the future of the PC. They are trying to make computers function in a metaphorical matter that makes sense to the average Joe, but that does no good to demo coders, who tend to think more like computers than like people. How can people contact you: Mail can be sent to ryan.mahoney@tssbbs.com for now, but I will be getting a college address soon. As soon as it is known, I'll put it in anything we happen to release. Remember, I always love to get mail! I religiously monitor c.s.i.p.d, as well.