We absolutely loved all things programming, and almost all things exclusively dealt with art or programming. He used to draw and sketch, but stopped doing so once he discovered programming. I kept going the traditional art route (although, I properly picked this up only during the first year of undergrad, when I didn’t have my laptop), though I started out with digital art (Photoshop, ULead Cool 3D, Terragen and eventually 3Ds max 7 (and onwards)). He, however, went the other, scarier route of art – mathematical/procedural art. Long story short – it’s tiny, tiny-as-possible code, which churns out the most blindingly amazing runtime graphics. You’ll find competitions with size limits starting with 4 Kb upwards – try compiling an empty C++ project with no lines of code, see how large it is, add a few print statements and layer it on, and notice how large it gets. This is a different mode of programming altogether – people who don’t see code in terms of (just) libraries or namespaces, but see machine instructions and CPU cycles and pipelines. On top of that, mathematical geniuses who derive physics shorthands and such, to have particulate interaction, reflection etc … all in runtime.

Here’s one of our … favorites, ever. An ~55 Kb exe which, has everything from music to physics to direction to aesthetics across…. every dimension of digital perception.

This is one of the last demos (that’s what they’re called) we saw… loved… before he died.

Razor1911 is the oldest such group on the internet. They started out as a demo group, but eventually became a cracking team – breaking games/software, all because it was just another means of showcase of logic-meets-art skill.

“What I love most about them, is how they reinvented themselves”

They started with the Commodore64, moved onto the Amiga, and then… while they were masters in those/that, restarted from scratch, onto … the PC/x86 architecture, as we know computing today. It’s like building a career (and being the masters) of a particular domain, say painting – and then people come and say “No more acrylic paints allowed, there’s this new paint that’s going to be ubiquitous, relearn everything you know about painting, with this”… and this happens three times, and each time, you still come out on top.

In honor of both him and Razor1911’s demoskills (obviously, the piracy part of things, I’ve got nothing to say about, it’s objectively illegal. Take from it, their incredible depth of reverse-engineering and such, if you may,,, but not their mode/piracy)…. I made this for their 40th anniversary this October:

The music is an AI-reimagined version of an old Amiga computer based tune from the 80s…. which we absolutely loved. More on that channel of mine, perhaps later. I intend to use it to “bring to life music that deserve second chances” via AI, and not to “blaspheme” Pink Floyd into Funk Floyd, or whatever the heck’s going on out there, these days…

Lastly, I’d love to just spill my mind for things, but… I’ll just leave this here:

I think I’ll …just… after all that’s been… I think I’ll park here, with this little cup… and what it says.