Dr. Claus Volko

I stayed at our class reunion meeting until about 2:00 am. Then I had a long journey back home since my usual train doesn't go before about 6:00 am. I walked from "Altes AKH" (9th district) to the state opera (1st district) - a walk of 45 minutes or more - and waited for the nightbus there. I took the bus to Alterlaa (23rd district), then I walked home (something like 30 minutes). Finally I was at home at about 5:30 am. Never done anything like this before.

Letzte Woche pflegte ich, die Nacht zum Tag zu machen und von 4 bis 12 Uhr zu schlafen. Da ich vormittags keine Vorlesungen hatte, war das möglich. Jetzt möchte ich mich wieder umstellen, zumal ich im August arbeiten gehen werde. Gestern bin ich um 20 Uhr durchaus müde ins Bett gestiegen. Die Folge war, dass ich heute um 4 aufwachte, also um die Zeit, zu der ich sonst schlafen ging. Zwei Stunden verbrachte ich im Internet und mit meinem Pharma-Lehrbuch, dann fühlte ich mich wieder müde und legte mich ins Bett; allerdings schlief ich nicht ein, sondern hörte Musik. Das ist etwas, was ich früher nie tat, denn ich war der Meinung, dass nur faule Leute Zeit mit Musik hören verschwendeten. Inzwischen habe ich meine Meinung jedoch revidiert: Musik ist eine schöne Sache, und vor allem ist es absolut notwendig, viel zu hören, wenn man selbst Musik erstellen will. Musik spricht Emotionen an, und das ist wichtig, um sich als Mensch zu fühlen. Tatsächlich stand ich dann um 9 Uhr beinahe mit dem G

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.