John Tsiombikas' personal web site


Welcome to my web site, my name is John Tsiombikas (alternate spelling: Tsiompikas) and I'm a hacker. This site's purpose is to provide information on my current projects and activities, my articles and tutorials, as well as an up-to-date list of ways to reach me.

Also, I now have a blog too. So head over there for random bits of news, hacks, and short articles.

Various random bits and pieces can be found at my personal computer, which is generally running 24/7 give or take a few mishaps.


Contents


This page is valid "HTML 4.01 Strict".
Please make sure your own web page is also valid HTML, and avoid using browser-specific constructs.
Valid HTML 4.01!   Valid CSS!

Support the Free Software Foundation, by becoming an FSF associate member.
[FSF Associate Member]


Projects

Here is a list of my most notable projects, past and current, excluding demoscene projects.
I'm also posting anything worth mentioning about my current projects at my new blog.


Articles & Tutorials

I have written a number of articles and tutorials concerning mostly, but not exclusively, graphics programming. Take a look at the list below, and I would be glad to recieve any feedback on these articles, good or bad. The title of the article serves as a local link where you can always reliably download it, any other external links are listed under "Published at". Formats may vary.

Lang.TitleDescriptionDatePublished at
greek Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL: part 1 The first part of a series of tutorials on graphics programming using OpenGL. This first part covers the basics: 3D object representation, OpenGL immediate mode, the graphics pipeline, and depth buffering. The accompanying code can be downloaded from here: gl01_src.tar.gz. 11 Sept 2008 greek linux format magazine
eng Fast & Easy High-Resolution Fractals with a Pixel Shader A tutorial on calculating the mandelbrot and julia fractals directly on the GPU with the OpenGL shading language. Includes two example programs with full source code, to see the technique in action, and experiment with it. 8 Feb 2006 N/A
eng Preparing for GBA development A small article guiding you through the process of setting up the necessary tools for GameBoy Advance development. Also contains a small example program. 30 Jan 2006 demoscene.gr
eng Pointers Explained (pdf 62k) A clean and concise explanation of pointers in C and C++ for beginners, who often have trouble understanding how to use pointers. 16 Feb 2004 N/A
eng Shadow Volumes Tutorial (pdf 304k) Tutorial on the shadow volume (stencil shadows) algorithm. 22 May 2003 demoscene.gr
PAiN Diskmag
GameDev.net
eng 3D graphics programming series An unfinished (only first issue available, on 3D math) series meant as an introduction to 3D graphics. 27 August 2002 demoscene.gr
greek Introduction to DirectDraw This article is a continuation of my previous article on the Win32 API and it is intended as an introduction to DirectDraw, the 2D graphics API of DirectX 7 8 August 2001 demoscene.gr
greek The Basics of Win32 Programming A short introduction to windows programming 8 June 2001 demoscene.gr
greek Huffman Compression A tutorial about data compression with the huffman encoding algorithm 6 April 2001 demoscene.gr

Contact

You may contact me in the following ways:

email: nuclear@member.fsf.org
ICQ: 2969558
Jabber: jtsiomb@gmail.com
IRC: #demo-gr, #gnu, #linux on GRNet

Of these, I strongly prefer e-mail, but IRC is also good if you plan to make a lengthy discussion about something. However let me stress that if you send me an email in html format I probably won't bother to read it. Please send only plain text emails.

I always sign my outgoing email messages with my gpg key, which you can retrieve from any public keyserver by searching for nuclear@member.fsf.org
Key id: 4174CFF2
Fingerprint: 7911 86F0 D58B 5487 EB91 82D6 B4AF 109C 4174 CFF2


Links

Here is a collection of links that I consider useful and/or informative on a number of subjects that interest me. If the intersection of our interests is not the empty set you might find something useful in this pile

Free Software

Free Software Foundation Home of the Free Software Foundatio. The movement that started it all.
The GNU Project The GNU Project started by Richard Stallman in 1984 in order to create a free operating system, managed to liberate millions of computer users worldwide.
Richard Stallman's web site Web site of the father of free software, and founder of the FSF and the GNU project, worth taking a look.
Debian GNU/Linux The best GNU/Linux distribution around.

Graphics Programming & Game Development

OpenGL 3D graphics library specification, which has become the defacto standard for real-time graphics in the scientific community, with implementations on every major operating system and supported by all kinds of specialized graphics hardware.
Simple Directmedia Layer SDL is a library that provides framebuffer, event handling, sound, input, threads and more in a cross-platform manner. It can also be used to initialize OpenGL instead of providing a simple framebuffer. Very useful for cross-platform development.
GameDev A nice site on game development, with an extensive collection of articles and tutorials. Some good, some not so good, but all in all a good resource.
Hugo Elias' web site The good-looking textured light-sourced bouncy fun smart and stretchy page, with many great tutorials on graphics programming. His algorithm explanations are extremely easy to understand, making these some of the best tutorials around.

Misc

Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters.
KernelTrap Kernel development news.

Other personal sites & blogs

Eleni Eleni Maria Stea
Airness Akis Foulids (airness)
Cybernoid Ektoras Karagiannis (cybernoid)
Samurai Michael Georgoulopoulos (samurai)
Rania Rania Hatzi
Badsector Kostas Michalopoulos (badsector)
Optimus Michael Kargas (optimus)
Demonmass Dimitris Glynos (demonmass)
Charon George Keramidas (charon)
Comzeradd Nikos Roussos (comzeradd)