About me

(aka useless information that nobody cares about)

Ok since you got to this page you are probably interested in learning a few things about me. My name is John Tsiombikas (Γιάννης Τσιομπίκας), and I am also known by the alias "Nuclear" (mainly in the demoscene). I am involved in the demoscene for some years now, since one of my main interests is graphics programming. I have been for many years the programmer of the demogroup called The Lab. I am also one of the two programmers of the new-born demogroup mindlapse (the other being samurai previously of reversed-engineers and co-developer of 3dengfx).

It's all about freedom

I am a strong supporter of the notion of free software. That is, being able to use, modify, and distribute modifications of software so that you can help yourself, help those around you, and also help the software itself to evolve.
As such, I am an associate member of the Free Software Foundation, a non-profit organization for the promotion of the ideals of free software, which I urge you to support anyway you can.

Interests

My main interest lies in graphics programming, but I am also interested in low-level systems programming, distributed processing, and in some aspects of artificial intelligence. For more information about my projects go to my main page.

When I'm not programming, I like to write articles and tutorials to pass on the knowledge in my areas of expertise. Again for more information about my articles, go to my main page.

My computers

These are the computers I currently have in active duty and use more or less regularly:

• quasar, my main computer, with an Athlon64 processor, running the 64-bit debian GNU/Linux system. I use it for most of my programming and daily tasks. I also run various services there that I need, like my personal subversion code repository, a web server, and ftp to be able to access my files remotely.
• positron, my laptop, is an Apple MacBook with an intel core2 duo processor, and runs GNU/Linux and MacOS X. I'm carrying it everywhere with me since it's rather lightweight and can run for a long time on battery.
• octane, my new SGI Octane2 workstation, has a MIPS R12000 processor, a V6 (VPro/Odyssey) graphics board, and a shitload (1GB) of ram. I got it recently from Ian Mapleson's sgi depot, used, in perfect condition, at a very low price. Ian was kind enough to install IRIX 6.5.26 on it, with everything under the sun preinstalled. I use it for SGI/IRIX development and compatibility testing of my programs. But the main reason I got it was that I always had a thing for Silicon Graphics machines (as most graphics programmers do), and I wanted to get one that is powerful enough to be able to do useful work on it (as oposed to my old indy).

Photos

Here is a random assortment of photos.

• Small picture of myself
• Me in my natural habitat in Thessaloniki
• My previous habitat in Athens
• Assembly 2004 demoparty in Finland. The other guy to the right is Navis of ASD.
• ReAct 2004 demoparty in Patras (Greece). Left of me you can see Radiant, one of the very few female programmers in the demoscene, at my right side is moT, former musician of dEUS and fellow free-software supporter, and further to the right you can see oddie.
• One of the many programmers meetings in Ostria Cafe-bar in AthensFrom left to right: Samurai / Reversed Engineers, Nuclear / The Lab (me), Thor / Quadra (the only non-programmer), Imak / Quadra, Emc / Deus, ^gfx / Psyxes.
• Another (drunk) coders meeting in Ostria. Nuclear / The Lab (trying to look intellectual), Outsider / Sense Amok (trying to destroy my image), Bad Sector / Nasty Bugs (trying to grin like an idiot).
• Track7 Programmers That's me, outsider (standing), and samurai: the programming department of track7 games. Not pictured here are badsector and imak, who also joined the team later on.