User:Coplan

Daniel Travis North, born in 1977, is a resident of the greater Philadelphia area, Pennylvania, USA. In the demoscene, on the internet and on several listserv groups, he is commonly known as Coplan. A self-proclaimed computer geek from the age of 10 and an audiophile for nearly as long, Coplan derived his alias initially for use on local Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's) on two principals: 1) Aaron Copland was a famous composer who has worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra and 2) Coplan (pronounced: ko-plan), when used by itself, was more appealing without the 'd'.

Here is a Summary of Coplan's Wikipedia contributions.

The Evolution of Coplan

Music

Early in his life, Coplan was exposed to a wide variety of music. At the young age of 9, he learned how to play clarinet. Though he never mastered any other instruments, he also experimented with other woodwind instruments including French Horn, Saxaphone, Trumpet, Flute, Oboe and Piccolo. His musical interest took a strong turn as a direct result of two major incidents. First, in High School, he a major argument over splitting time between his competitive Swimming and the School Band resulted in an early withdrawl from the band. Without a daily need for practice in his musical performance, a large void was left. The second major incident was the discovery of the demoscene somewhere around the age of 15. This was a much needed release as Coplan now had a method to write music without the need for a live band. Since this time, Coplan has expanded his skills in the art of making and mixing music through the use of his computer. He has long practiced in the art of tracking, but later expanded his music into the world of high-quality MIDI synthesis. Coplan does not claim to be a very talented musician.

Computers

Coplan was also exposed to the world of personal computers very early on in life. His family's first computer was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A bought in 1981. By today's standards, this computer could do little more than beep, display primitive graphics (on a TV, monitors weren't common as of yet) and little else. But it was a means in which Coplan was able to become comfortable with computers. In 1987 at the age of 10, the family computer was upgraded to an IBM PS/2 which used the x86 architecture. It used 5.25" floppy disks instead of casette tapes, and it had a CGA graphics card which was miles ahead of the former house computer. But more importantly, the family eventually bought a modem for the computer. Coplan signed on regularly to local BBS's under the same alias for the next several years playing Tradewars and posting messages. But around age 15, thanks to a local BBS known as Neurosis BBS, he was exposed to the PC demoscene. And that changed everything.

Coplan built his first computer out of a hand-me-down x286 motherboard complete with its 12.5 hz processor and math co-processor and a Sound Blaster Pro. He very quickly upgraded to a 486-dx 33mhz machine with a Gravis Ultrasound sound card, and his world changed. He had VGA graphics, 16bit sound, and an 80gig hard drive. Armed with his 9600bps modem, he regularly grabbed as much demo productions as he possibly could. By the time he graduated high-school, he was making spare cash by building made-to-order computers for friends and family. In college, he took a job in the school's computer center. His already vast knowledge of hardware continued to expand, and his upgrades came as regularly as his limited budget would allow.

College ended and the life of the poor college student did as well. Some of the first major purchases out of college included a brand new computer, a Roland XP-30 Expandable Synthesizer and a high-end ST-Audio C-Port sound card. While his music compositions and gaming were carried out on the new machine, his old computer became a testing ground for projects stemming from the Open Source community. Linux became the networking operating system of choice, and several distrubtions were evaluated. He regularly switched between Redhat, Mandrake, Debian and SuSE. Eventually, he settled on Gentoo Linux.

The Demoscene

At the root of most of Coplan's interests was the PC Demoscene. He got involved because of his strong music interests and his desire to write music. But Coplan never claimed to be a talented musician, and realized very quickly that he had little to offer the demoscene. There was, however, no shortage of strong opinions and the courage to say exactly what was on his mind. So in response to a reader's message to the editor of TraxWeekly magazine, Coplan began writing reviews for the popular scene publication. When TraxWeekly closed it's doors, Coplan created Static Line to hopefully fill a void that was lost. He continued to write reviews and instructional articles in addition to managing the magazine.

As his knowledge grew in the world of computing and his interests started to sway towards PERL, PHP and web development, Coplan began a new project, SceneSpot, with friend and long-time demoscene member Ranger Rick. The site lingered for several years, but eventually closed it's doors early in 2006.

Coplan continues to participate in the demoscene, though not at the scale that he used to. He no longer manages scene publications or websites. He is currently affiliated with a small group called Fulcrum that consists mostly of long-time demoscene participants.

Coplan Today

Currently, Coplan continues to grow in his knowledge and interests in web development. Most of his work these days is done in PHP and MySQL. His interest and participation in the Open Source community continues to expand. But most of the time, he spends time with his family or he focuses (no pun intended) on his photography. He works as a Landscape Architect for a commercial engineering firm in the Philadelphia area.

Interests & Hobbies

Computer Hardware
Linux (Preferred distribution: Gentoo Linux)
Web development with PHP, MySQL and sometimes PERL
Photography

Current Projects

Antisoc.net - Literature and Movie reviews and discussions
Coplan@DeviantART - Photography and other art forms by Coplan

Past (Abandoned) Projects

SceneSpot.org - SceneSpot was a demoscene portal with strong roots in the North American Demoscene. The website was abandoned early in 2006 in favor of my other projects.
Static Line - Static Line was a demoscene magazine that was created to fill a void after DemoNews and TraxWeekly closed its doors. More information can be found at the Static Line stub.