Inteview with Cesium

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Balance
Bad Karma - Candyman - Casket - ...
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INTERVIEW WITH CESIUM

TODAY'S PORTRAIT: CESIUM / BALANCE

Written by D'fence / Balance

He  started  at the bottom, this now so
famous   editor   of  Upstream.   After
living eleven years of his life without
a  computer,  he  suddenly  became  the
proud  owner  of a Commodore 64.  For a
small  fee, he would let the other kids
play,   but  'Frode's  Gamehall'  never
became  the  big hit he had expected it
to  be.   After  a few years of playing
games  on  his 64, he bought himself an
Amiga.   And continued to play, in more
colors   and  better  resolution.   But
something more important happened these
days:  Frode was born again - this time
he  was given the name 'Front Soldier'.
Fascinated by wonderful demos with bobs
and  colorbars, he and a friend started
a  computergroup  they  called 'Frogs'.
The  first  three letters came from his
name,  and the last two, were collected
from  his  friend,  GS.   Together with
this  mysterious  person  carrying  the
mysterious  name,  he went to his first
computerparty...

-  GS  and  I  carried all our computer
equipment  from our home town Stavanger
to  the  small  Norwegian  place called
Hisøy  outside  Arendal.   Wow!  What a
party   it   was!   Almost  300  people
gathered in a "huge" gym hall.  The two
groups  IMP-666  and No Limits were the
arrangers, and I remember we were quite
shy and embarrased about being there in
the  first  place, knowing little about
the  scene  and not knowing anyone.  We
rigged  up  our equipment, and sat down
in  front  of our machine and pretended
to be doing something serious, like all
the others seemed to do.  GS loaded his
DPaint   and   started   painting  some
totally   ugly   green  "frogs"  in  an
animation  (notice the ""'s) I remember
GS  told  me  not  to  attract too much
attention, not to go around telling who
we  were,  but  just  sit down and keep
quiet.   Some  time  before  this I had
started  to  swap  a bit with some then
unknown  people (Hi Drain/Orient!) so I
decided to walk around asking some guys
if  they  had  some  new  stuff which I
could copy.  "Yes, we have, but not for
you!" was the answer.  Gee, I felt good
about  this...  If you didn't know, the
famous  "Hunt  for  the 7th October" by
Cryptoburners  won the demo competition
at this party.

And  then  you decided to make your own
demos?

-  Oh  no, since the only member except
me  was  Corporal Clegg, a musician (we
actually  competed  in  the music compo
with  one of his tunes!) we didn't have
any  coder to make demos for the group.
But  after  this,  GS started packing -
only  cli-menus  of  course,  with  the
"rainbow"-background   utility...   :-D
When  he was bored, I took over most of
the  work  and  we  started  the famous
(!?!)     Swamp-compilations.     These
contained  various  stuff  from time to
time  and included utilities, demos and
other  snack  for  each  issue.   Frogs
didn't get a coder until one year later
when Beez teamed up with us.  The first
thing  he  started  on  was  to  code a
selector for my pack serie.  After half
a  year,  it  was ready.  (Beez = Lazy)
What   a   great   thing!    A   "real"
production  from FROGS!  With a logo on
the  top, music and my own scrolltexts!
Gee,  that  was  one  big moment, I can
tell you.

The  autumn  of  '91  you bought a high
speed  modem  and some months later you
recieved  the  now so famous bill.  You
must  have  known  that this bill would
come,  so  why  didn't  you  take  it a
little easier?

- Ehh...  Well, I hadn't expected it to
be  THAT large (10000,- NOK), I thought
it   would  perhaps  be  half  of  this
amount.  But you know, modeming is like


narcotics  for  me  - I just CAN'T stop
when I'm first at it...  hehe...

So, what's so fun about it?

-  I  know you are quite bored with it,
but  I  always have a lot of fun when I
have  a modem connected to my machine..
I  chat  with  lots of people, download
stuff  from  the boards and so on.  The
difference  is  of course big from 2400
to  14400  bps...   I tried a bit to be
among  the top uploaders on my favorite
boards  and  I  dialed  foreign  bbs'es
quite  a lot, among them our then Irish
HQ  called  "Forbidden Planet".  That's
why the bill grew that big!!!  I had to
sell the modem to cover the expences.

