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The past: our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition. (Israel Zangwill) | |
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The main cause for being able to write these pages now is due to I was born.
Born right after Xmas 1976 which is really a pity for all the presents
concentrate on those two days in late december. Moreover, in my elementary
school we never celebrated my birthday at school. And I didn't get less
homework neither. Hmpf. I was pretty surprised to find out that I wasn't alone. Yeah, some pet was running around all the time and they told me, he was my elder brother Peter. I can't reflect most of my childhood. I don't even remember the birth of my ~3.5 years younger sister Melanie. At least they've told me I've been pretty naughty most of the time. Phew, lucky just once in my life. |
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It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago. (Jim Bishop) | |
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I didn't like the kindergarden: children doing stupid games, being forced
to do naive paintings, and the worst thing: I never was fast enough to grab
the bulldozer during the breaks. So I often escaped and went home to watch
some educational programmes on tv. The elementary school wasn't any better at all. The teachers couldn't identify my writing (which probably had another reason: I'm actually left handed, but my parents didn't notice this and I've had to learn right hand writing), yielding bad marks in most subjects except for maths. |
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The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. (Platon) | |
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I finished the elementary school and started to the secondary school. I
don't know what exactly happened, but all of a sudden my marks were one of
the best and I could change to the grammar school 'Gymnasium Puchheim' the
next year (in summer 1988). Having passed all eight forms of the grammar school, I matriculated with A-levels in maths and chemistry in June 1997. I'm was very happy to never being forced to see the principle again. In germany every male citizen has go to the army for 10 months, or, if he refuses to serve with a weapon, he has to do 13 (formerly, now it's only eleven) months of civil work. I did the latter at the Münchner Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Psychoanalyse from 01-Jul-97 to 31-Jul-98, which is an institute for educating psychologists in psycho-analysis. I'm still doing their web site and am their main computer consultant. In fall 1998 I registered at the Technical University of Munich to study computer science which probably was my destiny since I first touched a computer. I've already passed my first six terms successfully and finished my pre-diploma tests early in 2001. |
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How can I tell... that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind? (Douglas Adams) | |
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| So when my computer history start? In 1984 my father bought his first computer, a ZX Spectrum 48K (do you remember this rubber-keyboard-thingy-like-computer?), which attracted my attention immediately. By typing in basic programs I started to learn programming and soon after that I wrote my own little programs. I nearly started to code in Z80 assembly language but... |
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| ...a few years later my brother bought a Commodore 64, which was the most stunning computer at that time as I thought. I was wrong (even though C64 was a great toy and I still listen to chip tunes with joy). Yet, I did some programming basic, but it was more of a gaming machine, however I was already collecting every demo and sid-music I could find. |
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Bliss in possession will not last; Remembered joys are never past; At once the fountain, stream, and sea, They were, they are, they yet shall be. (James Montgomery) | |
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A friend of mine (Hallo Michi!) borrowed a computer for some days and
invited us to play with it. I fell in love with the computer of my destiny
within a few minutes and started saving all my money. Finally I could
afford to buy my first Amiga 500 on the 07-Jul-89 (if have reconstructed
the past correctly) at a price of about 800 DM which was a lot of money for
a pupil of the 5th form. For those who never have touched an Amiga, it is a multimedia machine, introduced with the A1000 in 1985. The first generation machines were already capable of displaying up to 4096 colours at once, producing high quality sound output in stereo on four 8-bit channels (or by combining two channels, 14-bit output was possible) with any rate up to 28KHz. Several coprocessors were used to speed up graphics rendering. All in all, the Amiga was the first computer to playback sound (or music) and show colourful animations on a tv at 50Hz without jerking. Again, the first thing do to was gaming, but very quickly, I started programming in Amiga Basic (I've even did a (now looking pretty ridiculous) gamedisk in 1990 with uncompiled (dead slow) programs, download it as .adf-file and run it on the Amiga Emulator for it won't run properly on Kick 2.0 and/or faster processors and fastram (AmigaBasic is a MicroSoft product!)). On Xmas 1989, I got the Devpac Assembler as a present (which I still use now), and I started to program little MC68000 assembly language programs. At first, I didn't make to many programs (you know, you have to learn pretty much before you can start with nice programs), but 1.5 years later I was able to program my first intro (well, it was a cracktro nevertheless). For Amiga Basic was far too slow and limiting, I bought AMOS Basic soon after its release. I started a lot of different projects of which most weren't completed. In 1991 I acquired my first harddrive with SCSI interface: A SupraDrive XP500 with 1MB of memory and 52MB Quantum harddisk. It was getting full pretty fast, so I bought another 250MB harddisk one year later. |
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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness... Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (George Santayana) | |
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The darkest period of my life as programmer was between fall 1991 and
summer 1992: I started to crack some games. But hey, they never were spread
beyond my friends and you learn a lot about coding when you're trying to
remove a copy protection. Anyway, that was long time ago.
I destroyed the circuits of my A500 on the 27.06.92 (a pretty stupid story, I tell ya!), but bought a new one a few days later (well, I really had to, as I'm really addicted). In August 1992 I started negotions with 'The Software Society' (now called Nexus Software GmbH) to publish my games and other programs. The following years can be squeezed together:
Somewhere inbetween I also made some music modules with Sound-, Noise- and finally Protracker, but the results are not worth mentioning. |
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Four things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past, the neglected opportunity. (Omar Idn Al-Halif) | |
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Looking at the past sometime makes people worried: all the things not done,
the feeling or fear to have missed some aspects of live, the mistakes made,
the persons injured, the relationships broken. I've made many mistakes, but there's no chance to change the past. All I can do, is to hope that the wounds heal themselves, and that people forgive my faults. Nobody is perfect, so why should I be cursed for the rest of my life for doing an unreasonable thing once? |
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No man is rich enough to buy back his past. (Oscar Wilde) | |
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©1997-2009 Chris Hodges. Last time updated on 08-Aug-09 13:03:32. Legal disclaimer, imprint.
