Anyone know of a celeb into programming?

Anyone ever heard of a major celebrity (film star/pop star) that likes programming?

You sometimes see interviews with celebs where they might say they like painting or fishing, etc.

Any big-name celebs into programming - ideally games programming?

If so, let me know. I'll do the rest.

yeah... i hear that Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense is into programming...

why bother with Brad Pitt when you can admire and follow Red Ocktober around the media...

--Mike

All right then - any good-looking celebs?

um, hasn't Mike Oldfield designed games? Checkout the fruity loops site for celebs into that app.

hey... what can i say... they needed someone to play darth vader under the hood...

besides, you didn't specifiy in the original post... so here i be...

want my autograph...


--Mike

Not into programming, but Curt Schilling liked Advanced Squad Leader so much that he bought the rights to continue making the game after Hasbro bought Avalon Hill.

Bill Gates
Sid Meier
Peter Molyneux
John Carmack

Mr Spock

Mr Tricks is an actor.

Frank Sidebottom

"Leonard Nimoy" - sounds good to me.

John Pickford

Well, I am talking more film stars/pop stars here.

I believe Paul Daniels dabbled on the old 8-bit Ataris, or something. :P

why do you need to know anyway?

he wants to steal... eerrrrrr, i mean, 'use' a few celebrity textures from em... and maybe a few celebrity models as well...

:)

--Mike

Pat Morita was a programmer in the financial sector before he got into acting.


Andy

Well... there aren't a lot... certainly not ones that are all that good...

Um... Dane Cook does his own web site...

Maddox is a programmer... but he isn't a film/pop star.

I think Mitch Hedberg did something technical before being in a death metal band, then being a comedian... and then dying.

Oh wait.... Vin Diesel... he is the main reason that "Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from butcher bay" was such a good game.... Tho I don't think he had any hands on with the programming. He is a huge dork tho... Used to play DnD all the time...

There was a "gothic" FP click adventure written in the late 90s. And I think it was part programed by some singer. But I cannot remember either the singer nor the Game Title. So not much use realy

Is that thread with all the blitzers' photos still here? Plenty o' websites around to make such persons 'famous'.. :P

Well, it's obvious right from the name of the company... George Lucas = LucasArts. Of course, he owned the game studio since the old Atari days, and is one of the few companies that still managed to develop games since the crash of 1983. I dunno if Mr. Lucas programs himself, but he is an owner of a game software company, tho.

I doubt he programs. Regarding Lucasarts, he's just the one with the dollars I'd say .. :P

The short answer is no but I have a vaguely related anecdote. I have a nearly finished little game by the name of 'Block*Edz' that I ran out of steam on and my brother and I decided it would be a laugh to get some celebrity endorsement for it if we released it as freeware. He couldn't find Mr T's address but got in contact with Timmy Mallet who seemed quite keen to see the game. We decided not to bother in the end but Timmy dropped us another e-mail some weeks later.

Anyone see Carmack's stab at the X Prize? Quite an impressive rocket that could take off and land vertically under computer control.

@John Pickford
*laughing* :O)

@Grey
Has Mike Oldfield done any music after Amarok and maybe Tubular Bells II? I only remember that i was confronted with some very weird new age stuff once i tried out a new cd in a musicstore...very confusing!

I've worked on movies. Does that make me a celebrity?

David Bowie did that one Omikron game.

Didn't Marlon Brando do the C64 port of Elite?...Or was that Susan Dando?...I always get those two mixed up, I should get a system!

David Bowie have always been in front with new technology,
I would not be surprised if he programmed some too.

I think Rob Hubbard can almost count as a star,
his music is played all around the globe still.
And his themes are remixed a million times by
all kinds of musicians who ever played a C64 game !
..and he did program, at least this one game called Razzmatazz.

Robin Williams is a hardcore gamer n00b.. if you like to use that term of phrase *spits*.

Lol he was getting all technical and represented at a spore related media event.

( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3423935674619182066 ).. its right near the end when the press are questioning him 1 to 1.

@taumel: yeah Tubular Bells III lol. Also songs of distant earth (same name as a A.C.Clarke book) is good.

@Grey
Ohh maybe i should listen into this one if he makes better music again...Amarok was great, nothing to relax but great.

> yeah... i hear that Mike 'Red Ocktober'
> Hense is into programming...

He must be a Z list celeb :)

Well, Nolan Bushnell made a celebrity out of himself of late, he may still have the magic touch from the old Atari days. Of course, Shigeru Miyamoto has become world famous with his creations in the gaming world. Hideo Kojima, on top of that, becoming a household name with the Metal Gear franchise, and Metal Gear Solid. So, there's another way to look at it, programmers that become celebrities. On both sides of the globe, no less. Oh, yeah, Yu Suzuki, with Virtua Fighter. Maybe George Broussard from 3DR (get done with DNF already!).

Matthew Broderick

Did Douglas Adams program... or was he just a 'Mac typist' ?

