1998 UPDATES

(this page is basically a diary)

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1998


Since the links on this page are old (1998), the may or may not work properly. They are no longer maintained.

December 30, 1998
Well, another year comes to an end, this time it's 1998... (Wow, how observant of me ;)
As always I will do a 'summary' of 1998 on my first update in 1999.
The main reason for this update is lack of space on my user account. I therefore re-arranged the gallery pages a bit. I threw out one old pic and moved my latest pic from 'New Pic' to the ordinary gallery.
However another reason was the fact that I had to update the 'Cyberpals' link. So many people just let thei homepages rotten in cyberspace. Some of them have been removed by the web-hosts, other have been removed by their authors. If this continues, I'll soon run out of homepage nursing Cyberpals...
All right then, see ya all next year! Happy new 1999 and welcome back!
December 22, 1998
Damn, time flies when you're busy, doesn't it?
These days I rarely find the time to do something cool for my private pleasure... It's all work...
However... I have updated many of the computer-link categorys. But also the search-link and the other-link.
I don't wanna say too much too early, but I'm planning on completely rework the pages so that they work with style-sheets to make the code more 'future-friendly'. It's so damn much work though, it could take time...
November 10, 1998
Time for some resturcturing in the 'links' section. A new category in the computer section has been added. It's about game development since I'm in the business now...
The cyberpals section has been altered too. There is now an 'e-mail-only' section.
October 28, 1998
Today, I put up a testpage for a exciting new(?) technology called MetaStream. You'll find the link to the testpage on the main 'contents' page.
It's a fine new thing, but you'll have to download a plugin first.
October 21, 1998
Well, well, well.... I recently got an e-mail from the good folks at 3D cafe have put my latest pic into their exclusive gallery. Thanks to that you'll find a 'Platinum award banner' on my site.
Take a look at it here.
The URL to the gallery where my pic is:
http://www.3dcafe.com/gallery/gl-08-05.htm

Now to something else...Perhaps some of the more 'sharp-eyed' will notice that I modified the 'Netscape Now' piccy on the index page. It now recommends Communicator 4.5 which is now officially released.
October 16, 1998
In the old days, nothing was as boring as looking at someone else's link-pages...
It's probably still quite boring, but the trend seems to be moving towards a more positive 'image' for link-pages. The recent 'portal mania' made me think about my own link page. I found out that there are indeed other people that use my link page as a portal.
This makes it worthwhile to maintain the links and expand the 'portal' by adding new ones. It is still primarily for my self so the links will reflect my interests.
There are like 7-8 new links today and I thought I'd mention a few of them...

Alta Vista Photosearch This is a quite interesting service. Type something and it will display thumbnails of related-topic-pics.
Need more cyber-space? How about 11Mb absolutely free? Then Xoom is for you...
Now something really silly. A love calculator. Enter 2 names and it calculates how much chance a relationship between these two stands! Completely pointless, but it can be fun for a while...

Now... Again, should you want to use my links-page as your portal, go to http://hem.passagen.se/des/main-links.htm and bookmark the page...
October 6, 1998
Long time since I added new links... No one really cares about this, so I'll not bore you with what's new, however most of the categories has been altered in some way or another. These links are for personal use but if you want to use my 'links' page as a 'PORTAL' then go to the following URL and bookmark it.
http://hem.passagen.se/des/main-links.htm
September 23, 1998
Hmmm... I guess the good(?) old(!) folks (hey, I'm kidding, OK?)at Impulse must have liked my latest pic. (Impulse are the makers of Imagine, the 3D program I use) In fact they liked it so much, I got an e-mail asking for more... I sent a few more pics and now I have my own little page in their gallery. If you wanna see for yourself, you can find it here.
One odd thing though... Until I released my latest pic, in my opinion, my best pic was 'Enter The Cellar'. Now, I sent this pic to them too, but apparently they didn't like it, because it's not there... Hmm... Makes me think, you know...
September 20, 1998
All right... There are now two more images rendered in the same scene as the original image. These are not as polished or as good as the original. I call these spin-offs. They are rendered in much lower resolution and are only there to show the scene in some different perspectives. The stuff that made the original cool (water, detailed foreground) are not visible in these images and therefore they don't have the same 'grand' feeling about them. In fact one of them is only there to better show the attributes of the house that is too far away to be seen in detail in the original image. The other one is a cool camera angle of the bridge, but it shows that it was rendered in a low resolution, it looks somewhat 'jaggie'.
You will find these 'spin-off images' here...
September 15, 1998
OK, first of all I wanna thank everyone for their comments on my latest work. It's always interesting to hear others opinion. It's also quite easy to see who's a fellow 3D artist and who's not ;)
However.... I would like to point out a few things...
  • I'm not a professional, this is still only a hobbie. I don't have any kind of education in 3D.
  • Imagines output will never match that of SoftImage, Renderman, Wavefront, Lightscape or Maya. Please consider that. All 3D programs are not alike. Imagine has some serious limitations in it's rendering engine!
  • I'm not working on million dollar SGI equipment. The image is created entirely in Imagine on a 50MHz 060 Amiga!

