Just reading Ben's blog. He has been playing with 2D Fractal Terrains (as you do).
Seeing the landscape Ben generated instantly brought back so many memories. A school friend of mine, called Robert Parsons, used a similar algorithm to generate 2D landscapes that look just like Ben's. Only, he had it running on his PSION Series 3 PDA and then used the backdrops for a wicked game called (I think) Bobman where you had two little men that battled each other firing weapons that had projectile like motion at each other. It was a bit like Worms long before worms was ever invented but much faster action and additive in two player mode against each other. I wasted many hours in the my Sixth Form common room playing the game.
He then went on to do a Mandelbrot generator for the PSION (which I think had a monochrome screen but if you messed with a lot of machine code you could get shades of gray emulated by quickly flashing the black on and off). His crowning achievement was to build a basic 3D engine for the PSION which he developed from reading some computer science books at the local university library that I found absolutely impenetrable. I was hoping he was going to port elite to the PSION but we lost touch and I have never spoken to him again.
I've tried googling and looking up Robert (Bob) Parsons a few times over the years and never tracked him down. He was the first hacker I met that I knew was better than me.
> He was the first hacker I met that I knew was better than me.
I hang around on the Debian and GNOME lists, so I'm well aware there are many many better than I am! ;-)
Nice post.
Look on friends re-uninited for this guy?
Yup - no joy.