A messy slapdash page (that I might or might not update) until I have my domain (DONE), hosting (DONE), and web programming (WIP) sorted out.
Kenneth Forsbäck (spootiful.com) <spootiful@spootiful.com> (Finland)
An Ostrobothnian born 1985 among forests and meadows, a heathen since at least 2012 (the seed was planted in 2005), and a life-long gamer.
An amateur professional in game design, computer engineering, and linguistics since 2000-2001 and something that I started experimenting with in the 90s. A life-long gamer and nerd born 1985 in Ostrobothnia. A proud heathen since 2012 and a seed that was planted in 2005.
Spootiful (an alias I first used in 2010) was inspired by "spoot" from The Angry Beavers and (for me) means something silly, free-spirited, yet resilient, to be able to endure the hardships and the weight of life and still keep on smiling. The episode "It's A Spootiful Life" also deals with the burden of life.
The earlier A Spootiful Mind (“is a terrible thing to lose”) is a blending with Beautiful Mind (2001) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), referring to introspection, insight, having a curious mind, embracing your thread of fate, as well as to the beautifully vast sky of stars that make up my imaginative mind. Truly a terrible thing to lose!
Spootiful (2024) (Site)
Spootiful (2024) (Mail)
Spootiful (2010) @ YouTube
Spootiful (2017) @ Twitch
It's a Spootiful Life (2007) @ Steam
A Spootiful Mind (2016) @ Steam
Spootiful (2011) @ GOG
A Spootiful Mind (2013) @ GOG
Spootiful @ IRC
Spootiful (2024) @ XMPP
Spootiful (2022) @ Discord
Projects
Treesize Structure
Treesize Structure
Explorer Properties
QDirStat
Gaming: File Age
Gaming: File Size
Gaming: File Type
Storying: File Age
Computing: File Age
Computing: File Size
Computing: File Type
Heritage: File Age
Heritage: File Size
Heritage: File Type
Reference: File Age
Reference: File Size
Reference: File Type
[notes1]
ARTS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
games, computer, tabletop, athletic, stories, writing, drawing
[LIST]
200106
A first-person shooter designed around weapons with customisation and attachments inspired by Firearms (Half-Life) (1998).
200402
A first-person space simulator, focused on exploration and combat and with seamless travel from surface to space and between planets, inspired by Freelancer (2003).
200506 (longplay)
A software environment and user experience inspired by the PlayStation 2. Intended to bring the console experience to PC, allowing games to be played on a PC like on a console, with a game manager, game library, and a fullscreen interface similar to a console.
I discussed it with some friends on IRC, Mirand-IM, and some friends from GameDev and a programming site I don't remember, but they thought it was silly and not worth the effort.
[longplay.jpg]
200602
A first-person space simulator, focused on various careers in space and running your own company or faction, inspired by Freelancer (2003), Planetes (2003), and EVE Online (2003).
201108
A roleplaying system for story-driven gameplay with three attributes (take, hold, give). Inspired by Discworld (1995).
201406
A system for software rendering and resolution scaling, using texture streaming and using static or dynamic adjustment of resolution, inspired by Irrlicht and GPU scaling.
201508
A system for software rendering using integer algorithms.
201603
A system for benchmarking software rendering and integer performance, in order to scale algorithms and settings to performance, inspired by WinSAT.
[FILES]
(2001)
Some photos from issue 5/2001 of PC Pelaaja, a Finnish gaming magazine I used to read and buy for the demo discs. Diablo, Quake, and Fallout were familiar games, but Gorkamorka I had never heard of, and Venom I got to see long before I ever played and fell in love with STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.
This might also have been when I became somewhat interested in "AI" for games, trying to make entities work as intended, but I was still far too young to really understand those concepts: it just seemed cool.
[diablo.jpg]
[quake.jpg]
[venom.jpg]
[gorkamorka.jpg]
[fallout_1.jpg]
[fallout_2.jpg]
[tekoaly_1.jpg]
[tekoaly_2.jpg]
[tekoaly_3.jpg]
[tekoaly_4.jpg]
[LINKS]
[https://www.rpg.net/]
Gaffer on Games is where I first delved into network code for games, before that I hadn't cared about any actual implementation, and eventually I moved on to read up on Quake 3 and its internals—Fabien Sanglard has some damn nice stuff!
