Welcome to kostiadis.com

17-Feb-08

Yiorgos Anthony Kostiadis, was born on the 16^th of February 2008 at 20:14. He weighted 9lb 9oz (4.32Kg) and was approximately 22.4inches (57cm) long. For those that can't pronounce Yiorgos, the English equivalent is George. Both mum and baby are well.

10-Aug-07

Today I have handed my notice in at Climax. It was kind of weird because I felt both sad and happy at the same time. Sad, because I've been at Climax for almost 6 years and during that time I've met, worked, and become friends with some very interesting people. Happy because I'm very excited and looking forward to starting my new job. Obviously I don't know all the details about my new job yet since I won't be starting until the 17th of September, but here's what I've found out during my pre-interview research. BNP Paribas is a French bank with 150,000 employees in over 85 countries. In the Forbes public companies listings they rank 14th in the world. Just to give you an idea of what that means, IBM are 42nd and Microsoft are 66th. They are the 6th largest bank in the world (and the 3rd in Europe) with a net income of EUR 7.3 billion (up 24.9% from 2006) and net banking income of EUR 27.9 billion (up 28% from 2006). I don't know about you, but those are the kind of numbers I like looking at!

09-Jul-07

This weekend just gone, a group of us from work have taken part in the Three Peaks Challenge for Action Medical Research. Our group consisted of 5 climbers (me, Mark, Rudi, Rich, and Rob) and 1 driver (Emma). Thanks to a lot of people that sponsored us, we've raised quite a bit of money that will go towards a very good cause. The Three Peaks involves climbing the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales. These are Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis and Snowdon respectively. You have to do the climbs one after another, so any sleeping, eating, etc. happens only during the drives between the mountains.

We started our challenge on 04:44 on Saturday morning...We were team number 40 (out of 55). A few hours later near the top of Ben Nevis, when it's raining with 40mph winds at very near 0C temperatures with limited visibility and a very rocky terrain, you're trying to think why you are doing this... Fortunately, your brain is frozen by that stage so you can't really think! By the time your brain regains some of its functionality, you're on your way down so you begin to think that things aren't as bad as you thought. That's when the stabbing pains to the knees start. A while later, we were at the bottom of Ben Nevis. The marshals stamped the team sheet, we jumped in the car and off we went to Scafell Pike! Scafell Pike is definitely easier than Ben Nevis, but your body has already taken a hit from the previous climb. The chat and friendly jokes between the team members are less frequent. Your feet begin to feel like they're on fire. As we were climbing up we saw other teams coming down the mountain. "Not long now lads...40 minutes or so...keep going." they told us. I still don't know if they were lying (trying to make us feel better) or if it was 40 minutes that just felt a lot longer. A few hours later we were back at the bottom of Scaffel Pike. The marshals stamped the team sheet, we jumped in the car and off went go to Snowdon. When we started climbing Snowdon it was pitch black. Having done the other two climbs, your system is definitely wondering what is going on or if it's ever going to stop. After all, this wasn't the "sit in an office in front of a computer for 8 hours" that your system is used to. Snowdon is by far the easiest of the three peaks but being the last of the three, it definitely doesn't feel like it. There were no jokes or much chatting going on anymore. Is this my bed I can see in the distance? Nope...it's just a pile of rocks. Is this my pillow? Nope...it's just a sheep sitting on the pile of rocks. Is this a triple chocolate fudge cake on my bedside table? Nope...it's just a big pile of sheep poo right next to the sheep that's sitting on the pile of rocks. You switch off past that stage...I think they call it "tunnel vision". You don't care or see anything else past your target, so all you want to do is reach the top of Snowdon and get back down again. A few hours later we did just that. And getting back to the car park (our starting point) was the best feeling ever. The marshals stamped our team sheet for the last time and the challenge was done!

I'm sure other people found the whole thing a lot easier. We saw teams running up and down the mountains and one of the teams finished the challenge in just over 17 hours! Maybe we should have started our training earlier. Maybe we should have trained harder. I don't really know...What I do know is that this was probably the toughest thing I've done in my life so far.

23-Feb-07

I've redesigned the web site and all that's left now is to choose a nice colour scheme... Till then you'll have to put up with boring greys. As you can see the OpenGL and GP32 links are no longer there. This will serve as my personal site from now on. OpenGL and GP32 stuff will be under a programming subdomain. Till then, I've left the old opengl.shtml and gp32.shtml in case you need to download anything.

02-Dec-06

In the very little spare time that I have, I started looking at COLLADA for my engine and I have to say, I've been quite impressed so far...In very little time I managed to get Suzanne (the monkey primitive in Blender) rendering in my world! Quite nice API, and support for loads of stuff incdluing skinning, morhping, animation, rag dolls, rigid body dynamics and much much more.

09-Apr-06

Been a while since I've update this, but I've been spending most of my spare time with Amiee, so there hasn't been that much to report really...She was 1 a little while ago, and I can't believe how quickly this last year went by. She is walking around and doing all sorts of things now and keeping us all very busy. In my very little spare time, I'm reading poker books and doing very little computing related.

24-Mar-05

Our daughter, Amiee Ioanna Kostiadis, was born on the 16^th of March 2005 at 21:09. She weighted 9lb 13oz (4.44Kg) and was just under 23inches (60cm) long. For those who don't know, this is a very large baby (especially since it was our first one). Apparently subsequent ones tend to be even bigger!!! Anyway, both mum and baby are well.

15-Feb-05

DIY at home is finished (well...for now at least). Made some progress with my OpenGL stuff and soon there will be a demo available for your viewing pleasure. At this stage it's nothing much, but it demonstrates a continuous LOD terrain meshing technique using adaptive quadtrees, per pixel lighting, and a few other bits. More info will be available from the OpenGL section that has been added (just click on the OpenGL link below).

18-Jul-04

Been a while since I've updated things, but I've been quite busy and I've also been on holiday so... Priority goes to DIY at home so all things computing related are running a bit slow at the moment. Anyway, as far as GP32 dev goes, now that I've got my libs ready, I'm just waiting for a good design doc to land on my desk and then I'll start cracking. Andy is working on it, and I'm hoping it won't be long before he gets something together. I've also started playing around with OpenGL and SDL. That's mainly for the PC, and I have to say, from what I've seen so far, SDL is very impressive.

7-Dec-03

At last! I've added the GP32 page... It contains StarDust v1.0 ALPHA, a free, open source, space shooting game. It also has a few links to useful GP32 pages.

22-Sep-03

I've finaly got round to updating the layout of the site. CSS2 is great and I totally recommend it. Nothing better than separating content and formatting (especialy if you have to maintain consistency across numerous pages). Still have some polishing up to do, but most of the work is done for now. I will be adding the GP32 pages next...