Dr. Claus Volko

Kaum scanne ich science.orf.at nach älteren Meldungen durch, die ich aufgrund anderer Beschäftigungen nicht gelesen habe, stoße ich auf einen überaus interessanten Beitrag: http://science.orf.at/science/news/144832 Stephen Hawking stimmt also mit mir überein, dass die Menschheit ins Weltall expandieren muss, um zu überleben. Diese Meinung vertrete ich schon seit Jahren auf meiner Homepage, welche ich bei dieser Gelegenheit gleich mal ein wenig updaten werde (lange nicht mehr getan).

Today I spent some time watching demoscene productions in order to relax and I felt like posting some of my thoughts here. I first watched: - Squish by AND (64k intro, 1st at Assembly 2002). A masterpiece, very impressive. It's a one-man production by AND a.k.a. Dmitry Andreev, a Russian student at the mathematical faculty of Voronezh university who is just a bit more than 1 year older than me. I interviewed him for Hugi #28. Squish is technically sophisticated, it features a lot of not-so-trivial effects, well combined, and what especially impressed me: the colours have been chosen well, it's anything but coders-colors. So Dmitry did all the coding, 3d modelling and also music-composing. I remember people commented on his intro in a positive manner, but some critized the music, which is why he had the music made by someone else in his sequel intro "zoom3". But I also enjoyed the music, it's well done, too. Now the question is: How much effort has been made for su

After many years of chaos and weirdness, I've decided to finally become an ordinary human being. Let's see if I'll succeed.

Recently it has occurred to me that there is a special skill which few people have, but which is absolutely necessary to innovate. I remember when my father taught me math, he always reminded me that I have to "speculate", to think about various possibilities how a problem could be solved. This skill is the thing that is necessary to come up with new solutions. I believe that this skill can be trained very well in the demo scene if you watch demos and try to figure out how these effects might work. It's a different approach than just studying existing effects from books and then implementing them. Of course size optimizing (as in the hugi compos) is also a way to train this skill, as you have to work out many different algorithms and, further, tactical optimizations before finding the optimal one.

10 years ago, on May 25th, 1996, the 1st issue of Hugi was released. So we can celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Hugi Magazine today. In other words: I'm still pursuing the same hobby as I did when I was 12 :) Hugi #32 will probably be released in July 2006. Your articles are welcome.

This was in the signature of an email I've recently received from a Russian girl whom I had met when she spent her holidays in Vienna: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" Another good motto I've recently found: "Wer glaubt, etwas zu sein, hört auf, etwas zu werden." (Someone who believes that he is something, stops developing.)

If I'm not mistaken, today has been the 8256th day of my life. I was born on October 8th, 1983, which makes me 22 years old. Each year had 365 days but 6, which had 1 day more (1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004). Well, and calculating the number of days that have passed since October 8th, 2005, the result is 8256. I wonder what I should do with this piece of information. Have you got any ideas?

Während meiner Schulzeit habe ich mir immer wieder Gedanken gemacht, wie man den Unterricht verbessern könnte. Im Laufe der Zeit habe ich verschiedene Lehr- und Stundenpläne angefertigt. Mit Abstand betrachtet, orientieren sich diese alle viel zu sehr am bestehenden System. Ich verfügte damals noch nicht über so viel Lebenserfahrung wie heute, kannte praktisch keinen Betrieb außer der Schule selbst, war mir nicht im Klaren, worauf es in der echten Welt ankommt, nämlich auf verschiedene Charaktereigenschaften wie Eigeninitiative, Interesse, Zielstrebigkeit und Ausdauer. Wollen wir kritisch analysieren, was am Schulsystem gut ist und was besser sein könnte. - Sprachen und Mathematik: In diesen so genannten Hauptfächern liegen meiner Meinung nach die Stärken des aktuellen Schulsystems. Ich halte es für sehr wichtig, dass die Kinder und Jugendlichen in diesen Bereichen eine gute Ausbildung bekommen, und ich glaube, das ist auch der Fall.  - Lerngegenstände: Hier stellt sich die Frage, was