A Portrait of Dario Phong

Adok & Dario Phong

Dario Phong started writing for Hugi in early 1999. His first articles were published in the coding corner in Hugi 14. In Summer 1999 he became a member of the Hugi Core & Royal Family. His position in the Royal Family is the one of the "Mage", the compression mage. He chose this position since he had been editing a corner on data compression algorithms for a few issues.

Adok: Hi Artus! Could you introduce yourself to our readers?

DP: Hi Claus. It's nice to be again in such a situation (we did this interview two times before, for some reason we threw them away). Let's see if the third one can be the good one. E-))

Hi reader. Nothing you know about me really is the way I'm. So you better clear it and start with a new way of thinking about me. Ok, hi. After some handshakes we decide to go to a bar, take something to drink and talk there. And so here our conversation starts, which for the case would be something like that: Me sitting, Adok on the right and you on the left. All of us free of external pressures and worries. Hoping to learn more about each other. Today about me. Tomorrow, hopefully, about you. And I start to speak.

My name is Arturo San Emeterio Campos. That strange name "San Emeterio" gave an opportunity to children to make many jokes, they were no fun but I had to endure them. Ok, that's a good starting point. It's good that I realize that young that I'll have to shut up with many things in this world, because I wouldn't be able to solve them. I see my life till now as a happy walk towards reality. But let's go a little bit more away than that. I was born in 1982. In Madrid, when my mother was twenty. She had used to live in Barcelona (also in Spain) but she had got tired of her father, and when she had the legal age of maturity, 18, she left home, and went to Madrid, with the hope of finding something better. Assuming I'm something good, we could say that the only good thing that she got was me.

Imagine a twenty-year-old, with no one to help her and a baby to take care of. Partly because she decided that my father was not a good thing for me, and I can agree that he wasn't. We had to endure some situations which I wouldn't wish you to have. Fortunately I was so young, and so blind... For me it was quite fun and happy. My mother had to work hard, and we hardly had anything, only food. She was wise enough to buy good food. But we had nothing else. Apart from each other. Though she worked a lot, she used to play with me.

Then at the age of 6 or so, we moved again to Barcelona, with the hope of finding something better. At the start things were very difficult. Unfortunately here in Spain there was an economic crisis, and if you've got nothing in a crisis, government doesn't care about you. No one does. Another big truth that time let me realize. Here in Barcelona I went to the school. I was unsociable. That later became shyness. I used to spend most of my time playing in my house or going to the library, till we got a little black-and-white TV, in front of which I spent too much time. I had some friends. I remember that I was quite poor (well, the situation now is not much better). Later I could understand that money was one of the keys of our society. Because of the fact that my mother had to work during the holidays I went to a kind of place - for poor people (including people from outside Spain) - where you went to the swimming pool, played football, and did many other activities. Here I met the other side of society. Very poor people, people with a lot of problems, with problems in their families such as violence, drugs and others. I had a quite fun time there.

In my school I met another part of society. Common people. Their main goal was to have the latest game. Then in my school I had the BIG pleasure of getting to know people who were not accepted anywhere. They were poor. They had problems in their families. Violence mainly. No one wanted them, no school wanted them, no guy wanted to be their classmate, marginal people. For any reason my extremely innocent mind and my unsociability (which sometimes made such people come to me) let me enjoy one of the biggest mental pleasures, and learn one of the most important facts in this world. I knew the person. I forgot the facts and learned what they were like. They were so cool and so kind, they were smart and friendly. Then I learned to look further of what society says. And I found friends. Good people who were not as happy as they could be, just because many people didn't accept them. Another sad lesson which opened my eyes a little bit more.

Someday, I opened my eyes and realized what I was. I cried a lot. I couldn't understand most of the things. But unfortunately (or fortunately, I like the truth) I knew enough to know what people thought of me. Another hard and sad lesson. Coming back to what I did. I had no computer. Only a TV, and a little tape player. I used clothes from other people. Our economic situation had improved only a little bit. Then my mother, wise as she had always been, sent me to the country side during the holidays. To a kind of school, where you learned many things about nature. Here I met nature. Being in the middle of the forest, with no other noise than the forest's, was a really good experience.

Later I learned that distance colds friendships and kills love. More lessons to my bag. I had to move away. Then I remember that my family, for some reason, wanted to give me a computer. It was 1997 if I'm not wrong. It all started with a few games. Doom, Quake, they were quite nice. But I also liked applications, someday I saw my friend going to MS-DOS and typing cd and dir. I asked him for some commands, and started trying them out. I remember that at first I was scared of it. I was under Windows but in MS-DOS, and I didn't know how to get out of it, so I started to type a lot of bullshit, till I got down and decided to turn the computer off, I was worried.

