Return of the prodigal son

So I went on holidays with my family last month and forgot to return home.

We went to Greece, to do what common people do there:

1. Wake up at 10:00, have breakfast
2. Drive to the beach, swim and tan for a few hours; drink a bit of coffee
3. Go home, have lunch at 16:00, have a siesta for the next couple of hours
4. Visit family, have dinner out
5. Put baby to sleep, have a drink out, watch the world cup together with thousands of Yugoslavian tourists. Paradise!
   
6. Go to sleep as the temperature just dips below 30'C
   

Would be nice wouldn't it. Only this is the life of a tourist. The reality is slightly different for many who live and work there:

1. Wake up at 7:00, have a strong coffee
2. Work in an air-conditioned office either making shitty java plugins or selling overpriced clothes to the nouveau poors
3. Go home to wash and watch some crap on the tv, laced with a million of commercials for things you never needed anyway
4. Go out to see friends and moan together about the crooked politicians, when it was you who voted them and your parents who, long ago, benefited from this chaos
5. Go to bed wondering how you can afford one day to have your own children, your own house and your own furniture. Say goodnight to mother who looks after you.

Anyway, the first and last seconds of "Iconoclash" (our assembly demo... remember that?) are copied and pasted from my swimming experiences in Greece. I'll try now to post more often (although I'm going away again in 2 days) and keep you up to date; only 3 weeks left!

Associations

The words Summer, Assembly and this will be linked forever within me.

Snooker and demos

Have you ever wondered: if the demoscene was a sport, what sport would it be? I've been thinking about it recently while watching the snooker world championship on BBC.

I've been an avid snooker fan for the past 13 years. I'm fascinated by the complexity of play, the perfection of rules and combination of technical skill, logic and imagination.

There are other parallels between snooker and the demoscene: first of all, unlike most other sports, snooker players/demoscene groups stay around for more than a few years (since mind deteriorates slower than body). It is not uncommon to see players stay in the circuit for 20 or more years! Just like the demoscene, snooker is also very topical, a kind of curiosity only really popular in great Britain and some commonwealth states.

But for me the most obvious connection is this: you either get snooker/demoscene or you don't. People are saying "why waste your time on something that won't make you money" or "what is fascinating about baize and balls" - it is an esoteric society you belong to and it gets better and better the more you get involved with it.

Perfectly blue sky and the power of dreams

Over the past week the weather gods have blessed us with a beautiful sunshine: I woke up today at around 8.00am and just laid on my bed for an hour listening to the morning world.

The coming of summer has been painful to me for a number of years, always for the same reason, the beginning of the exam period: whether at school or university we all had to go through the laborious task of studying and worrying about the insignificant.

But the end of summer and the advent of autumn was sweeter still: anxiety was replaced by aspiration and hope for all the new, exciting stuff that the new season might bring.



And every October, back at the time when I was living in Greece, 15 years and more, I used to sit on our balcony and dream of my ultimate demo. And of Assembly, the Gathering, the Party; all the unknown, exotic places I may visit one day, and of other things that make the heart thump.

Relaxation time

I was reading this article in-between work and play, and thought of having a go myself. So I wrote this little program. This is the outcome.

Top image is original, second left is how it is fed into my filter and then how it comes out. 50% of pixels are missing, yet the result is not bad at all.


Back to my demo now. Got to hurry!

The cheats of europe

Yeah I know, one way or another, we Greeks have made a complete mess out of it. It is, however, an oversimplification to assert that it is all because of the egotistical, negligent nature of the people.

The matter is more complicated, and for a wider view of Greece, its tribulations and hopes in the wake of the 20th century, have a good read of this book.