Where Are They Now?

What happened to the people who wrote for your favorite Atari magazines? Here are bios for all the Antic/STart writers, programmers, and editors that the Digital Antic Project has come in contact with. If you were published in the pages of Antic or STart, send in your bio for inclusion on this page.

Marc Abramowitz wrote Red Squares (July 1989 Game of the Month) during a summer off from school in Staten Island, New York. Soon, he followed it with Pull-Down Menus (February/March 1990). After high school, Marc got his Bachelor's degree in computer science from the State University of New York at Binghamton and later got a Master's in the same from Stanford University. Since his Atari days, he's worked on a number of software projects, including software for biomechanics research (at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) as well as digital audio (including Digidesign's renowned Pro Tools software). He currently lives in Palo Alto, California and works for Fireclick on a hosted service called Netflame that accelerates Web sites and provides tools for real-time site monitoring and analysis. He is also an avid guitar player. His e-mail address marc@fireclick.com. [List of articles]

Thomas J. Andrews wrote Customer List Manager (August 1989 Feature Application) for use at the family vegetable stand. Sales patterns have changed, and Andrews Farm no longer uses a call list. Tom, along with his brother Jerry, own and operate Andrews Farm in Central New York. He still has the 800 he used to write the program, and it's still set up and ready to go. After writing for Antic, Tom joined the Atari Computer Enthusiasts of Syracuse, eventually becoming its 8-bit Newsletter Editor. While with ACE, he wrote two shareware programs, Print Star and Reformat. Print Star was partly inspired by Doc Print Pro, an Antic program written by Ron Fetzer, another ACE member. He and Ron both remain members of The Ol' Hackers Atari User Group (OHAUG). Tom wrote several articles for Current Notes and Atari Classics, including an article for Atari Classics' Premier Issue. His current primary computer is an Atari Mega ST4. He owns neither Macintosh nor Windows PC. [List of articles]

Jon A. Bell, after working 10 years as an editor and writer in the computer magazine industry, changed careers to concentrate full time on producing 3D computer graphics and animation for television, films, computer games multimedia, and print. He provided 3D models and animation for the films Exorcist III: Legion; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Honey, I Blew Up the Kid; Soldier and Mighty Joe Young. His multimedia and game industry work includes architectural models and animation for the Oracle Systems Athenia CD-ROM, model designs and animation for LucasArt's Entertainment's X-Wing and Rebel Assault, Sega of America's Jurassic Park and Wild Woody CD-ROMs, and Gametek's Robotech and Wheel of Fortune. He has written three books on 3D Studio MAX. You can reach Jon at 74124.276@compuserve.com. [List of articles]

Jeremy Birn wrote Quatro while he was in High School in Albany, New York. He went to college at Northwestern University where he started doing 3D work on his own Amiga 2000, and later on Silicon Graphics workstations. He moved to California, got an MFA in Film at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and is now a freelance 3D artist working in the Hollywood, CA area. Jeremy is the author of the book Digital Lighting & Rendering, and has portions of his book, samples of his 3D renderings, and related information at his web site, www.3dRender.com. [List of articles]

Bill Bodenstein wrote two articles for Antic, plus a few for Analog Computing and Compute magazines while in college. "I loved writing machine language code and to this day I can still convert 6502 assembly instructions to decimal opcode numbers in my head, even though I haven't touched an 8-bit Atari in 11 years." Today he works for a small healthcare company, MedPlus, as a manager of a software team. "My experiences with the Atari computer helped me understand the lowest machine level workings of a computer, which is knowledge that helps me understand what really happens when I compile C and C++ code on Windows PCs and UNIX servers. Mastering the simple stuff is necessary before you can grasp the more complex systems we have today. I miss the days where you actually could know everything that went on inside your computer." His e-mail address is bbodenstein@cinci.rr.com [List of articles]

Heidi Brumbaugh, Programs Editor for START Magazine (previously editorial assistant for Antic and START) likes to tinker on Internet sites and write, both fiction and technical articles. She met her husband through Antic publishing, former START author/programmer Jim Kent. They live in Northern California with their two girls. When they recently set up the old Mega 2 to play some old START games, one child asked, "What's with the baby computer?" Ouch! Visit Heidi's web site at www.heidi.to. [List of articles]

James Capparell was publisher of Antic and STart. Today he is president of Mac Home Journal magazine. [List of articles]

