Oldskooler Ramblings

My vote for the most subtle-yet-cruel entry in the category of brain mis-wirings is Imposter’s Syndrome. (It is also a first-world problem; apologies if this offends you.) I have it fairly bad, and it’s gotten worse as I age. It has prevented me from starting projects, finishing projects, and having normal levels of self-confidence. I am, thankfully, able to praise and mentor other people as necessary, but I cannot provide that for myself. Combine this with yearly instances of FOMO and you end up with someone who goes through waves of trying to join the party, only to feel sheepish once they get there.

This must end. Not in the manner in which my friends and fans might have hoped, but it simply has to end if I’m going to be available for the people who matter (including, most importantly, myself). So, it ends today. It ends with a list of things I’ve achieved in my life by my own skill, intelligence, and volition. I’m granting myself permission to be proud of everything on this list.

• Sang on the stage at Carnegie Hall (a live performance, with a paying audience)
• Participated in NAID ’95 and ’96, where I formed some friendships that helped me later in life
• Was one of the 10 founding fathers of the Abandonware movement (and the very first Abandonware site in history to get shut down because of it)
• Designed and founded MobyGames with my high-school buddy and Best Man Brian Hirt
• Produced three demoscene anthology series on DVD and Blu-ray with full commentary and participation of the authors
• Created two novel methods of displaying full-motion video on 1981-era personal computers without requiring additional hardware
• Wrote an open-source project that allows vintage computers to be used as easy-to-use, low barrier-to-entry historical research tools
• Led a dream team of demosceners to win first place (“oldskool demo” category) at the world’s largest demoparty
• Mentored a vintage computer enthusiast to create a brand-new DOS game in 2018 (and contributed some key performance-sensitive code myself)
• Created a viable “pied piper” audio compression method that can reduce already-compressed music sources up to a further 6:1 ratio with no perceptual loss in quality

And, most importantly:

• Met my wife, became a better person for her, and started a family

That is truly my greatest accomplishment. It has directly touched hundreds of lives, contributed something positive to the world, and will outlive me by many decades, if not centuries.

But this person is going away, and this is the third-last post I will be writing on this blog.