Because of my love for raycasters and simple 3D graphics I have also read up on a fair few documentations and discussions over the years, both theory and pages delving into practical and programmatical aspect of some of my favourite games.
[Gaffer on Games]
[Quake 3 Source Code Review: Network Model]
[Duke Nukem 3D: Build Engine Internals]
[Simple DirectMedia Layer]
[Allegro]
[Irrlicht]
[Irrlicht Forum]
[GameDev]
[DevMaster]
[RPGnet]
[NOTES]
(1991-1992)
I came across a handheld brick game fairly early in my life, my first real foray into video games and gaming outside of cards or board games.
(1992-1994)
I was first introduced to the NES at my cousin and later the Atari 2600 at a friend, both in the early 90s, both of which helped me embrace gaming and were my first introduction to consoles.
200106
I had been slowly immersing myself in PC gaming ever since Ski or Die on DOS, familiarising myself with computers, with DOS, and slowly moving to Windows 95 and onward, finding more complicated and more immersive games in different styles. Ski or Die was the first real game I immersed myself in at school, and Doom became the great turning point in my life, making sure I was to be a gamer until I was old and grey.
(2001-2002)
I began using IRC and quakenet.org.
200201
I began to use gamedev.net.
200407
I began to use irrlicht.sourceforge.io.
200411
I began to use devmaster.net.
(2010-2011)
I have an old hard drive that broke during the second incident around 2010-2011 that contains project files from before 2010, IRC logs, Miranda-IM logs, personal comments, and reference material.
Once recovered it will help me prove even better what I have worked on and when, showing that I am not falsifying anything.
I think it was a Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 containing a Samsung hard drive, I don't think I was using Buffalo external drives at that point in time.
SCIENCE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
computing, information, networking, communication
[LIST]
200212
A gaming network with online multiplayer and discussion boards inspired by Quake (1996) and Planet Quake.
200403
An extension programming language inspired by Lua.
200410
A system programming language inspired by C.
200512
A file system layout inspired by Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
200602
A 32-bit RISC architecture inspired by MIPS R3000 and ARM7TDMI.
200602
A 16-bit RISC architecture inspired by ARM7TDMI (Thumb) and Z80.
200602
A system for explicit cache management inspired by ARM7TDMI and 6800, allowing for precise control over data flow with separate instructions that guide the processor as to which memory sections are needed. Later expanded by the concept of immediate memory for multiple levels of explicitly managed memory.
200608
An emulator (or set of emulator libraries) for my architecture designs.
200611
A firmware environment for managing and loading system environments (firmware applications and/or operating systems) inspired by BIOS and coreboot.
200611
A hardware hypervisor for virtualisation, management, and monitoring of execution inspired by ARM7TDMI.
200611
An immutable system and file system inspired by game packages (Doom and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind) and Apple Disk Images. Intended to make management and maintenance easier by keeping a system read-only as much as possible.
The file system layout is categorised into read-only, read-prefer, and read-write, where writing to the system is allowed only in excluded paths (such as user paths) or through a transactional system, and non-user data is distributed through images mounted as read-only in a hierarchial load order.
Revisions and patches are mounted after the base to allow for simple modification and updates without always having to change the base image.
200612
A system for volume partitioning and management inspired by MBR.
200712
An array processing unit for a modular architecture.
200705
An 8-bit variable-length RISC architecture inspired by Z80 and 6800.
200712
A system for user-accessible on-die immediate memory inspired by Z8.
200712
A tripartite system of machine-readable object code, being bit code, byte code, and type code, inspired by Lua byte code.
200803
A system processing unit for a modular architecture.
200803
A hardware description language inspired by Verilog.
200803
An 8-bit fixed-length MISC architecture inspired by Z80 and 6800.
200803
A director with directives and directive files for monitoring and management of compilation inspired by C and make.