Now, having said that I can also tell you that I've included the Wireframe view of the scene so that people can see for themselves what are polygons and what is faked with Imagemaps (HINT: Nothing is faked ;).
If you're interested you can find the Wireframes here!
September 14, 1998
All right then... This is it... About two months after I've first announced it, it's FINALLY ready...
I'm of course talking about my latest picture... What I've just done, I won't be doing for a loooooong time. It simply takes too much time.
People ask me 'Daniel, why do you spend so much time on doing something that wont get you any profit?'
Well... To me this is like... painting... I used to paint pictures with a brush in the old days... Nowadays I use a computer, but the basic thought is the same... I have a certain vision and I want to convert that vision to something others can see, so that they can share my vision. Simply put I'm an artist who wishes to express himself. So, yeah... This pic may not make me any money, but it is there for my personal satisfaction as an artist...
Click here to see the actual thing...
September 2, 1998
Just a minor update... A friend pointed out a couple of minor bugs and then I discovered some huge ones myself... A whole bunch of broken links on the main 'no-frames' page.
In case anyone wonderes about the status of THE pic, I can say: 'It's rendering'. I started the render midnight, sept 1:st.
August 28, 1998
Hooray! I've received my new SIMM now! I now have 80 Mb RAM and that is enough to render the pic!
As always you can the whole story here!
August 11, 1998
Now, the expected has happened again... Yeah, my 'Big project' deadline is a couple of days away, but I can already tell you it's going to be another broken deadline... Why? Well, here's the problem... I estimated that the polygon count would end up at aprox. 150.000... I actually checked the project yesterday (and it's basically ready to render) and get this: There are 267.788 polygons in the scene!! That's a lot of polygons, and I also use some image maps, so what happens is that I don't have enough memory to render the picture!!
The bad news is that I need a single sided SIMM module to expand my current setup (48 Mb). They are not easy to find at all though, and I'm still looking for them... If anyone knows where i can get such a module, don't be shy... e-mail me....
Ok, then... Obviously I have changed the text in the gallery...again...
August 1, 1998
OK, if you're visiting today, you might have come to check out the new pic... Is it ready? Well... Why don't you read the story here...
July 13, 1998
A looong time with no updates. Ouch! (I've been busy watching the World Cup ;) (That still doesn't explain my absence in May, does it?) But here it is, and more than a few things has changed...
The 'links' section has been completely redesigned with new graphics and a java-script. Lot's of new link categories (and links) and... Would you believe it, -a new picture is about to be finished. Read all about the hype here! (It's not just another picture...)
Also, changes in this (news) section and lot's of 'internal' changes! (e.g. almost all html docs has been renamed to give this site a more consequent structure). As always, if you find any bugs or if you experience any problems with the new 'Links' section, please inform me about it!
April 28, 1998
Changes in the 'movie' section.
(I added a Star Trek 'sub-division'. I rearranged some existing links but there is also a new one, Outpost 21 , a good StarTrek site.(All you 'trekkies' out there should check it out)
I also changed the color of the visited links. The old color was too 'much'... (The new color are also 'explained' in the 'Readme' sections)
April 27, 1998
Some small changes in the cyberpals section. (I had to update, one of them actually updated his homepage!)
I actually found some bugs here & there... A couple of them on the CLUT page, which would explain why no one noticed them ;)

April 17, 1998
Yesterday, April 16:th 1998, computer game developers 'Golminds Development' decided to discontinue it's activities.
The remaining members (me included) officially pronounced GMD dead. The links to the Goldminds site has therefore been removed. (Much like the site itself)
May the project rest in peace.
(I also had to update the 'info about me page' because of this)

April 9, 1998
Again, some new links have been added... (amazon.com, computer.com & mailexcite)
I felt it was time to remove the 'preview of the month' page from the 'gallery' until further notice, so that's what I did...
I also made the 'visited link' color a little bit brighter. (Wow!)

April 2, 1998
Some minor changes in the 'links' section... - Yeah, I know... Very interesting...

March 31, 1998
Some new links... (XML-links and other) You know where to look for them...

March 20, 1998
Do you also want to reach people on the internet, but you don't have their e-mail address? Well, I do sometimes.. Yahoos 'people search' is pretty good at it. It's worth a try, anyway.
I've also got a confirmation about the java-script working in Internet Explorer 4.0...