I'm a self-taught man. I learned DOS. And then I saw some .bats, I saw that they were some kind of executables. So I played around with them, I already wanted to make programs. I thought, if it can be done, I want to know how to do so. My best achievement was modifying some bytes of an exe with edit.com, of course it hanged, so I knew that wasn't the solution. Someday I had the luck of meeting a programmer. I convinced him to explain me how it worked, and to give me a tutorial for a compiler. C was born for me. It was difficult for me to start thinking like a programmer. You should have in mind that I did it all alone, and he rarely gave me help.

I always wanted to know, I always wanted to have knowledge. So the next logic step was gathering information about programming. Then I met them: Assembly and the demoscene. If there was something better than C, I had to know it. And the demoscene, it was so cool, those things moving around with that music, I also wanted to do it. And then I started. Going from C to assembly was VERY difficult. Again no one to help me, just a few tuts.

My first effect was a simple fire. But man it was 100% assembly, and it worked fine. E-) I was so proud of it. But you have to keep in mind that I never had an Inet connection. My first contacts were through snail, then I joined my first group, PhyMosys. I made an intro, it was my first, you can forget it. Then I found Hugi. I learned how to use the FPU, and wrote some tuts. Then I wanted to make another 4k intro (garbled) and so I needed compression, read the article by Picard about lzss, and everything started.

As I told you I always want to have as much knowledge as possible, thus I looked for more and more information. Then I wrote a simple tut about lzss. Then I was already hooked. Too late for me. E-) Lzp came. Mtf. Bwt. Huffman. Arithmetic coding. Range coder. More lzp. More articles. My home page. Ppmc. Programmed them in assembly and C.

Oh, sorry Adok. Seemed that you wanted to ask something, shoot.

Adok: What makes data compression worth dealing with in your opinion?

DP: Nothing. Just got hooked. I liked it more and more. And the more I did, the more I liked it.

Now I'm a good compression programmer and article writer. So now I have decided that this hobby that I like so much must be my job. I can't say anything, but I may do a professional project about compression.

One of the big challenges of compression for me, was making it better than pkzip did. And I achieved that. Now I want to do some work in ppmz, ctw and switching (the states of art). But I also want to do some practical algorithms.

But I'm also busy with other projects.

Adok: What are your plans for the future?

DP: I'll die.

Before that, I'll worry about death.

Fortunately our brain can't really be focused on a single topic, so I'll do many other things. E-)

Adok: What do you think about girls? Do you have a girlfriend?

DP: Girls... nice word. Reminds me of nice girls. But it also reminds me of many other things, some of them are not that beautiful nor enjoyable.

The first would be trying to define my position. I don't like fanaticism. Thus I don't like feminism, nor the opposite. They are only a way of getting headaches and problems. I leave this task for the world, it does it quite well [ironic smile].

Girls are complex. Humans are complex. Thus they also are. Ok. Everything is complex, but that's not the matter. Ok, do you realize the error there? I'm trying to attack the matter as if it was a simple programming problem. And that's not the way.

Maybe we could say that I love them, but they don't love me. E-) But that would be making it too simple, and that's not the answer that you deserve, nor that I can accept. I don't love any currently. Actually I'm quite happy. I've lived many things. Now I understand and accept them. But girls, I'm still a beginner at this matter. Thus I don't really know what to think. Ok, I can't achieve that way. Let's separate the problem in three: friendship, sex and love.

Friendship, the rules for friendship are a complex as they are with a boy. Maybe there are a few more differences. They've been taught in a different way. They are a little bit more sensible. But again I'm saying something that I wouldn't believe myself. That's a topic, let me quote the following from John Kenneth Galbraith: "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." I'm sensible, and I do talk about my feelings - my friends know so - but they are often - due to the way they have been taught - a little bit more sensible. So a friendship with them is ok. But there's a problem compared to a friendship with a guy (I'm heterosexual, that is I like girls, I'll assume you know so from this point at on). If you have a friend who is a guy you don't have to worry about if you fall in love with him, or if you want to fuck with him. On the other hand if your friend is a girl... damn, that's quite more complex then. And what if you love her? What if you want to fuck her? What if both of you do but are not sure about what will happen next? Do you see? That's the problem with having a girl who sexually attracts you. Let me quote again: "el sexo lo jode todo", something like "sex fucks up everything". Which means that we are doomed to sex [because it's our nature, we just like it] but that it takes a lot of problems.

