I was born in 1972 in Murwillumbah, a small hard-to-spell town in Australia, and where I spent the first 18 years of my life before moving to Sydney in 1991.

I first started coding around 1986, on an Amstrad CPC464 (Z80 processor, 64K RAM including 16K video memory, tape drive for storage), messing around with BASIC and later a bit of z80 machine code, using a hand-rolled assembler— my first, reasonably successful stab at a compiler. Then I discovered girls and lost interest in computers, which in hindsight was a terrible mistake since all I really did was mope around being a moody teenager wondering why nobody understood me.

Five years later (after dropping out of a design school in Sydney) I found myself unemployed and somewhat directionless, and so used the opportunity to rediscover computers and starting working with QuickBasic and x86 assembler, then C, then C++… which is where I stayed. I helped develop a 3D software engine for a strange company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment, where we busily poured money down the toilet prior to the dot-com crash, with the intention of developing interactive 3D movies. Google Cyberswine if you want to know more about that. I walked away from that job with some rather modest savings and a handful of utterly worthless company options, and for a while tried to become a screenwriter, but before too long realized I didn’t have the chops for it, and started piddling about with programming again.

Then after a few years of occasional contract work and blogging about nothing the tax department caught up with me and informed me I owed them rather a large hunk of money, whereupon I picked up and moved to New Zealand to try my hand at a proper job for a while, again working in C++, rendering and 3D. I paid my debt and vowed never to be so irresponsible again [ha].

In 2010 I have returned to Sydney, to pursue my fortunes as an independent developer once again, and this time I really mean it. If I don’t have a clear path to riches and fulfillment by early 2011 then it’s back to salaryman for me, and catching up with all the 30 somethings who have already paid off their mortgages and such.

I have a bunch of my own software I have neglected these last 5 years, over at Jujusoft (all in perpetual beta) as well as a unique little driving demo called Drivey which I created a few years back, and plan to one day expand into a functional game (I’ve been saying that for ages now).

But it’s not all about programming…

I like to draw occasionally too, and am quite likely to write half a novel someday. I’m an occasionally vocal atheist and strong advocate of skeptical/rational thinking. I think that God is a ridiculous concept, and that religion is on the whole detrimental to anyone seeking knowledge and wisdom. I feel outright contempt for Scientology, new Age-ism and most modern religions, because these don’t even come with any cultural heritage— they’re just bullshit which add nothing of value to the world.

I won’t try to enumerate all the stuff I’m into here, since that’s the point of keeping a blog. I started it in August 2002, and am quite glad that I did— it’s great to have a record of what I’ve been thinking about, and blogging has prompted me to explore ideas more thoroughly as well (although it hasn’t improved my writing ability as much as I originally hoped).