Interview
Handle: Kaktus - Homepage
How did you come up with your alias ?
I'm not sure I remember correctly, but I believe it was when speaking to my friend Mahoney on the phone. At the moment we were busy doing printed covers for our 5.25" disks. I think that we were talking about what I should print on my covers, and there it was. Actually, Kaktus is swedish for Cactus, so it's not misspelled or something.
City / Country:
I was born in Helsingborg in the south of Sweden. Recently I moved to Lund, fourty kilometers south of Helsingborg, and that is where I live and work now.
Born year:
According to my parents, I was born the first of January 1972. Yikes! That's a long time ago!
What was your first computer, and when did you get it?
My first computer was a Texas TI-99/4A. I got it for christmas when I was nine. Probably the youngsters today haven't even heard of it. It was a very robust computer, pure american with a blanc aluminium cover on top. In the beginning of the eighties, I believe that it was the fastest 'home-computer' available, since the processor TMS9900 had a 16-bit wide databus. Anyway, due to some strange language convertions in the OS, it probably appeared being the slowest computer available. Actually, the sprites as seen on the '64 and later on the Amiga was first implemented in the Texas.
How did you get into the scene and what groups have you been a member of ?
Hmm, long time ago. I don't remenber how and why, but one summer evening in 1986 I found myself in the basement of Mahoneys home. He had arranged a local 'copy party' in his parents house, and we were at least six people there, excluding Mahoneys family. Anyway, before that evening, I didn't know his name or anything, but when we met in the cellar we looked funny at eachother. Some weeks earlier, on a copy party in Furulund, I had (by accident) disconnected a powercable connected to some poor guy's computer. It was this guy that was standing oppsite to me in the basement. - Mahoney!
Mahoney was a member of a local group called The Defiers, so I joined them. We made our first demos together, Alvesta-Sirap and Skruv. Both huge one-diskside-demos. When we made Skruv we had joined a group called Triumph. The same day that Skruv was finnished, we migrated to the Amiga. After the demos Blue, Funny and Scrolly we joined NorthStar, a group located mainly in Helsingborg. We made some new demos, Scrolly II, Bobby, Green, Squarey, White and Black. Our first Amigademos plus some of our new demos were released on NorthStar MegaDemo II, a one-disk demo. At this time, Mahoney started to work on the NoiseTracker V1.0.
NorthStar wanted to release a MegaDemo III, a two-disk demo project, so we made some demos for it too, for example Flummy, Scrolly III, Flummy Intro and Flummy Intro II. Later NoiseTracker V2.0 was finnished. NT2.0 was supposed to be a commersial product, released by EAS Software in Germany, the same company that sold Obarski's Soundtracker. Unfortunately, we wanted to make a working and useful product, so when we considered ourselves finnished with our work, EAS didn't exist anymore. The vice president converted to doing business bying and selling houses!
What was the proudest moment in your career ?
Hard to say, I get happy every time someone remembers me!
For what specific reason(s) do you think that you are remembered ?
When I and Mahoney began to code together, we did totally agree on that most of the demos we had seen were 'quite usual', typically that is a picture, a tune and a scroller. (Remember this was back in 1986.) So, when starting to code on the Amiga, we set up a few rules to make our demos look more unusual. For example it was forbidden to keep the backgroundcolour black in a demo. If you run some of our old demos and turn up the intensity on your monitor, you'll see that the background is blue or pink or something like that. It is important to notice that the rules didn't interfear with creativity - possibly the reverse, we were bound to be creative to make a demo look good. On the other hand, I and Mahoney were almost always coding in what you could call a surrealistic way. We had an idea, which we tried out if possible, and we just followed it to see where it lead to. This explains Amigademos like Bobby, and almost all our '64-demos. So, I hope that this is why some people remember us. We did something different from "Look! I've got 153 ugly bobs at the same time on the screen" or "This is my new cool mega- vector-3D-object-blitterfill-routine plotting a blob in the center of your black screen with a scrolltext at the bottom."
What would you like to be remembered for ?
Nnnng.
What made you stop the scene activity ? (and do you remember when?)
I've always thougth of this one.
Thinking back on the good old days, is there anything you regret?
Yes, I regret that I payed school so much attention, and that I listened to every authoroty being around. Of course school is important, but I didn't think I became interested until highscool. When I think back I realise that school just kept me in line, and somewhat prevented me from being different. I would't say this unless I'd managed anyway.
What was your favorite
GAME(S)
On the '64, I played them all. I wasn't amused playing games on the Amiga.
DEMO(S)
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PROGRAMMER(S) (OR PROGRAMMING TEAM(S))
People like Stavros Fasoulas and Andrew Hewson still make me impressed. I will never forget the 1001 Crew or the Dutch USA-team.
CRACKER(S) (OR CRACKING GROUP(S))
Mr.Z, Mr.Zeropage, Triad, and later, WCC and Fairlight (Hi Bacchus!).
OVERALL GROUPS :
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COMPOSER(S)
Oh, I just love the SID - Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard, Chris Huelsbeck and many others.
BEST COMPOSED TRACK(S)
Probably Sanxion by Hubbard or the Ocean loaders by Galway.
BEST GRAPHICS
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EVENT(S) (E.G. COPYPARTY)
The NorthStar party in Trollhaettan, Sweden, and the classic party in Glostrup, Denmark.
MEMORY(S)
I've got strong memories of when hanging around with the Los Svullos, Uggadunks, or Sandladan as the called themselves last time I saw them together. They were blowing up '64s, drilling ABC80s and playing Front-242 loud.
DRINK ?
Wiskey is nice.
What are you doing nowadays ?
Recently I graduated as a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. (I like the sound of that:-) Now I am working as a PhD-student at the department of Applied Electronics at Lund Institute of Technology. I am working with VLSI-implementations of Digital Signal Processors, especially Wavelet transforms and image compression. At the moment we are building chips for a digital television transmitter.
What are you doing on your spare time?
I spend a lot of time building electronics. I have some projects of my own, and some with my friends. Possibly I'll link to some of my projects on my homepage. My parents have a house up in the woods, and I very much like to work in the forest (I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK...) I'm also a big cult-movie fan.
What is the meaning of life?
I'm a scientist, and I refuse talk about things that I don't know anything about!