Sex. Sex is different for every person, so it's for me. Sex is a good exercise. It also helps you feel better mentally (just take a look at a monk, making sex with animals or with little boys, it sux). Nowadays sex is a lot easier than it used to be. Condoms help a lot with diseases and babies, which both are big headaches at such a young age [and also when you are middle aged too!]. In short words... fuck! again a simple solution for a complex problem? Before another interesting quote, let me tell you that we run out of time anyway, maybe some other day I'll tell you more. Henry Louis Mencken: "For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong." Sex is something weird, due to the fact that it has to be private. And so you have less chances of it. However, and being realistic again: Steve Martin: "I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy."

Love. I seem to like extremely complex problems. We could also say that they come to me. We could just not say. That would be much better. Let's drink a little bit more. Ok, let's resume with it. Look my dear friend, love doesn't exist.

If you still are mentally alive, I'll explain that. We got a false conception of what love is. Probably you have seen "Ally MacBeal". Her dreams are way too innocent, stupid and pathetic. But that's in fact what we've been taught to believe in! We expect something perfect. Many times I've cried, and my tears were the best explanation: while you are alive you'll get nothing else than unsatisfactions, mostly because you have learned to believe in satisfactions as a daily basis food. So we are hungry. We are starving! But it's our own fault, and it's not! Everything is too complex to be explained with just a few phrases. We have been taught that way. We can't change that. But we can, and we should, and I must, refuse to do the same with the people that surrounds us. Let them be free, I don't want a world full of blind, unhappy zombies, sitting in front of the TV!!

E_( I can't explain it all, because I don't understand it myself. But the fact is that you make your own reality. In my case I like it to be as close as possible to the real reality, the one which plainly sucks. So love is only a little bit lie, which should be only accepted if we keep in mind the fragility and the fleetness of love and life. These are my wise words made to be misunderstood by fools and ignored by wise men. Hopefully you'll catch part of it.

Ok, that's the way I think. But what happened in my life in respect to friendship, sex and love? There's nothing to say about sex, because there's nothing, you may think it's sad and a little bit weird, I will say that it's the combination of many things which made it that way, at least till now. So let's move on, friendship. I'd say that I'm sceptic about it, but I don't believe in scepticism, so I would say that I'm critical about it. I used to have a few (she) friends. I remember a girl who really found me interesting and asked me about the things I did and thought. A long time without seeing her, though. I remember another who explained to me her sexual and emotional experiences (she was very beautiful, and very funny). It was a good lesson. I remember another, who I never loved but always liked. I still see her from time to time. She's nice. But she's out of my life for ever. That's the way it works, we had different hobbies, different friends. I remember one who was very intelligent but wanted to be free, and her wish of freedom led her to a prison, the lack of studies. And I remember another one, whom to some extent I loved, but never took the time to know her. And I remember another one, who was beautiful, and funny, we were friends. But again lack of compatibility in hobbies, friends, WORLDS, made it impossible again. Nor even a friendship now. It's so sad that they and me let things end without a word, nor even goodbye, no handshake, no nothing (actually that happened with boys, and it hurt as well). Don't get the picture of a sad feeling, some things are. But some are funny. Some gave me good lessons. Some knowledge. And some just were. I'm afraid I have to move on to the next one love.

My life is not a song, and I'm not a musician, nor a poet, nor a good writer. I'm just a guy who knows that sometime he'll die and prefers to speak before it's too late, to enjoy as much as he can. So I start now. When I was very young I had a girlfriend. You can say she was quite beautiful, because pure. Or you can say it was only a way of getting really hurt. The fact is that I had to move, and thus told her bye. It was the first scar, on an almost cold heart nowadays. Then a lot of years without the need of love. Seemed I forgot it. I cared little about sex, and did not care at all about love. So it was no problem. The problems came later. The end of the school. I played my cards, but didn't know the game.

I was in love with a girl who was in love with another guy, who refused her as much as she refused me. But I'm very happy about that, because in fact it was the clap which told me to open the eyes and see who I was, and what was surrounding me. Very hard and sad moment. But had to live it. At the same time I talked a lot with another girl, and made her laugh a lot. And the last day, someone told me she was in love with me. But again I had to move, and thus had no time even to start loving her, no time to get hurt, no nothing. I prefer trying it. From this point on, I realize I want love. But that's like running into a big wall. And now I'm lost in the mist, looking for something, don't know what yet. Before that I tried it again, and again, three times I think. No way. I would say no luck, if I believed in luck. But I don't, so I'll say it's a bunch of different things which are all impossible to know, analyse or understand. Result? I feel like a stranger somewhere in a bad country, where all the jokes are lies, and everything is a fake, and the only thing you really know is how alone you are.

