One of the things that contributed significantly to MindCandy 2 being delayed for 18 months was self-inflicted implosion. I got so hung up in the project — worrying about what to do, how to do it, when to do it, who was waiting for it, what was affected by it, etc. — that I self-destructed and sought out anything that would help me avoid working on it.

Oh, I wanted to work on it. I love capturing video, especially from older computers doing their thing. I love processing it without touching the picture detail; I love compressing it to within an inch of its life without affecting picture quality. I love distributing it. And I especially loved the subject material. But left unchecked, my mind tends to enter a recursive death-spiral feedback loop during moments of stress and I just spin my mental wheels.

I started to get that hung up over my Block Party plans and obligations. Should I attend? If so, what should I bring? Should I give a talk? If so, on what? Should I bother with a compo entry? If so, what compo? Is it worth going if none of my very close friends will be there? If so, who will I talk to? What talks should I attend? Ahh! Aaaaaaahh!!

Five weeks ago, I was in #blockparty telling s_tec how much I enjoyed the invtro, and after a brief conversation, he innocently stated something that reminded me, after so many years, why I love the scene and all its related offshoots:

[14:49] <__Trixter> Almost makes me want to write a demo again :) but I'm not sure I will. I can't compete with the big boys and this hunk of junk is much slower than my imagination is
[14:50] <s_tec> So? Making demos isn't about winning, it's about making.

It is indeed. Thank you for the reminder; it was cathartic.

With my head cleared, I was able to sort out all of my thoughts, organize them, and get them down on paper (well, into a text file). I have a very clear direction on what I want to accomplish and how to accomplish it. Whether I get it done in time for Block Party ’08 or not, I make daily progress. This is a good thing. The experience, like all fun programming, is not unlike relaxing in a trance-like state punctuated by occasional moments of pure exhilaration.

I am working on creating a nearly useless piece of software. Only a handful of people will ever use it. It serves no practical purpose. But it is mine, created with my bare hands, where nothing like it existed before in the hardware space it commands.

For the curious, here is the some insight into my madness: MONOTONE development notes

I taught myself Pascal in high school. I was not admitted to the AP course my high school was offering due to my overall GPA, so I taught myself to 1. spite the arrogant jerk of a teacher who denied me, and 2. follow along with the course so I could spend time with my friends. I had been taught other languages (LOGO when I was 12, and BASIC when I was 13) so I wasn’t a stranger to programming. What I was a stranger to, however, was discipline.

My early code, which includes my early demo coding, is sloppy. Oh, the code is nice to look at and doesn’t contain spelling errors, but it is incredibly sloppy. Instead of using REP MOVSW to copy memory around, or even Turbo Pascal’s move() procedure, I would copy one array to another byte by byte. Instead of sorting an array by inserting an array set into a sorted binary tree and then copying it back to the array (heapsort), I would loop through the array and swap crap as necessary (bubblesort). Instead of learning how to use pointers, I would try to trick the compiler into giving me multiple data segments (which had the side effect of bloating the executable). Essentially, I lacked experience, insight, and wisdom — and my programs were buggy and slow as a result.

Today, nearly 20 years later, that is not the case. I still program in Turbo Pascal, but I use pointers/heap, objects, inheritance, and especially in-line assembler in places that need it. I understand proper data structures a lot better now (still struggling with tries, but I’ll get it eventually).  I write my code as if I am delivering it to someone else to maintain.  I can’t say that I am ashamed of anything I’ve written past 1997.

I mention all this because the PC Speaker tracker, something that most people bang out in a day, has taken over two weeks and I haven’t written more than 50 lines of code.   What I have done, however, is:

• Spent 3 hours writing up various design and structure ideas in a notes file
• Spent 2 hours last night laying in bed trying to visualize object-oriented tracker design while preventing playback performance from turning to shit (answer: a Song object that controls entering and retrieving note/effect data into the song, and a Player object that retrieves song data one row at a time… still thinking about this one, since a single object makes more sense, but would be harder to virtualize playback methods for other output devices)
• Spent an hour researching the frequency and amplitude characteristics of Vibrato (not just the human voice, but woodwinds and stringed instruments) so I could be sure to make the best use of the effect bits I have available (answer: most pleasing vibrato has a frequency within 4 to 7Hz and amplitude of about 10 cents)
• Spent an hour revisiting various tracker formats, looking for ideas on how to pack notes+volume+effects into two bytes (answer: 7 bits for note, 3 bits for effect, 3 for effect 1st parm, 3 for effect 2nd parm)

…but no code.  Yet.

I believe it was the demogroup Silents who proclaimed, “If you can’t do it better, why do it at all?”  That is simultaneously democoding’s greatest motto, motivator, and curse.