James Catalano wrote two games for Antic, Sorcerer's Apprentice and Saucerian Shootdown. These days, Jim is designing a trading card game. He created the Doom for Atari 2600 hoax. His Web page is here. [List of articles]

Ian Chadwick eventually left the Atari universe to work as a freelance writer, computer consultant, and animal behaviourist. In 1990, he moved out of the big city into a small Canadian town, where he worked as reporter and later editor of the local newspaper. After almost a decade of covering local politics and snapping grip-n-grins of local service clubs, he left to work on web site design, literature, and operate his Mail Boxes Etc. franchise. When he's not in front of his computer, Ian rides his motorcycle into the backroads of Ontario. Sometimes he still dreams about POKEY chips and the fun he had with his Atari 800. [List of articles]

Ray Citak wrote Keyed Up! for Antic as well as the APX program Name The Notes. Ray works as a piano technician in Laramie, Wyoming. His Web page is here. [List of articles]

Spencer Craske wrote "Alien Asylum" at the age of 15. "What am I doing now? Same thing! I write videogames for the Sony Playstation. I currently work for a company called Radical Entertainment here in Vancouver, B.C. (Canada). I've been in the industry since 1991." [List of articles]

Chris Crawford was a games designer/programmer at Atari, then supervisor of the Software Development Support Group (evangelizing the Atari,) and finally manager of Games Research. "I was laid off in March 1984 and went to work on the Macintosh, for which I wrote a number of games. I went on to found and write the Journal of Computer Game Design, and to found and lead the Computer Game Developers' Conference in its early, non-commercial years. I've been working on interactive storytelling technology since 1991." [List of articles]

Dennis Debro wrote "Nuclear Reactor" (Vol.9 No.1) and the Tech Tip "Machine Language Loader Menu". "It was my first (and quick) stab at writting AtariBASIC games. I had been typing programs in for years and decided to try to create one on my own. Of course after that my games got better but unfortunately Antic and A.N.A.L.O.G. (one was accepted by them too) went out of print. Currently I am the senior programmer for the Managed Care devision of Per-Se Technologies. We are using Smalltalk to write a managed care system for medical insurance companies." [List of articles]

Len Dorfman, Ph.D. is growing old graciously. At 50 he's still a public school teacher, married to the same goddess of his Antic days, father of a radiant twenty-five year woman, a dedicated Tai Chi player, has written twenty-one books (on programming with 80x86 assembly, C and C++) and is author of the Win98/W2K freeware version of PAX Chess, which is both recreational and research related. Len's playtime currently includes GUI development with VC++ and MFC, along with periodic DirectX coding. His Web site is at http://users.systec.com/ldorfman/ and his e-mail address is ldorfman@systec.com. [List of articles]

David Duberman, an Antic editor, was hired shortly after the first issue was published, where he stayed until mid-1984, when he went to work for Synapse Software, and later, Atari. "These days I'm a technical writer specializing in 3D graphics. I currently work for Discreet (formerly Kinetix) on the documentation for 3D Studio MAX, Character Studio, and related products. I really enjoy my work; it's exciting to be on the cutting edge of software development for such a major program! I also do some freelance writing, including articles for 3D magazine, and I occasionally do editing of 3D-related books for publishers like Peachpit and New Riders." [List of articles]

Ron Fetzer, author of Doc Print-Pro, is retired from teaching Mathematics and Computer Science in New York City. "I learned about computers and programming in the beginning of 1980 when there were very few courses on the subject. My computer education therefore was mostly self learned. I wrote the expanded documentation of Turbo Basic XL which is now the standard for that language. About 1986 I joined the OL' HACKERS A.U.G. INC. and have been a member ever since. Although I own a P.C. my favorite computer is still the Atari. I still program on it, although it is mostly for myself." [List of articles]

Dan Fruchey came to STart from ST Applications, one of the first Atari magazines. He regularly wrote articles for about two years and was finally became Desktop Publishing/Word Processing Editor for STart. He currently works for the County of Sonoma, California as a Programmer Analyst. [List of articles]