Some weeks later you decided that Frogs
should release a diskmag, with yourself


as  the  main-editor.  You were at this
time  quite  bankrupt.  Did you see the
mag-project   as  a  way  out  of  your
financial problems?

- Haha, no not at all.  It started with
3-4   newsletters  as  plain  textfiles
about  recent changes in the group.  We
included  a  couple  of articles, and I
launched the idea of making an official
diskmag  instead  of this internal one.
I  can't actually say that the response
was  overwhelming, but anyway I decided
to go on with this and the project grew
bigger    and    bigger.     At   last,
approximately  half  a  year later, the
first issue of Upstream was ready.  You
all  know  the  rest  of  the story.  I
didn't  make  Upstream  to  earn money,
(isn't  that  what  they  all say?) but
because    I've    always   been   very
interested  in  doing  my  own papers /
magazines.   Another reason was to make
Frogs  (and  myself)  more known in the
scene and all which that brings.

Frogs  became a little more known after
the  first  issue, but then all members
suddenly joins Balance.  Why?

-  It happened a couple of weeks before
easter  1993  - I'm beginning to forget
the  details  about  it actually, but I
think  it  was  after I had read Magbox
#4.   I  had  been thinking for a while
about  a possible merge with some other
diskmag.   The  group Balance and their
diskmag seemed to be a suitable choice,
I  felt  that they were more or less on
the  same  level  as us.  A merge could
mean that we'd get twice the support on
the  mag,  a  new,  strong and powerful
group  with  more  coders.   This would
again lead to more frequent releases of
high quality productions.
   I  then  picked  up  the  phone  and
dialed    Wolfman    of   Balance   DK.
Fortunately, he was very interested and
after  some hours on the phone the next
days  we  had  figured  out most of the
management on how we were going to work
it   out.   The  week  after  came  The
Gathering 93 where we got the chance to
meet  each  other  and  discuss various
things   in   person.    Balance   were
represented  with  more than 10 members
on  the  party,  so  we had an internal
meeting in the cafeteria and brought up
different   topics  about  the  merging
between the groups and the diskmags.

How do you think the future for Balance
and Upstream will be like?


- Our goal is to make Upstream the best
diskmag in the scene.  We're constantly
trying  to improve the mag in all ways,
both    its    contents    and   looks.
Furthermore,  I  think  I  have  all my
members  behind my back when I say that
Balance  is  going  to  be  a so-called
legend  in  the scene.  Our artists are
working  seriously  and  professionally
(without  loosing the fun!) with future
projects  to  entertain the other scene
freaks  out there.  We enjoy what we're
doing, and I hope it shows!

What  about  yourself?   How  will your
private life be like?

- How detailed do you want it? ;-)

Everything except the juicy details..



-  About my love life?  OK, no I'll try
to  be  serious here, since that's what
you  want.   The  BIG  project  I'll be
occupied  with in the next months, will
be the opening of my own Bulletin Board
System.   I  estimate  the opening date
will be January 1st, 1994.

The  board will be completely different
from all others around this planet, and
it  will  be  the  best.   Believe  me.
D'fence  (you!?)  will be the co-sysop,
and  we  have  great many ideas for the
running of it.  It's going to be run on
an   A4000/030,   16.8k   and  400+  MB
harddrive.   The system hardware is not
the   most   important   though,  every
serious  user of the Amiga should buy a
modem  and  log  on  to  Omaha Thunder.
Await  more  details in the next issues
of Upstream.


Another  aspect  worth mentioning here,
is  that I'm planning to move away from
home  around  this period of time.  I'm
having  some  internal problems with my
parents,  especially  when  it comes to
modems  and stuff like that (My father,
quote:   There  shall  never  more be a
modem  in this house!), so...  If I get
that  blunt  D'fence  to go and rent an
appartement  together  with me it'll be
quite  awesome.  Imagine the atmosphere
we'd  make with all our equipment!  The
BBS  would be the main attraction, plus
we have a great deal of sound equipment
to boost.

Besides  that,  I'm going to work a lot
this  year  -  to  save  up  money  for
computer   equipment   and   for  later
studies.   The  plan  is  to  go to the
states  around 1995 to study journalism
in  Florida.   As many of you know, I'm
exercising  quite  a lot, Chagall and I
are  practising Jiu Jitsu together, and
perhaps  I'll  get  the chance of going
for the black belt next May.

Let's see what life brings!
I've got business to make...

Ok, we'll stop here. Thanks.

                              - D'fence