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Dr Sleep and Dr Josh
Dr Sleep & Dr Josh

Who is Dr Sleep Anyway?

Last updated 06-30-98
(Favorite Books)

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Now Playing at ION STORM!

I work for John Romero at ION Storm as a Level Designer. The game we're doing is called Daikatana, and it's a hot number. We hope to be finished sometime in 1998. If you're at all interested in what's going on at ION Storm, have a look at my .plan file, via the Blue's News page, or click the previous links.

02-20-98 -- Be on the lookout for the March issue of WIRED, featuring the article "Legions of DOOM." The article, ably written by David McCandless of PZ Zone, chronicles the rise of Sverre Kvernmo and myself to the ranks of Leveldom under John Romero at Ion Storm. They've even got some pictures of us (though I came out looking a bit like Vincent Price) and screenshots of our work for Daikatana.

09-20-97 -- The Daikatana team recently went to ECTS in London, England, courtesy of Eidos and Ion Storm. The show was terrific, and Daikatana was given a warm welcome by the British press. Nearly everyone who stopped by our booth seemed impressed, and had many kind words.

I was fortunate enough to be present during Princess Diana's funeral, and managed to attend the procession in Hyde Park. I've written a little photo-feature of my impressions of Britain's farewell to Princess Diana, which you can read (if you like) here. Also, since this page is about ME, I'll casually mention that I was interviewed by Tim Hulse for the London Independent, the full text of which you can read here in this rather large image file. (Yes, I admit it: I love seeing my name in print. I'm a member of a lost and restless 60's generation, and therefore have a huge inferiority complex.)


Obligatory Game Credits


As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've done a couple of DOOM levels that have earned me some renown - though I think it's fair to say that my reputation is much larger than my body of work. Dante's Gate was one of the first original DOOM levels back when all of this mania started in the early part of 1994.. There were only a handful of levels at the time - all of them constructed with DEU, by the way - and Dante's, I think, was a particularly good first-effort (or so I'm told), especially since I paid attention to such things as texture alignment at a time when it was all done by hand. There were no feature-laden editors to do everything for you, and I think it's for this reason that Dante's has stood the test of time - plus, I've revised it here and there to keep it in the public view.

Dante's Gate and Crossing Acheron were also featured on the premier CD-ROM edition of PC GAMER Magazine in December of 1994. They've updated their DOOM wads download section -- and I was surprised to see that they've also added a nice little bio of me. I owe them a lot for keeping my levels public, and in such good company.

Anyway, Dante's Gate and Crossing Acheron have gotten me a lot of attention - first from my peers in the DOOM community, then from id Software, which led to my work on The Ultimate DOOM and The Master Levels - and a few other game companies since then, not least being ION Storm, as you've read above.

I also worked on BLOOD under Q Studios (now Monolith) for a short time. I'm grateful to Nick Newhard for giving me my first professional start.

I worked for Epic MegaGames as Level Designer and Technology Coordinator on UNREAL for 16 months


The Basics


I'm 41 years old, an avid and discriminating reader, and I even play the piano. I also write (short stories, plays, a couple of novels: none published) and did some acting on the side for a season or two with a local theater group. I like drawing and Japanese Sumi-e painting. I like really good films and really bad films, plus foreign films (Akira Kurosawa, Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Arnaud, etc). I'm also a huge Monty Python fan and a Beatlemaniac. Besides reading books, I collect first editions as well. I've got several thousand hard backs and tons of paperbacks.

I have a 15 year old son named Joshua, who's a fair threat at Quake himself (though I think he prefers Warcraft and, lately, Diablo).

I currently reside in Dallas, Texas (actually, a little suburb north of Dallas called Farmers Branch), having moved here from Pennsylvania in February of this year.

My politics are liberal in the old-fashioned, original sense of the word, so don't get me started.

I had 11 cats (long story), but I'm down to five, I think. My favorite is named Schmoopy. I know you probably expected a name like Kerouac or Winston or something, so if it's any consolation, my other cats are named Lin Chi, Zenji, Goombah, and Oscar. The others who have found nice homes were Mephistopheles, Gautama, Fu, Mrs Fuzzy, Mrs Whitetoe, Mr White, Mr Blue (or Frankie), and Kimba.


Favorite Books and Stuff


If you're interested in knowing what some of my favorite books and movies are, click here.


I'm a student of Zen Buddhism, if you're interested, and a member of the Mountains and Rivers Order at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York.


Miscellany


By the way: I am NOT a programmer. Because of my association with DETH, a lot of folks seem to think I'm one of the authors of this fine program. While this is flattering, such is not the case. I'm a programming idiot. Antony Burden is the brains behind DETH, not me. I'm just the publicity dude, distributor, and front man for DETH.

For those who are interested, I'm running a P166 (Rhino Octeck V6 i430VX) with 64MB EDO RAM and a Matrox Millenium video PCI w/4MB, all of which I stuck together myself out of bits of old paint and popsicle sticks. I'm self-taught at this (well, I had some help from a friend), and have only been messing seriously with computers for about three years. I've also got a Cyrix 6x86 P133 (110 MHz) with 32MB and a clunky old 486DX4-100 with 16MB here on a network that I set up so my son and I can spend some quality time blasting each other with the grenade launcher.

The first computer game I ever played (aside from those Zork things and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on my old Leading Edge Model D with a whopping 512k RAM!) was id Software's Castle Wolfenstein. I haven't done a day's work since.


Links and Stuff


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Amazon.com -- Earth's biggest book store. Great place to find the latest published books.There are Expert Editors sections on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, and you can even order online. Search by author, title, or subject. I go there everyday just to see what's new.

Science Fiction Weekly. Book and film reviews, Anime, and current news in the Science Fiction community.

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The New York Times on the Web: Books. Featuring The New York Times Book Review. Weekly reviews, searchable archives, bestseller lists, etc.
Advanced Book Exchange. Wow. Search for that out-of-print or hard-to-find book you've been looking for across a network of used and rare booksellers. Totally free, too. Order online, or just use to see how much some of your favorite books are worth.

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Check out The Electronic Frontier, sponsoring the Blue Ribbon Campaign for Freedom of Speech Online. Everyone is encouraged to display a blue ribbon on their web pages to show support for the essential human right of free speech. Visit their homepage by clicking the logo to the left, or any of the other similar Blue Ribbon Campaign logos displayed at the bottom of each of my web pages.

Send e-mail to President Clinton and Socks and let them know what's on your mind. Click the logo to the left to go the White House Correspondence form page - or click here to send e-mail using your favorite proggie.

Please take the time to hit the American Civil Liberties Union Freedom Network logo and get the latest scoop on First Amendment issues.

Stay informed about the Christian Coalition's "stealth campaign" to subjugate our local public school boards and city councils, replace scientific methodology with "creation science" in our public schools, and establish their brand of Christian theocracy in government. (Yes, they make me paranoid.)


The views expressed on this page are my own. Period. So don't make a fuss. If you don't like them, lump them.