Neal Stephenson ended up writing "Snow Crash" after spending years on trying to write software good enough to produce graphic novels to an acceptable standard (project eventually shelved.)

There was a video floating around recently where Robin Williams was demonstrating some 3D modelling software, he seemed to be pretty good with it :)

Robin Williams mentioned 7 posts earlier. It was Spore (a game with character creation).

This is going well - most of the people mentioned in this thread I've never heard of. :P

lol @ wargames. wasn't it a C64 he had with a modem that you plug the handset into? I never realised it was M. Broderick

This was a MicroVAX...

Yeah, he was involved with programming the HHGTTG text adventures IIRC.

Nahh he wrote the script but he didn't code it.

Then again, anyone involved with computers in the early 80's would have done some coding. There wasn't much else to do with them.

An accoustic coupler. I've always wanted to say that.

I've always wanted to say that.

glad I could be of assistance. And by complete coincidence a visiting friend happening to mention the same modem tonight in the middle of a kung fu movie.

After the CIA took all his stuff away, he uses a ZX80. (But its called whatever it was called in the states)
It was hidden under a donot or something

I have one i my loft, I just ain't got a phone that will fit it into it :)

A piccy of the Uber machine used by M Broderwick



Cheers

Garion

Britney Spears is a Perl wiz.
Jessica Simpson prefers Pascal

Michael Jackson uses c++. That's why noobs always say "OMG!11 C++ IS THE 1337!!".

I hear that Richard James (Aphex Twin) sometimes writes his own audio software if he can't find anything that does what he wants..

A cartoonist , Nick Bradbury, wrote the first couple of versions of the excellent html editor 'Homesite'.
There used to be an easter egg in it that displayed one of his cartoons if you went into 'help' - 'about' - then typed 'whereisthedamneasteregg'.

Wil Wheaton ?

I have a wooden accoustic coupler. I kept it as it the only wooden computer addon I have seen. I think it went upto 1200 baud!

I'm surprised your ceiling hasn't caved in with all that old computer crap you've got stashed up there! Especially with that old 'portable' computer that weighs about half a tonne. :P

OH GOD - YOU ALL MISSED THE EXCITEMENT

Anyone ever heard of "Michael Jordan"? I nearly burst a nappy when I found his CV online:



However, it isn't THE "Michal Jordan" - it's a 2-bit actor that has been in ER and other TV shows:

http://home.earthlink.net/~mj023/id1.html


Still, the search continues.

Puki,

Is your cunning plan to pretend to be this realy famous person, write to the oblivion ppl and ask for permission to use their graphics?

Richard Dawkins wrote some cool evolution simulators.

I sorta doubt this, but I know that Tom Clancy puts his name on games, but whether or not he's really involved in the development of Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, or Rainbow Six, that's beyond me. UbiSoft sort of took things over, but that's something that gets me curious, too...

Daley Thomson did some ace speccy & C64 games. I think he won programmer of the year.

Mavis Beacon's been knocking out typing tutors for years too.

I hear Jade Goody's working on a MMORPG.

Massively Minging Online RPG?

That's the one. :P

Jade Goody reminds me of Miss Piggy (with less personality, of course).

I Like Jade.

(She is after all a Millionare)

But that doesnt matter, I think shes nice

She still can't afford me.

She has managed to make a shed load of money by effectively doing nothing, though. Life just isn't fair. :/

/me mumbles something about an overdraft

Ah yes, I remember the shot put well and pressing ZX rapidly to run ... ah those were they days.

Jade is not stupid. What she is, is uneduated. Thats not the same thing at all.

You say she has made a shed load of money doing nothing. Well look at all the other ppl from these "Fly on the wall" programs.

She is the second richest of all of them, the only one richer than her is Jordan.

It takes some skill to make the money she has, and to keep it is just as hard.

And, whilst Ill admit she is not "Venus", she isnt as unattractive as you make out.

I think Thompson's only input into the game was to complain that his character was white. He clearly had no understanding of the poor ol' speccy's limited graphics capabilities. :)

@Big10p,

What he was annoyed about, was the whole thing wereby he "Bacame" white in peoples minds because he was winning. The speccy decathalon thing was just an extention of that problem.

(For Overseas people, Daily Thompson, was one of the greatest athletes the UK has ever produced. And he was a "Nearly" White, black man. He was so everyones hero for about 10 years. And all those places/people who would have nothing to do with blacks, suddenly decided that he wasnt black. [In the same way Hitler declareed his Doctor not really Jewish])

lol, and here we have the evidence:



who is that white guy?

I rubbed the keys away playing that. (Not rubbed the letters off, rubbed the keys away)

I treated my keys like formula one tyres as they were rubber, you know go on a warm up lap or two until they have optimum temperature... ;-)

Heh, I have yet to see Gary Coleman do his own program, as opposed to just appearing in one.

We can all thank Gary Colman.
Thanks to him people realise its OK to hate Disabled people. (ok, Physicaly chalanged)

Mind they had this girl on special victims unit, who suffered from what Gary had. And even though she was the murderer, you still felt sorry for her.