Interview
Handle:
Celebrandil
How did you come up with your alias ?
I got my nickname from Tolkien's Silmarillion back in 1985. However, I didn't get it right, since the correct name in the book was Celebrindal. Like so many other kids I was playing role-playing games then and needed a name for my new and imaginary character.
City / Country:
I was born in Lund in the southern part of Sweden, but now live and work in Stockholm.
Born year:
1970
What was your first computer, and when did you get it?
The first time I got in touch with a computer was when I used to borrow my cousin's C64 in 1984, making tiny music things and text-adventures. After a year of money-saving I bought my own machine and soon discovered the fancy world of assembly coding. Like so many others I thought that the only way of coding assembly, was by using pen and paper, and DATA statements in BASIC. My first demo-like things were made that way.
How did you get into the scene and what groups have you been a member of ?
At elementary school I met a guy called Boerni and we continued working on our C64s using the groupname Altair. At that time I had already become interested in raytracing and made a few programs on various machines. Boerni was the first one to buy an Amiga in 1987 and I joined him the year after. Demos had started to grow in numbers, so we changed our attention from games to demo programming. We both became members of a major demogroup called North Star and contributed with some demos in their megademos. North Star had just started to cooperate with Fairlight, who just had entered the Amigas scene after years of successes on the C64. When the groups finally splitted, I joined Fairlight in an effort to improve the group on the Amiga and managed to release two demos for them. In 1990 I met a talented democoder called Mr.Gurk from a group called Phenomena and I later joined that group much because of their brilliant musicians and hardworking coders, even though it was hard to leave the old friends from Fairlight. The brother of a friend of mine from my military service, Azatoth, had already joined Phenomena and it was quite clear that lots of new things were to come. Phenomena stayed on top of the charts during the year of 1991, but most members had left the scene a few years later.
What's the proudest moment during your career on the scene?
Winning democompo in Odense in December 1990 with Animotion.
Why do you think you have been remembered?
Introduced raytracing on the scene in 1988 and made a couple of demos, out of which three were compo-winners. Came up with effects like space-cutted vectors and glenz-vectors. Even though these things were rather trivial, they had not been used in demos before and people started to copy them (and managed to improve them a lot more).
For what do you want to be remembered?
For trying to help people with coding, independent of who needed the help.
What made you stop the scene activity and do you remember when?
I became less active when I started my studies in Computer Science and Engineering at Lund University in 1990. I visited a few parties during a couple of additional years with my friends from Phenomena, but it became harder and harder to concentrate on both demos and school.
Thinking back at the good old days, is there anything you regret?
Nothing.
Favourite:
GAME - Sanxion
DEMO - Cebit'90 by TRSI
PROGRAMMER - 1001 Crew, Pernod/Censor, Delta/TRSI, Yabba/Light
CRACKER - Strider/Fairlight, Il Scuro/Defjam
COMPOSER - Uncle Tom/Scoopex, Mantronix/Phenomena, Danko/Censor, Dizzy/CNCD
EVENT - Slagelse in 1989 (Still remember those girls ? -Ed)
MEMORY - All the friends
DRINK: Hoegarden, a dutch beer
What are you doing nowadays?
I graduated and got my Master's degree in 1994 and started to work with ASIC design for Mentor Graphics in Stockholm. After two and a half year in the industry, I went back to school and entered a Ph.D student program in Computer Vision at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
What are you doing at your spare time?
Chasing chicks and coding texture-mapped stuff, compilers and rendering on a PC. From time to time you can see me as Celebrand on Internet Relay Chat, where I try to catch up with what's happening on the scene today.
Is there anything you'd like to say to the public (admirers)?
"The best part of my life is already over"
What is the meaning of life?
Taking part of the scene in friendship