March 18, 1998
OK, I don't know if it works yet, but... I finally changed the Java Script in the left frame, so now it should work in that evil 'Microsnot' browser (v4) as well as in Netscape...
(Please send bug reports if it doesn't)
I also removed/added some links... (Does anyone care about that?)

March 3, 1998
No good news, I'm afraid... I've had a heavy HD crash, and as it looks now, I've lost 1.3 Gb of data!
I have not given up entirely (on retrieving some of the data) but things look very bad indeed.
This will of course have a huge impact on the future availability of new pictures in the gallery. I had some 3 projects very close to completion, now they're very probably all gone...
A new page has been added, nevertheless, to my site... It's a 'form' where you can fill in you thoughts about this site. Have a go at it here! (It is also accessible through 'contents')
The 'come.to/sevo' address is now operational. Try it out!

February 25, 1998
A banner on my site??? Yep, it's true! I 'ordered' the free (I hope) redirection service from the 'come.to/surf.to/travel.to' company (?).
Anyway, the alternative address should work within 48 hours (or so they say). The alternative URL is:
http://come.to/sevo
Otherwise there's not much new, except, I got rid of a couple of links to pages that haven't been updated for a very long time... I'll check all my links some day...

February 13, 1998
Friday the 13:th... No major stuff like yesterday, but I re-aligned all the documents in the CLUT page to 'CENTER'. I also fixed some minor quirks...
Perfection is not far away! :)

February 12, 1998
Now the documents on the CLUT site have been validated as well.
I also had to change the 'search' function on my search page. I had an embedded AltaVista search function, but suddenly it wouldn't work anymore. Now it's a standard link to AltaVista instead. (and a couple of mirror sites).
To the list of free ISP I added 'Netaddress'
As you can see above, I added a 'link' to e-mail me if you want to be notified when this homepage is updated. Alternatively, you could use the 'NetMind' automated function.
I also -sigh- changed all the documents to be max 600 pixels wide. Before, the tables were 90% of the screen width. I also had lot's of stuff that was outside the tables which I now moved within the table tags...

February 11, 1998
Minor bug-fixes, further validation of documents, slight changes in the 'Cyberpals' section... Not much to see actually...

February 10, 1998
Guess what, for the last couple of days I've been validating the HTML code in my documents... If you use Netscape, you probably won't notice any difference at all, but according to the validator there were MANY violations against the HTML 3.2 standard.
Now, most -but not all- documents are 100% 3.2 compliant. Perhaps it will work better with other browsers...
Some minor bugs were also corrected...

February 3, 1998
Minute change. I rewrote (parts of) the 'about Microsoft' text that you get to see if you try to download IE from the index page. I also adjusted some minor 'quirks' found elsewhere on the site.

January 23, 1998
Yipeee! Good news today folks.... On January 22:nd 1998 Netscape Communications announced that they will no longer charge for their Netscape Navigator/Communicator software... Not only that though... They will also be releasing the source code for free!
So long Microsoft... Well, not really, but anyway, this was enough to inspire me to write down what I think about IE and their policy... You can read it here!
Some links were also added to the 'science' section...

January 21, 1998
The usual 'removed a few links, added a couple of others' stuff... Like anyone cared... Well I do!

January 14, 1998
I often use my links page instead of bookmarks because I work in a school I don't always use the same computer... Whatever... I added a 'Tech News' category under 'links/computer' with links to the places I visit every day to increase my knowledge and awareness of the computer industry. Yep, that's why I know so much! If you read these every day, you might learn as much as I do! :)

January 8, 1998
First 'log entry' of the year. Again... yes, those were my exact words a year ago, only then it was 1997 of course...
There were 37 updates to this site during 1997. This is actually the number of days. The number of actual changes is much larger...
I learned a lot in 1997. In 1998 I will be testing HTML 4.0 and if time permits: JAVA! Who knows, I might be writing my own applets within a year. All this depends on how much spare time I have...
1998 should also see the release of 'Fire At Mill'. The game I am involved in doing. You can read more about that here.
Then of course we have the gallery. It was finally included in february 26:th '97, after many delays... Speaking of delays. Some of you might be wondering whatever the hell happened to my updates in the gallery... Well... I've been busy... But don't give up just yet. Some day.... Some day....

Todays actual updates: Text on 'Preview' page changed again. Text on index page changed. (The one about Internet Explorer). I also added links to 'Tucows' and 'Truste' and moved some other links around... I moved the 1996 updates to a separate page.

Click here for older (1997) updates.  
Click here for older (1996) updates.