200803
A 4-bit MISC architecture inspired by MOS Technology 6502 and Intel 8080.
200804
A data description language inspired by C.
201111
A managed system programming language inspired by Lua and C++.
201201
A functional programming language inspired by Lisp.
[FILES]
[LINKS]
I might still be able to find some of the material I learned from and reviewed while working on various architectures, systems, languages, and other designs in computing, but most of it might be gone. I still have a fair few reference files from the period 2000-2010, but most of those files are still locked away on the broken hard drive that I intend to send for recovery.
[Bowen's Instruction Summary Cards]
Alongside ballistics I also found an interest in optics and acoustics in order to simulate those aspects in first-person shooters, and ended up having some contact with Eberhard Sengpiel and his many pages and tools.
[Forum für Mikrofonaufnahmetechnik und Tonstudiotechnik]
[NOTES]
200602
I enrolled at VAMK in 2004 in the hopes of ultimately working with microprocessors and instruction set architectures, but my studies suffered greatly the first year (2004-2005) due to mental health problems and by the second year (2005-2006) I was no longer in attendance. As such my dreams of working as an engineer in my field of ambition were shattered, but I intuitively started learning and designing systems on my own.
With my personality (INFP) I had been self-driven since childhood and I quickly found solace in my work, able to bear the depression and anxiety that weighed heavily on my spirit and slowly managed to work up motivation.
Despite growing up on the x86 architecture and AMD being my processor of choice since K6, I found an interest in older processors such as Z80, 6800, 6502, and ended up falling in love with MIPS and ARM, envisioning them as future desktop architectures.
200812
I stumbled across Steven Faber's web site around 2008 and came to exchange some e-mails with him, wanting to learn ballistics. Before this I had attempted to use rather crude equations that worked as long as you guessed and tweaked the variables correctly, but I was interested in something more accurate.
He might also have been the one to recommend me McCoy's "bible" on ballistics which I later ended up buying on Amazon. While I lacked, and still lack, the mathematical knowledge to fully make use of all equations, I managed to learn what I needed.
[coppock_theory.pdf]
[coppock_model.pdf]
[coppock_theory.jpg]
[coppock_model.jpg]
[le_duc_model.jpg]
[powley_formulas.jpg]
[pressure_curve.jpg]
[mccoy_1.jpg]
[mccoy_2.jpg]
(2010-2011)
I have an old hard drive that broke during the second incident around 2010-2011 that contains project files from before 2010, IRC logs, Miranda-IM logs, personal comments, and reference material.
Once recovered it will help me prove even better what I have worked on and when, showing that I am not falsifying anything.
I think it was a Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 containing a Samsung hard drive, I don't think I was using Buffalo external drives at that point in time.
HERITAGE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
my native culture, language, and worship, belonging in Ostrobothnia and Finland
[LIST]
200305
A serious effort to study and research our native language.
201203
A language institute or association to preserve our language.
201611
A private company to provide online services in our native language.
201901
A classification of all North Germanic languages based on phonological data.
[FILES]
There is a considerable amount of loaning from Pre-Proto-Germanic and later languages in Finnish, being proof of how much contact Germanic and Finno-Samic tribes had in pre-historic times.
Finno-Samic tribes and their languages would most likely have lived on the southern coast of Finland, around lake Ladoga, and in Estonia, and for such contact with Germanic tribes to have taken place the Germanic tribes would either have had to have maintained extensive sea trade or to have lived close to these Finno-Samic tribes.
Loans in Finno-Samic from Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, and Balto-Slavic is consistent with movement of the Finno-Samic tribes and their Indo-European counterparts, indicating contact in trade, culture, and technology. Germanic contact is the only subject that remains controversial and lacking recognition, and would most likely require a reintepretation of ancient history of the North.
[lex_iefin.html]
[Pre-Finnic vocabulary.htm]
[NOTES]
(1993)
I was intrigued when we explored Nordic mythology and the Edda in primary school, already somewhat familiar with the lore from reading Valhalla by Peter Madsen. The stories stirred the imaginative mind of a child and our Nordic gods seemed like superheroes going on amazing adventures and dwelling in the world tree.
