Today's #PSA: In a world full of #vibecoders, be a #demoscener

https://youtu.be/BLMUfBikxTY?si=VkYa05wnW6CKaCNs

#demoscene #msdos #amiga #appleii #c64 #retrocomputing #music #techno #vibecode #ai #aiwinter

Interview with Japanese Demoscener – 0b5vr

https://6octaves.com/2025/09/interview-with-demoscener-0b5vr.html

#HackerNews #Interview #Japanese #Demoscener #0b5vr #TechCulture

#introduction

After alienating a few people with follow requests while having 0 posts, I guess it's high time I introduce myself.

Hello all o/, I'm Varstahl, a #SoftwareEngineer #RemoteWorker, but more of a Jack of all Trades in reality. #SystemAdministrator and #TechLead are also titles I worked under for my clients.

I'm a hobbyist #artist who had the pleasure of having a song broadcast live on #radio, and a #demoscener at heart. Growing up nerdy was quite difficult, it's not common to find 12 to 14 years old boys or girls studying Assembly manuals in non-native languages, just to get more insights on how computers work. Let's just say that in hindsight, yeah, I was probably the odd one out studying college level books just to foster my passion. But the search for kin ended when I attended my first #demoparty in Fallingbostel (Hamburg, Germany).

I’m driven from Hamburg to the apparent middle of nowhere in Fallingbostel, I remember fields all around and a single industrial building, with someone selling the tickets. It’s almost pitch black, and I think to myself “what have I gotten myself into, but then again I already made a 1400 km travel, I might as well bite the bullet and see where it leads”. I take 2 literal steps in, I look around, and I immediately think “these are my people”. For the first time I feel a huge sense of belonging with a whole bunch of (temporarily) strangers, and the sheer amount of hardware and interesting people in there still fills my vivid dreams: #Commodore64, #Amiga, #Vic20, #PC of all shapes and sizes, teams of a couple persons working on a real time raytracing of Stonehenge (this was 2002!), people that brought carpets from their home to decorate the hallways, guys and girls from all across Europe sharing their #technology passion in the friendliest community I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of… #MekkaAndSymposium2002 changed my life forever.

As a #demoscener I made lots of friends and I participated in and won several competitions: #StreamedMusic, #4ch #TrackedMusic, #ANSI, #ASCII, and I also had the pleasure on working on compression and packing #tools that helped a friend of mine win a #4kIntro competition at the young age of 17. I also made a few #cracktro and #intro, but those were never released so they don’t count!

Let’s see, what else:

• I still love #IRC
• I listen to (and make, sometimes) a ton of music, ranging from #chiptune to #BlackMetal, from #ClassicalMusic to #jazz;
• in the past I published some #tech and #gaming videos on my YouTube channels;
• I stream #games, #tech and #dnd campaigns on my Twitch channel (although rarely as of late);
• I’m an #OpenSource contributor and I maintain (sparsely nowadays) some modules for #Kodi that support Amazon Prime Video;
• I’m waiting for my friend @Dubmood to spin up a #mastodon named EFnet (short for Elon-Free network, @macaw.social you lost a great opportunity there);
• … and I guess that’s it for the moment.

How was that for an #introduction?

I got a pick-up slip in the mail for a package from some French author whose name and works ring no bell at all, and it's kinda making me nervous...

The only possibly link I see is a #demoscener who quoted said author in one of his #shadertoy creations, and whom I gave my address a while ago for some homemade chilli sauce, but AFAIK he lives in England, not France.

Guess I'll go to the post office to pick it up after I've made some food for the kid and me...