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Bagder / Confusing Solution,
Super Swap Sweden,
Horizon
Added on November 19th, 2003 (7899 views)
www.c64.com?type=3&id=58
Tell us something about yourself.
Daniel Stenberg, born in Stockholm Sweden on November 23, 1970. I still live and work in Stockholm, Sweden. My biggest interests I guess are computers/programming and travelling. My spare time programming these days are mainly in the Curl (http://curl.haxx.se/) and Rockbox (http://rockbox.haxx.se/) projects. I work as a consultant, doing embedded, network and Unix programming for Contactor AB (http://www.contactor.se/).
What handle(s) did you use and how did you come up with it/them?
I was known as Bagder, which initially was meant to be the animal but somehow I got it all spelled wrong and I left it like this. It made me more unique.
What group(s) were you in?
I started in Confusing Solution (Consol) back in 1987 (together with Kjer and Zagor). The three of us joined Super Swap Sweden (SSS) in 1988. Later that same year, we joined forces with Thundercats and together we formed the group Horizon.
What roles have you fulfilled?
I was mainly a coder. I did demo swapping and I tried to do some graphics at times, but I was always foremost a coder.
How long were you active for?
I guess I was active between 1987 and 1991.
Tell us about those years and how you got into the scene in the first place.
When Kjer, Zagor and I created Consol we wanted to make cool demos like those cool ones we got from our friends. We learned programming and during 1987 we started to get a good grip of assembler, and we started to make simple demos.
We got to know about the big Triad/Fairlight party on Christmas 1987, in a school very near us and we brought our equipment and our code there. We become friends with the nutty guys in Thundercats on that meeting, and from that moment on we pretty much lived for making C64-demos and I think that Xmas was our intro to "the scene" for real.
We enjoyed parties and we arranged quite a few of them ourselves. We were in the whole business of making demos for the sole purpose of having fun. And we sure did have a lot of fun during those years, and we got to know a lot of fun friends from all over the world. Well, at least from all over the Scandinavian countries (I mean the ones we met in real-life).
Describe a typical day for you in front of the computer.
Uh? I got home from school, switched on my C64 and when I was dead-tired late at night, I saved my work, switched off the computer and fell asleep at once. Coding was, and still is, mostly a loner's work.
Did you personally invent any special techniques or tools to make things easier for you?
To tell you the truth, the exact details of much of this is starting to fade from my memory. Of course my sound routine was one of the key things for us when we did the music in Skyline Technics, which we called the music group I wrote the code for and Boogaloo and Zagor composed for. Otherwise I didn't do many "tools" of any kind that I can remember today. I wrote some sinus wave creation tools, but they were never that cool.
When you look at what you did back then, what are you most proud of?
That I learned to hack that good all on my own time. That I could move on to a computer programming career after my 12th grade in school without ever having to attend college/university. That we made so many friends and that we did so good in the demo competitions of our time.
Who were your heroes on the scene and why?
My scene heroes were the early ones because they are the ones that made me interested in demos and who thus also kind of contributed to who I have ended up to be today. Guys like the 1001 Crew.
What, for you, was the coolest thing ever invented on the C64?
I really can't say. All inventions were cool, and of course the more time we spent the cooler things were invented.
Did you go to any copy-parties, meetings or tradeshows?
I went to lots of them and I was co-organizing many. I enjoyed meeting people in real-life and I enjoyed the insane hacking-sessions and the demo competitions associated with them. I liked the time when you wrote your whole demo during the party.
In your opinion, what was the scene all about?
Having fun. Plain and simple.
What were the particular highlights for you?
I actually can't remember a single favourite event!
Any cool stories to share with us?
Not at the moment.
Are you still in contact with any old C64 people today?
There's three other Horizon members working at the same company I work at (Contactor) and I still know and meet many people that I first got to know during the C64 period. Many of them are working in the IT market today, so I sometimes meat them at customers' places, in trade shows etc.
When did you get your C64 and do you still have it lying around somewhere?
Me and my brother bought our first C64 in the spring 1985. Before that I had visited Kjer many times during many months and enjoyed playing around with his C64. But I don't have any of our C64 boxes any more, I gave them away to our kid sister who used them during many years until they both broke.
Was the C64 really as special as we like to think it was?
Yes it was. It was cheap and yet powerful enough to do many fun things. It was easy to program and yet you could do really fun things. Also, the fact that so many things (mainly graphic effects) were undocumented and you could "discover" new effects was totally cool.
When can we expect to see some new C64 output from you? :)
Never. I try to keep up with the world, there's no need to get stuck in history and nostalgia. C64 was then, Linux is now.
Do you have a message for your old contacts and/or anyone reading this?
Thanks for all the fun you helped me experience during the days!
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