Mark Gierhart wrote Broadcast Automating Atari "Back then, I was a Broadcast Engineer for the Lima Broadcasting Co., engineering for two Radio Stations, WIMT-FM and WIMA-AM. I am now Engineering Director for eight radio stations here in the Lima & Findlay Ohio Market Areas. We've went from the 8-bit ($169) Atari based automation system to the new Prophet Systems Automation & Digital Audio Storage System costing nearly $80,000. Back then, the Atari, was used with the R-Time-8 Module to 'fire' spot (commerical) breaks, liners, and reel-to-reel music. Now, with the Prophet System, all audio is stored on the six 18 GB harddrives." The 130XE automation system was taken offline in 1986, and a telephone screening program (also using a 130XE) was used until 1999. "But if you take a look in the storage room, I'm sure you can still find the 5 1/4" floppies with the 130XE sitting alongside" [List of articles]

Steve Ginzburg was Antic's youngest author: he wrote the game Beam Me Up! (in the Oct/Nov 1989 issue) at age 12. "I wrote the inline machine code in line 336 of the program when I had just learned assembly. Nowadays, I do assembly professionally...I'm an engineer working on compiler internals for DSP chips. One of these days, I'm going to have to sit down with a 6502 chart and disassemble that old code... It should be good for a laugh." [List of articles]

Glenn Gutierrez (glenn@planethype.com) is a self-taught music producer, writer, engineer, remixer, graphic designer and webmaster. Gutierrez has sold millions of records and won numerous industry awards. He has had songs on Billboard charts every single year since taking on his own projects with Classified Records in 1994. Glen's Web site is at http://www.planethype.com. [List of articles]

James Hague (jhague@dadgum.com) started Dadgum Games, a Mac-only game company, in 1996. "Got lots of good press and good feedback, but not enough financial reward to keep at it full time. I'm currently doing programming for Volition, Inc. -- the FreeSpace people -- and doing more experimental game design on the side, when time permits. I keep in touch with my 8-bit roots by running the Giant List of Classic Game Programmers site." [List of articles]

Josepha Haveman is a developer for Wayzata Technology Inc. with 11 published titles of art and illustration materials. She is completing a CD-ROM-based interactive, multimedia archive of her work of a half-century of fine arts. "For the record, what I miss most about the Atari 1024 was CAD 3-D! I did a lot of good work with that which couldn't be carried over. It took a decade or more before there were apps for the Mac that could do similar things, none quite as nifty." [List of articles]

Carolyn Hoglin, author of Secrets of AtariWriter Plus (July 1987) and also "Carolyn's Corner," a series of columns about AtariWriter Plus that was available on CompuServe, says she is still avidly computing away, now on a Pentium PC. Her specialties are word processing, desktop publishing, and digital photo editing. Her e-mail address is choglin@usa.net. [List of articles]

Charles Jackson is the Internet Manager for Sun Microsystems Laboratories, the R & D division of Sun Microsystems, Inc. "I have a patent for a global indexing application and several other patents pending. At Antic, I developed several image format converters, worked with Patrick Bass on a program to receive weather satellite images (using less than $10 in hardware,) and received a letter from Benoit Mandelbrot, requesting reprint permission for my 'Fractal Graphics' article in his book, Fractal Graphics on the Computer. (I still have that letter!!!)" [List of articles]

Robert Jung wrote A-Rogue (May 1987) and has written for other Atari-related publications, including the now-defunct free AtariUser magazine. He works today developing large-scale computer systems, from automated train control software to military air defense systems. Robert keeps his toes in the Atari world by maintaining the Atari Lynx and Atari Jaguar FAQs, along with a small archive of Atari-related news articles. And though he's traded in his Jackintosh for a Macintosh, he still has his Lynx, his Jaguar, and his Atari 800 (complete with Star Raiders, natch). [List of articles]

Brad Kershaw is now the I.S. manager for a news clipping service, has built several computer networks, and the online trading system for Wells Fargo bank. [List of articles]

Greg Knauss wrote Killer Chess, Reardoor, and Frog. He now programs professionally, but misses his Atari 400 terribly. He's responsible for eod.com and metababy.com, but will deny it if pressed. [List of articles]

Thomas LaRosa wrote P/M Graphics Studio when he was seventeen. "Currently I am living in Massachussetts where I enjoy a career in programming on Windows and Unix machines in languages like VB, SQL, C++ and Java. Recently I bought an SIO2PC converter cable and started converting my old disks to ATR images for use with an emulator program." [List of articles]

