No religious affiliation or outlook is implied. I realize that some people are offended by my use of the word "Blasphemy". This is unfortunate, because I can't really change it now. Even if I could though, I probably wouldn't.

Most of the work on my free site was created using some combination of Lightwave 3D, World Builder, and Vue d'Esprit.

If necessary I apply the finishing touches in Adobe Photoshop. You can find a more detailed listing of my tools on my links page.

HARDWARE: I've used a few different configurations over the years. Here they are from the start:

The 486 years: My first computer was a Compaq 486/66 with 8 MB of RAM, which I received as a gift from my Mom in the fall of 1994. It's original purpose was to hold my first novel, but I was drawn more to the copies of Adobe Photostyler and KPT 2 that came with it. That computer had a 14 inch monitor and 1 MB of video memory embedded into the motherboard. I first started making pictures because I couldn't find any good wallpaper for my 800 x 600 display. I upgraded the memory to 16 MB and got a copy of Bryce2.

Pentium Overdrive: I recieved a Pentium Overdrive (83 mHz) for Christmas 1995 and bought some more RAM. I also picked up a copy of Poser 2.

Pentium 200 MMX : Another windfall, this time in late 1997. Digital Blasphemy was getting around 200 visitors per day, and one of them sympathized with my hardware woes. The kind samaritan donated a nice Digital Pentium 200 MMX with 64 MB of SDRAM and a 2 MB Matrox Video card. This machine also had a nice, fast SCSI hard disk.
I upgraded my monitor to a big bright 17" Sony Trinitron. I upgraded my video card to the STB Velocity 128 with 4 MB RAM, but recently I've upgraded once more to a 16 MB Voodoo Banshee card.

Pentium II 300: I purchased a cheap $800 Pentium II computer and loaded it with 192 MB of memory. I intended this computer to tide me over, while I saved up for a workstation class machine.

Pentium III 550: Almost workstation class. This computer has 768 MB of RAM.

Dual Pentium III 600: Decided shortly after purchasing the 550 that I wanted a dual-processor box. This machine has 1 GB of PC100 SDRAM with ECC and comes equipped with a Diamond Fire GL Pro video card. Metacreations products, unfortunately, do not take advantage of multi-processor systems but Lightwave and World Builder do.

Dual PIII 1 GHz, 1 GB RDRAM. This machine uses a Fire GL2 video card, powering 1 21" Trinitron.

My last machine was a Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz with 2GB RAM using a Nvidia Quadro 980 XGL graphics card. I am currently using a Dell 3005FPW widescreen monitor. Here are the specs for my current machine.

Consider it another way (this is exaggerated to more clearly show the trend): Say you get ten new emails from people in a day. You reply them all. The next day you ten emails from new people and you get replies from the ten people you wrote yesterday. 20 emails. You reply to them all. The next day you get ten emails from new people, ten replies from the first day's threads, and ten replies from yesterday. Now you have 30 emails. Can you see where this is going? Of course, not every email thread will continue over many days, but the general trend remains the same. You can't keep up too many email threads when you constantly have new requests pouring in.

Someday I hope to hire someone dedicated to buffering my email correspondence and making sure everyone gets the reply they deserve. That day has not yet arrived.

I do read each and every email I am sent (I rather enjoy knowing that people are happy with what I am doing). If the subject really touches me, I will reply. My job right now however is to make excellent wallpapers for my subscribers, and not to chat it up with everyone on the Net. Sorry if this makes me a snob.

If you want me to look at your image or file, please post it on the web somewhere and send me the URL. Thanks!

I used to have bitmaps a long time ago, but I decided to drop them in favor of JPEG graphics. JPEG files take up a lot less space on my server, so I can post more images, and they keep the original colors intact (24-bit). Since they are smaller, they also download faster.

JPEG's are easily converted into bitmaps. Open the file in windows Paint (this may not work on your system), select Save As, and save it with the file extension .bmp in your windows directory. Set it as your wallpaper as usual.

An even easier way is to use your web browser. IE3+ and Netscape 3+ will allow you to right-click on a an image and set it as your wallpaper. Click on the thumbnails in the galleries to load the full sized image. Select the size you want, right-click on the image, and select "Set as Wallpaper" from the options. The JPG will be converted to a bitmap in your C:\Windows directory (or whatever is equivalent on your system). You can get the bitmap out later by looking for "Internet Exporer Wallpaper.bmp" or "Netscape Wallpaper.bmp".

It would eat lot more bandwidth than is necessary as people would no doubt check out more than one resolution just to see the difference (I would do this anyway). Besides, with great programs like I've listed above, it's easy for anyone to get a good fit.

Several colleges teach courses in computer graphics, usually in the Art dept. If anyone knows of any cool class pages I should list here, please write me.

Otherwise you can do like I did, sit in front of your computer for hours everyday twiddling with software. Do try to get some fresh air once in a while though.

Answer here.