The last part of that course material also stuck in my mind, with the end of the world and of Ask and Embla born out of the tree. Later in life I have come to understand that we still bear traces of this in our language, old figurative words for man and woman being "tain" and "tjalg", both meaning branch or twig.
I was too young to care for it more than as stories and fables similar to the comics I was reading, but some of those memories have stuck with me ever since.
While it scared me as a child, as an adult I have also come to appreciate how my grandfather used to scare me with the trolls of the well and the forest, and the small stories of their mischief.
(1996)
I grew up in Ostrobothnia with my patrilineal heritage being North Germanic (Österbotten) and my matrilineal Finnic (Satakunta), with my Ostrobothnian heritage being primary and what I bear foremost.
While standard Finland Swedish is what we learn in school, our language having no standardisation, no formal recognition, and no teaching material, it is not my native language and not what I use outside of writing.
Several colloquial writing systems exist for our language, but even then there is no standardisation and the language can vary moderately between speakers, as such many resort to writing in Finland Swedish and code switching from and to our native language.
Despite not being tought in school we did discuss our so called dialect and how it differed from Finland Swedish, and that it is a richness that we should hold on to. It was in primary school (fifth grade) were I began to truly wonder why our language was different from Finland Swedish in so many ways, in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and why we couldn't study it in school.
200206
I began working with constructed languages due to being inspired by Might and Magic 8 and other games to make my own worlds and languages.
200305
I began working with constructed languages in 2002, wanting to make my roleplaying fantasy worlds more immersive, and I decided to use my native language and Finnish as inspiration. I eventually become curious as to why our language was they way it was, rekindling an old thought, and moved from constructed languages to linguistics.
200501
I attended my grandfather's burial as he had recently died and a small piece of me sprouted from the seed that might have been planted already when I was a child. At the graveyard the priest talked to me and asked me how I was feeling, unknowing that I had been dealing with mental unhealth since long before this and my grandfather's death was not the reason for my apparent mood.
It was still too early, I was not yet ready, but I ended up mentioning that I would have wanted to pour a cup of ale for my grandfather, that I didn't feel comfortable with the wake.
(2006-2007)
I began to use langmaker.com.
201112
I had been working with my native language long enough, going so far as to immerse myself in Old Norse, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Indo-European, trying to determine the development of our language and slowly beginning to realise that it might not be just a Swedish dialect as conventionally classified.
As such my intentions for standardisation, regulation, and formal recognition in Finland began to slowly grow, and I also found it relevant to try and classify our language and its relatives.
201312
I began to use linguistforum.com.
201202
I began working on my own standardisation of writing, having used the colloquial systems before this.
201202
I rediscovered Nordic and Finno-Samic mythology and rekindled an old interest, looking for inspiration in what I should write to showcase my language and standardised writing, and it didn't take long before the smouldering embers began to burn after lying dormant.
201203
I began planning for formal recognition (and our inclusion in the national census) in the future and for regulation of our language, for a council, institute, or association to help protect and promote our language in our native region.
201407
I had gone through several changes in life and several self-discoveries, slowly leading up to a turning point, and slowly able to shed the pain and weight I carried for almost 15 years.
This time around there was no uncertainty and I knew I was to be heathen, to one way or another embrace the old ways, and to find my strength and serenity. Along with several other factors I turned my life around in 2015, ready to look forward to a beautiful future where I was no longer held back by past experiences.
I had found myself, seeing my life since the 90s before me and knowing why it had been the way it had, what path I needed to walk and what to look for.
201607
I began planning for how to register and maintain a religious association once the time was right and I have a working standardisation and its material, a charter ("perustamiskirja") and the bylaws ("yhdyskuntajärjestys"). That way I can have my worship formally recognised and registered in the national census.
If you want to change the world for the better, then help just one person, grant them strength and hope, stoke their embers and wake their heart; if I can help just one person find their sigh of relief then I've done enough.
201610
I began contemplating the status and circumstance of our language according to the UNESCO's "Language vitality and endangerment" and "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger".