About the author…
It is so difficult trying to summarize my whole self, rather than a particular thing which catches my fleeting attention. I get distracted easily because there are just too many ways to occupy one’s mind these days— the only reason I’m writing this now is because I’m supposed to be something else much more important…
I was born in Australia in 1972, lived in Sydney from 1991 to 2005, and am currently living and working as a senior software engineer in Auckland, New Zealand. I’ve come to terms with the fact that most of my life has been spent in front of a computer monitor.
I first started coding around 1986, on an Amstrad CPC464 (Z80 processor, 64K RAM including 16K video memory, tape drive for storage), and messing around with BASIC and a bit of assembler. Five years later (after dropping out of design school) 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++… and many years later I’m still coding in C++ and working on 3D conversion and rendering. I also have a bunch of my own software I just barely maintain, over at (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.
But it’s not all about programming; I like to draw occasionally too, and am quite likely to write half a novel someday. In the late 90s I wanted to write screenplays, and got quite fired up about it… until I realized I didn’t have the requisite hunger and talent to see something like that through. In general I think it’s a good thing that I’m not driven by success so much as the desire to do interesting things.
I’m also an occasionally vocal atheist and proponent of skeptical thinking. I feel that God is a rather silly concept and religion is on the whole detrimental to anyone seeking knowledge and wisdom. I think we are damaging our environment and long term viability by burning resources at an unsustainable rate, but I have real hope that we can make it through the tough times ahead without the whole of Western civilization collapsing (after all I do quite like it for the most part).
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 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).
