#Amiga-heads at Siggraph
13 messages in this thread
At the recent Siggraph show, a number of former Amiga-heads stopped by the
Syndesis booth…
Jim Mackraz is now working for Maxis, makers of SimCity et al, which
incidentally was founded by Jef Braun, known for publishing the Colorfonts and
Calligrapher products in the Amiga market. Peter Selverstone also stopped by.
He designed the FlickerFixer, and was happy to report that he's still getting
(small) royalty checks from sales in the Amiga market. And Keith Young
stopped, too – he's now working for Kesmai, a maker of online entertainment.
John – THANKS!!!
It's always good to know what happened to those folks who were so very
important to the Amiga in its early days.
It sounds as if they are all doing well.
—Betty
John,
<SimCity et al, which incidentally was founded by Jef Braun, known for
publishing the Colorfonts and Calligrapher products in the Amiga market.>
Just a little nit to pick here…<g>
Although Jeff wrote (or had written) the original Calligrapher he sold it to
John Collins (if memory serves me right) before SimCity even came out. The
reason I know this is that I met and spoke with Jeff about making a font disk
for Calligrapher. I'd started fiddling with it almost immediatly and then was
contacted by John and contracted (officially with a contract and money and
everything) to do that disk, which was released as Asha's Fonts.
Just for a giggle, Calligrapher still works on my A2000/040 under OS 3.1 and
even promotes gracefully to my 640X480 Picasso screen!
Skimming through the Redwoods on AutoPilot
Asha
Asha!
>>Although Jeff wrote (or had written) the original Calligrapher he sold it to
John Collins (if memory serves me right) before SimCity even came out. The
reason I know this is that I met and spoke with Jeff about making a font disk
for Calligrapher. I'd started fiddling with it almost immediatly and then was
contacted by John and contracted (officially with a contract and money and
everything) to do that disk, which was released as Asha's Fonts.<<
Hey, I know you! (I met you a few times anyway) I did the "Newsletter Fonts"
package about the same time you did yours. I went to one of the Amiga Shows at
that round hotel in L.A. with John and helped "man the booth", lots of fun.
There was also a guy named Lyon Kuntz (Lyon's Fonts) who did some
programming/fonts and a "kid" Russel Caslis (rcaslis@hydra.acs.uci.edu) who
did a lot of programming for John too.
Hmmm, small world, eh?
/ / / //ANDRE
Andre,
<Hey, I know you! (I met you a few times anyway) I did the "Newsletter Fonts"
package about the same time you did yours.>
I knew your name looked familiar but couldn't place it…(I'm so bad with
names!) What are you doing with your Amiga these days? Still into fonts?
<I went to one of the Amiga Shows at that round hotel in L.A. with John and
helped "man the booth", lots of fun.>
Boy do I remember THAT one! ;/ I threw my back out the morning I drove down
to L.A. and was in agony the whole time!
<There was also a guy named Lyon Kuntz>
He recently moved up here (to Sonoma County from San Francisco) and gave me
a call. He did fonts forever! I can't remember what he said he's doing now
though.
<Hmmm, small world, eh?>
Yup! Nice "seeing" you again!
Skimming through the Redwoods on AutoPilot
Asha
Asha,
>>I knew your name looked familiar but couldn't place it…(I'm so bad with
names!) What are you doing with your Amiga these days? Still into fonts?<<
I have a "Blank Spot" for names too, but your message jogged something loose!
I'm doing mostly DTP stuff these days, a little difficult on the Amiga, but I'm
in too deep to switch now. Fonts? I've always been a "letterhead", I have all
the programs (TypeSmith, Fontographer) but not the free time to do any new
fonts. Fonts are so cheap these days it's hardly worth the trouble to make new
ones.
I remember Lyon converted a LOT of P.D. Type 1 fonts to Amiga formats and was
selling them for a long time.
Well, "See" you around!
/ / / //ANDRE
> There was also a guy named Lyon Kuntz
Actually, it's "Lion", I'm pretty sure. <g> Anyway, I wrote to the guy a
bit while he was on GEnie, but he kinda alienated everybody with his attitude.
He soon closed his account there and headed to a different service. He sure did
some good-looking work on fonts, though!
— Tom
To pick more nits, Jef didn't write Calligrapher, and he was the first
publisher to move the product… 🙂
John,
<To pick more nits, Jef didn't write Calligrapher, and he was the first
publisher to move the product… :-)>
Ah! I thought he did write the original, thanks for the correction. There
was just this huge artical in the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner (Sunday)
about people who had taken various ideas and run well with them. One of those
mentioned was Jeff Braun. There was even a picture and he hasn't changed at
all since I met him many many years ago.
I do remember him telling me about Sim-City and me thinking that it wouldn't
ever fly….Obviously I'm not a savy business person….:)
Skimming through the Redwoods on AutoPilot
Asha
John,
What were your general immpressions of the show?<g> How did Syndesis fair at
presenting it's wares? Nice to hear Peter is still getting royalties for the
FlickerFixer, that was a while ago!
Did you see any presentations dealing with VRML? Thanks again for sending a
ticket, but at the last second I couldn't get away from my work responsibilies.
🙁
Tom
We did very well at the show, we were very busy and did as much business this
year as the previous two years combined, and I thought we did well in those
past years! The booth was always crowded.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to any VRML presentations. We do support VRML
export in InterChange, though.
As for show impressions, nothing stuck out to me this year. Lots of incremental
change, no revolutions. I did get a kick out of an immersive VR system based
on a dozen or so video cameras, each pointing in a different direction. Special
hardware combines the images and sound, records it to tape, and playback is
through a motion-sensing head-mounted display. You turn, you see the video in
that direction, and the stereo sound "turns", too. Low-res for now, but very
fun.
John,
BTW, Siggraph was VERY cool thanks to the complementary ticket I got from you
:^) Thanks very much.
Lots of SGI Onyx lurking behind drapes and around corners. I wonder if those
super computers had anything to do with the killer demos??? :^)
The show was quite overwhelming even to a heavy duty computer Nerd/Amiga Dude
like me. I really wish I could have gone for a couple days. It was like a whole
year of CGW right in front of you to play with.
My pick would have to be the Quantel Domino, full motion, movie res Paintbox.
I'm not a real SGI fan.
….John