Adok: What's the political situation in your hometown like?

DP: Sucks big time. Like most of them. You know, they are so powerful that they can't remember their initial ideas (if they were good ones, which I truly doubt). If someone asks me about power I'll tell him/her to read "The Lord of the Rings". That can answer a lot. Power corrupts. The who once was a wise leader now is just a son of a bitch who does everything he can (illegal or immoral, or both) to retain the power. Robert Mugabe (if I spelled it right) is the president of a part of Africa. Of course once he did good things, but now he only wants to retain the power. He has changed the laws many times (up to twenty, in twenty years of power) to suit his needs, not the needs of the people. He's promoting a racist attitude against white people just to retain power. Many people have died due to his lust of power. He has killed his opponents, and has faked the elections. Is that fair? But please, make this question about your political system, you'll see they lie to you just to be able to retain their power.

And now it's my time, Spain. Spain sucks big time, no matter what they say. We're technically not as developed as we should be. Don't believe if you hear the opposite.

We had a dictatorship during a lot of time . Franco (friend of Hitler's and Mussolini's). Democracy started in 1978. Still there are many fascists and assassins in power. During a lot of time we had socialism, but four years ago the fascists came back. They had been always there, so it wasn't a real surprise. Now they pretend they are not. They say they are the best party. But you know: why do they deny that they are fascist? because that helps them to retain the power. They wouldn't be elected if they said "we're back, the age of FRANCO is here again, let's kick all the negros out of there, only Spaniards deserve to live in Spain". They don't say so, but they are doing so! The laws about immigration are getting worse for immigrants now. We don't want them as persons, we just want them to work in our agriculture, and when that's done, fuck them. It's as sad as that. Of course they won't tell you. Why should they?

But there's more. Education. Only for people who can afford it. In fact that leads to the situation when people with power (and money) teach their sons how to retain the power. And so on. See?

But that's of course not all. We have terrorism in our perfect Spain. This takes long to explain, and I doubt that you are very interested in that, so I will just tell you the same tale of always. A big country with a powerful army conquers their neighbours. They retain that power with the army. Time goes on, democracy comes. Now they use the army to make a law which suits their needs, of course the land they conquered is part of the big country now. And then more time goes by. Now the law says that the little country is part of the big one, it's the law, it's democracy. That's a shit! The little country loses its culture and language. When democracy evolves, they try to regain their old rights. But the big country doesn't want that to be.

Ok, let's put names, the big country is Spain, the little ones are Euskadi and Cataluņa (Catalonia, Barcelona, Olympic Games 1992, remember?). Euskadi has terrorists who claim that Euskadi must be free again. Once they were good, and only killed people from the army. But now they are corrupted (like everything else that has power). Now they kill civilians. They don't care much about whom they kill. They were in peace during a year. Now they are back to killing.

The socialist party fought an illegal war against them, but that once that became known, that helped the fascists come back to power, saying "see how bad the socialists are, they kill people" (although they were killing people under the name of a dictatorship for a lot of years). Then PP, partido popular, popular party, I think it's ironic that sons-of-a-bitch who only care about themselves hide under such a name which makes the people think that they act for the people... PP came to power four years ago, and they won again, so we'll have to stand them for four years more. And you know what they did? NOTHING! God damn them. They who so many times claimed that the socialist party did nothing (but an illegal war) to stop the terrorists, they, they did nothing. Oh, shit. They once tried to speak with the terrorists, but it was just a "mascarada" (a false act) made to shut up the voices that said "hey look, in Ireland they stopped the terrorist talking". Now they say terrorists are very bad, and that stuff, but do nothing. Also they want to rule in Euskadi. In Euskadi now the nationalist party is in power. And the PP (with Jose Maria Aznar, that dwarf, son of a bitch with an ugly moustache) does nothing but claiming that the nationalist party is responsible for the acts of the terrorists, do you know why they do so? just to gain votes. To rule in Euskadi. To gain with lies what they can't gain with the army now. There's more but that already got long enough, and I'm getting tired and angry at it, so let's move on to another topic.

Adok: Which time of the year do you prefer, spring, winter, summer or even fall?