Sheldon Leemon has the distinction of being the first unwitting contributor to Antic, as his program "Outer Space Attack," first published in Softside magazine, was submitted by Vince Scott as his own work, and appeared as Pac Invaders in volume 1, issue 3. Sheldon won an Atari Star award for his APX programs, and wrote a number of articles about Atari 8-bit and 16-bit computers for magazines such as Compute, SoftSide and Creative Computing. He says he would have written for Antic voluntarily had the pay scale been anywhere close to the industry standard. It is ironic that although Atari 8-bits were his first computer love, he is better known as the author of Compute's "Mapping the Commodore 64." That book borrowed the format of Ian Chadwick's "Mapping the Atari" and sold more than 100,000 copies, becoming the programming bible for that boxy, failure- prone monstrosity. After ten years of writing about the Amiga (the spiritual heir of the Atari 800), he is, alas, now writing about the PC (the spiritual heir of the Commodore 64,) and runs the ezsweep.com Web site. [List of articles]

Matthew Ratcliff, a gifted programmer, died in March 1999. His colleaguue Rachel Holmen said, "I was privileged to serve with 'MatRat', as he signed himself, as part of Borland's TeamB, volunteers who answered questions first on CompuServe and later on the Internet newsgroups. Matt leaves a wife and several children in the St. Louis area." [List of articles]

Andrew Reese, editor of STart from 1988 to 1990, is now the Academic Director of the Game Art and Design Program at The Art Institute of Phoenix. One of only three Certified 3D Studio MAX instructors in the world, he has taught all levels of 3D animation at the school and written or co-written eight books since leaving STart. He lives in Peoria, Arizona with his wife and daughter. You can contact him at areese@uswest.net or reesea@aii.edu. [List of articles]

Jeffrey Stanton wrote the game Olympic Dash and several books about the Atari Computers. He left the computer business in 1986. "To keep busy I wrote several self-published history books and sold them with my homemade photo postcards on Venice Beach's boardwalk on weekends. Several people convinced me to learn the Internet about four years ago. They loaned me their offices since I have never bought a PC; I still use an Amiga at home and I'm not on-line. I often use the library to get my E-Mail." [List of articles]

Bob Stewart's old Atari 800 still runs. "About the time of the articles some other people and I started a company, Carousel Software, to write home educational software for the Atari. We ended up doing that and for the (yuk) Commodore 64. In 1984 I left my job at Digital Equipment Corporation and three of us worked for Carousel full time for about 9 months. We quit while we still had our shirts. We did publish some software ourselves, and had a few titles published by others, including Brain Strainers, Telly Turtle, and Music Painter. I went back to working in telecommunications, specialized in network management system design and implementation, for Xyplex then Cisco Systems. I retired from Cisco and a 30-year high tech career in 1999." [List of articles]

Rich Tietjens is a sysadmin for an international manufacturing firm, and runs his own PC business the other 80 hours of the week. [List of articles]

Russ Wetmore (Russ.Wetmore@POBox.com) wrote "Preppie!" which was a seminal game for the Atari 8-bit platform. In addition to writing entertainment and productivity software, Russ also contributed articles to several magazines including Antic. Russ moved on to a long successful career at Apple Computer, earning five software patents and later achieving minor success with the first widely sold application for a PDA: "Notion: The Newton List Manager". Although known for his software talent, Russ has spent most of the last ten years in senior management roles in engineering, IT and marketing/strategy. Russ currently resides in London, England with his wife, Karen, as a Partner with marchFIRST. [List of articles]

David Woolley completed a BA in English in 1994, a Diploma in Film & TV Production in 1997, and is currently finishing his MA in Film, TV & Media Studies. David still lives in his native New Zealand, and works nights at a television station, a job that requires him to spend sit alone in a darkened room in the wee small hours. Somewhere in the middle of this hectic lifestyle he continues to write fiction. Email: daveyw@ihug.co.nz [List of articles]

Jason Worley (jasonworley@home.com) wrote File Master at the age of 15. Jason is now Microsoft MCSE administering 25 Windows NT servers and 400+ NT workstations on a 10-location computer network. In 1999, he finished his MBA degree at University of Oklahoma. Hobbies include guns, radio-controlled gas/electric cars, trucks and airplanes, comptuers and programming, high-end car/home audio and fast cars. "Recently purchased my 'first' computer through an eBay sale, a Timex/Sinclair 1000, Z80-based toy computer with a whopping 2K of RAM plus a 16K expansion pack! Been playing with some Atari emulators (Atari800win) and was even able to find and successfully load and execute the program I wrote for Antic in August 1986." His home page is at http://members.home.net/jasonworley. [List of articles]