SpectateSwamp (Doug Pederson) has led what many
people would describe as a 'dull' working life. Working in (to use
his own words) 'data processing, data data processing' and programming,
he has made up for this blandness with the sheer variety and extent of the weirdness
in his free time.
In 1972, Doug found a stone with a hole in it, and,
like a rational human being, he disregarded it - until, over the course of the next
two years, he found another two rocks and dreams told him that the
rock was special and magical. Having had this 'confirmed' by a local medicine
man, Swamp concluded that the stone had found him, and declared himself a shaman
(shawman as he so cleverly twisted it). He has since been
on a quest to enlighten the world about their (and his) powers, getting publicity
in local papers, and setting up a company 'Tokin'.
In 1999, Spectate began coding his own hobby search program
in Visual Basic 5. Though his horrendously poor coding practices, mess of GOTOs,
and baffling interface was all but unusable, Doug was convinced he was on to a winner.
'Spectate Swamp Desktop Search', or
SSDS as it was later termed, could search one plaintext file only - and
this was not through use of an index, but by brute force. Consequently, Doug had
to change the basis of all his computer-use to accommodate the loss of text formatting
and embedded images, not to mention the restrictions imposed by his using one or
two giant plaintext files - but this worried him not. In an attempt to win fame
and support for SSDS, Doug has spent many years
spamming wikis, blogs, and IT forums with unfocused, confusing videos and irrelevant,
unreadable posts, refusing to listen to any of the critics or well-meaning people
who advised him otherwise, and continue to do so to this day. With the
source code for SSDS becoming available
for download in 2007, things went from bad to worse as the true nature of the beast
could finally be seen. The hideous code (in .txt format) was and is truly shocking,
and many professional programmers have been scarred for life, or even blinded, by
the sheer horror contained within.
A digital camcorder, usually a beautiful tool, managed to add yet another facet
to Mr Pederson's delusions. Convinced that editing raw footage
was unnecessary, even undesirable, SpectateSwamp propagated this message
also, not only on videographers' forums, but also on those frequented by IT professionals,
who had expressed no interest in the subject. Not to be deterred by their constant
criticism, Doug continued to believe in his statements and continued to try to spread
his message, despite claims that he was a 'retard', and also despite his contradicting
himself on one occasion.
Suffering from suspected psychoses too numerous to
name, SpectateSwamp has the delusion that the entire world is out to get him. 'Geeks'
are conspiring to suppress his 'search engine'
and make him lose coding competitions, and many even challenge his
magic stones! It is really impossible to do justice in summary to the wide,
scary range of Doug's paranoia, and
conspiracy theories.
As well as his digital obsessions, Doug is an avid amateur
paleontologist who combes the riverbanks near his home in an attempt to
find fossils. An interesting endeavour which many
of us have tried at some point, but Spectate takes it one step further. Not content
with the skeletons of dead fish, he honestly believes that he found some real life
dinosaur skin. Apparently ignorant of the fact that
this is impossible except in marshes and tar pits, Doug 'strengthened' his claims
with many blurry photos which to most looked like nothing more than a rock. As may
well be expected, he ignored all criticisms against him, claiming
conspiracies by local museums who, he thinks, want to poach his finds. Most
critics believe they would not want to poach it at all - if the museum wanted a
bit of useless and uninteresting rock, they could go and find one themselves - as
Spectate himself did. Apparently historical delusions are somewhat a problem in
Doug's neighborhood, as one of Spectate's 'friends' believes he found a huge skeleton
at the river. Frighteningly enough, this unnamed friend also believed in a
conspiracy against him, and, like Doug, was totally unable to take a photograph
that was in focus, even with today's digital camera technology.
Clearly discontented with his earthly conspiracies,
Spectate sought to branch out and soon came across what he thought were
aliens in some of his pointless videos of clouds. After excruciatingly long
viewings of the videos, Doug saw various leaves being blown and bugs flying. However,
in his wisdom, Spectate knew his eyes were not to be trusted. Clearly they were
not leaves nor bugs, but alien spaceships sent to monitor
him with the aid of the big crow that has occasionally been seen in Doug's garden.
Conveniently forgetting the rules of three-dimentional space, Doug thought that
their apparent proximity in his videos indicated that they were in cahoots against
him. Despite the shame of being ridiculed even on forums devoted to UFOs and alien
sightings, Spectate has sought to warn the public about the alien
threat.
Credit: jakkle -- TDWTF