I’m Back!

After about 4 years of hiatus I’ve decided to try blogging again. This is my second attempt at it since 2011, and just like the last time I have developed my own WordPress theme to go along with it. I have even included most of the posts and comments from the half year of blogging I did in 2011, the ones that may still be interesting to read. There are topics about TV shows, my ventures into various MMORPG, as well as a few other gems. They can all be found before this first post of 2015.

About me

My name is Jens-Christian Huus and I come from Denmark. I’m interested in computers, PC gaming and programming. I first used the abbreviation JCH in the demo scene on the Commodore 64. Later, I changed to my current handle Chordian which was the name of one of my most popular C64 tunes.

I made quite a name of myself during 1987 to 1992 on the Commodore 64. I coded a music editor which became widely used and respected. This is probably the product of my life that I’m most proud of, the one that trumps everything else. The editor has since been copied and expanded in various ways ever since. I also composed a lot of chip music on the C64. Even today I don’t think it’s really all that fantastic, but these tunes also have their stalwart fans even today.

The demo scene on the C64 was awesome in this period of time. I had a lot of visitors and we shared coding tips, music, demos, etc. The scene solidifed all around Europe, even a little bit in the USA. We sent snail mails to each other with floppies containing the latest demos. For some it was an important network, for others it was a great opportunity to write actual letters with someone sharing the same hobby. We had enormous demo parties in various countries with what felt like thousands of C64 nerds together. We barely slept between the tables on top of bottle caps and wires, to the cacophony of chip music mixed with obnoxiously loud ghettoblasters. This was a brilliant period of my life and I will always remember it fondly.

In the 90’s I made a music editor for AdLib on the PC as well as some music on it, but none of the efforts here had anywhere near the same impact as they had on the C64. I started losing interesting in composing music, and later also in programming. I guess I got a little bit disillusioned. After having dabbled around with Half-Life mapping just past the turn of the millennium, I decided the hell with all this creativity. Now it’s time for some fun! I began gaming really seriously about 2001 on the PC, and I guess I got a bit obsessed with it. During the first years from 2001 to 2005 I completed more than 300 games on the PC. Then World of Warcraft arrived and it started my adventures in various MMORPG. This slowed down the process considerably, and later I also inevitably burned out. I have since then picked up on PC gaming again, and to this date I have completed over 400 games.

Completing games and keeping track of this was an important part of my gaming hobby, and this spawned the idea of a web site to handle this. I decided to call it GameDeed and I released it in 2013. I had been messing around with some fan sections on a web site before, like a list of enchantments for World of Warcraft and maps of barterers for Lord of the Rings Online, but GameDeed really got me into hardcore web programming. I learned a lot about PHP, jQuery and MySQL, and maintaining it has been an adventure in almost impossible marketing and disappointments. I still maintain the site today and intend to get back to more coding for it, and I expect there will also be a few blog posts about it here.

The Olivi theme

Just as in 2011 I wanted to have my very own WordPress theme for my new blog. I decided to try out this flat design using olive colors and thus named the theme Olivi. Green colors have always been sort of my trademark since the JCH music editor I made on C64, and I wanted to hold on to that legacy.

A lot of luxury stuff has been added to this theme, but I’m not sure I’ll use all of it. For example, I added styling and watermark graphics to all post formats such as asides and quotes. I also added a [spoiler] shortcode that can be used in both posts and comments. All post formats can have a featured image on top (once known as post thumbnails).

Topics

Just as with the blog in 2011, I’m not going to lock the blog into a specific topic such as e.g. MMORPG. It will be a wide open blog and I’ll write about anything that I feel like talking about. That’s why you have categories; to filter the blog posts according to whatever you’re interested in reading.

However, as I’m very much into PC gaming I’ll probably write a lot about this. The most obvious will of course be posts for games I’m currently playing, along with my juicy opinions. I also have this other idea of a series of posts with game tropes featuring screenshots from a ton of games I’ve completed throughout the years. For example, one post will list screenshots fitting a specific trope such as suspension bridges. Apart from being entertaining by itself, to see how various games have done this and compare as you go, perhaps it could also be useful for game developers seeking inspiration.

I also have ideas about comics, TV shows, maybe even pondering some philosophical questions, even crazy ideas. Oh, and rants. Rants are always entertaining.