DP: Probably fall. It's not too hot. It's not too cold. You can sleep well. You can sit in front of the computer without problems. Sometimes you can wear T-shirts. The falling leafs are quite beautiful.

Adok: What's your favourite colour?

DP: Adok-ran-out-of-ideas-alarm!! E-) Grey colours. grey-blue (that kind of blue I overuse in my code E-). The colour of the full moon. The colour of my mother's eyes (like mines). The colour of the sea. The colour of a naked girl's skin. The darkness.

Adok: Give us three basic tips for people who want to start coding.

DP: 1 - Like always, think long-term. What do you need the language for? Would asm do any good to you? Do you have time for it? Or should you code in C? First comes your opinion. But I imagine you want to know mine.

Assembly will give you the real knowledge about the machine. And it will explain you how other programming languages work, because in fact all of them make assembly code (well, machine code). I think assembly is the only way to get the smallest code and the fastest code. But it should be used in those situations.

In the professional world you'll rarely use it. Assembly is only used for device programming and optimizing till the death inner loops. You'll discover that c/c++ is ok for most situations.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn assembly. I don't complain about having learned it. But don't get hooked on it, move on to other languages and other ways of thinking. And think long-term.

2 - Know people who have the software. Yes, piracy is the only way for most of us. That's no problem. You won't feel guilty. But remember that piracy is only a way, not a goal itself. So neither get hooked on it.

If you want to code that's not the only thing you need, go and search for information, download as much as you can, and store it. Online time is expensive so use it wisely. Get contacts here and there who know how to code. Don't feel discouraged when you meet I-Think-I'm-Too-Good-For-You- Little-Lamer.

Well, you'll, but don't worry about such losers. You'll find thousands of them, and also outside the demoscene. So get used to ignore the bullshit that they throw by their mouth (instead of their ass). Once you're ready...

3 - Start coding! The more you do, the more you'll know. At first it will be very difficult. Read other people's code, and learn how do they do that and this. Think long-term but get short-term goals. Otherwise you'll feel like a loser and will give up. On the other hand short-term goals will let you realize your own progress, and enjoy it too! But also set some long-term goals like making a demo or an intro. Assume that the first thing you'll do will be pure shit. Don't worry. Show them to your contacts, and let them give advice. Most of the time you'll see that nobody cares about you and what you do. That's what happen till you are not very good [that's a pity, I know]. But keep in mind that's it your job, it's what you like, it's your destiny's path (ups, sorry, that's a techno song E-). So don't worry much, and follow your own way. Nobody is going to help you, but you can do it, if you want. Remember it's only up to you. However, don't do what they did, help beginners who ask you, be a teacher of at least one topic (like I did with compression or FPU), think that's good for them, that's what you didn't have but wanted to have. That time they will. Fortunately some day there will be enough information, till then, we have to write them ourselves.

Adok: You coded several 4k intros. What's your opinion about the world of 4k intros?

DP: Maybe I should have coded more, and maybe I should have seen more of them, but I already feel free to give my opinion on that topic without much fear of being wrong.

4k are exhausted. All that could be done, has been done. 4k got short for our creativity. We have to move on.

But let's explain it a little bit more. A lot of time has passed since 4k started, it would be difficult to say how much, and since then many things have been done. The state of art has been reached from all the point of views possible. Picard did something really impressive, Mesha. Which did not only prove that 4k was a lot of space for such good minds, but also that 4k had reached a top with 3d.

Let me explain, hardly anyone will be able to do something as BIG as Mesha, but if he does, who cares? It will just be some boring 3d scenes. Mesha itself is not good, but it is stunning. I think that now 3d in 4k hardly makes any sense. We are bored of a plain torus (though I'm the first to admit the difficulty that it poses). In that, 4k already reached the top. And a lot of cool 3d has been done too, Void*, Live, Omniscent, Isoworld, Outline, etc. Many others with music and good effects, like Purple Dreams, Spin, Never Bored, and Turn it back. And also some things worth checking, like Void3 with voice-synthesis, Anatyda for windows9x, or Chaos Overflow and its feeling. In conclusion, too many good things.

And then I come to my last idea, 4k is not enough, it should expanded, without, however, reaching the size of a 64k intro.

Do you know what would totally rule? an intro with the 3d of Mesha, the sound of Void3 and the feeling of Never Bored. Tell me if someday it will be done.

But then the question arises, how much do we need, 8k, the double? or maybe 12k, a good number (some say)? In any case it's quite clear for me that 4k are already too little, and that we should move on. So here I invite the 4k coders to change their affilation to something like 12k coders, and show us new and exciting things.

Adok: What's your personal motto?

DP: I've got many. Probably the main one, which rules all of them, is that no idea is really the truth, and that I should use it for my matters and also for finding a better one. But damn, let me quote a few I like... [sorry, but I *love* quotes]

POWER

Henry Cate VII: "The problem with political jokes is they get elected."

Voltaire: "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

Chester Bowles: "Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians."

Amy Tan: "You see what power is - holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them!"

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604-1605: "O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant."

LEARNING

Malcolm S. Forbes: "Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."

Chinese Proverb: "To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."

G. M. Trevelyan: "Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading."

Will Durant: "Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."

Lyndon B. Johnson, December 13, 1963: "We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it."

SUCCESS

Beverly Sills: "You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

Winston Churchill: "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."

Mary Pickford: "This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down."

Erica Jong: "Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow talent to the dark place where it leads."

YOURSELF

Henry David Thoreau: "In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world."

Andre Gide: "There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.'"

Joseph Conrad: "Facing it, always facing it, that the way to get through. Face it."

Euripides: "Do not consider painful what is good for you."

FANATISM

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): "The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

Robert Louis Stevenson: "If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong."

Bertrand Russell: "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

OTHERS

Christian Furchtegott Gellert: "Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying."

Walter Bagehot: "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

David McCullough: "Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love."

Clive Barnes: "Television is the first truly democratic culture -- the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want."

Albert Einstein (1879-1955): "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Henry Ward Beecher: "Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry."

Helen Keller, My Religion, 1927: "Science may have found a cure for most evils; but is has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings."

Steve Martin: "I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy."

William Butler Yeats: "Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

Bette Davis, The Lonely Life, 1962: "It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies."

Roy M. Goodman: "Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination."

Samuel Johnson: "I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."

And above all:

Louise Erdrich: "They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness."

Sorry for so many quotes, but I think you should know them.

I don't believe in all of them (read the last one), but I think they are worth the time. Moreover, I put so many because I think I can't express myself with words. Of course a single quote can't say anything. So instead I put many, with the hope that they give you a feeling about what's going on between my ears.

Adok: What would you never do in your life?

DP: Answer such a question. E-))) In Spain they say "nunca digas de este agua no bebere, ni este cura es mi padre", which means "never say I won't drink that water nor this priest isn't my father". E-D So I can't safely answer that. Maybe I affirm that I won't live forever.

But now is time to say good bye. I started in the scene not so long ago. So far I got more than expected. I just wanted to be able to make demos. But I got a lot more, won in a competition, was well recognised, and above all found good friends. Of course if you have followed my career in Hugi you'll notice that for me it doesn't only matter what I get, but also what I give.

I tried to make them better programmers with articles about things like FPU, sorting or compression. I tried to make them better sceners with reflections about this scene, which should be a double way channel. And I also tried to make them better persons, by letting them know what I think, because I learned about myself looking at the other people. Also I made an intro and took part in Hugi, to make your moments in front of this screen more enjoyable.

The comments by many people let me think that I have achieved it all. Not a radical change, but a little seed, which some day will flourish. Unfortunately I won't be there to enjoy it.

I have to study, to get good marks. I'm not sure if I'll be able to afford my career, so good marks is the way to get part of it financed. Spain is not a good place to study, 30 years ago still was ruled by fascism. Now being poor in Spain sucks big time. The way to get money is to have a good job, and I need a career. But studying takes a lot of time, as you probably know. But it does take more when you have to reach high marks. However, I don't only feed of studies. I also have my friends. They take time too, but it's time well spent. Lastly I have time for my hobbies.

There are two, compression and demoscene. However, compression will be also my job, thus I have a lot of things to do. I have to become a better programmer. To do so I have to spend a lot of time learning new languages and implementing compression algorithms. Also I'm a promoter of free knowledge. That takes a lot of time too! It's not just writing, it's teaching. You have to study the thing you have to explain harder than usually. Besides, you also have to learn how to explain it. Thus I hardly have spare time for demoscene.

I don't want to be inactive, that goes against my conception of demoscene. I think it's time to quit Hugi and the demoscene, and leave room for new generations. It's time to move on. Having done my own part, I leave demoscene, with good wishes, not for demoscene but rather for you all. I always say "see you soon". It's not the case. Now it's time to say "farewell". Thanks and good luck.

Adok & Dario Phong