daimyo.org

At the moment, I am a student. Somehow I have ended up at New Mexico State University immersing myself in Computer Science. Even though I have some natural computer ability, the CS curriculum is at times very demanding.

Often I feel myself fighting to stray out of the little logical box some of the CS classes try to impose on my thinking. After awhile there is only true or false. On and Off. One and Zero. And/Or. Yet, in life there is a continuum of values. Even times when something is true and false and neither one all at once.

I do my best to work through areas not related to Math/CS/Logic too. Some of the most powerful ideas available can be taken straight from Biology. Consider how something as small as a honey bee can not only fly, but seek out food, reproduce, socialize, calculate flight paths, etc. Designing the software that would be light-weight and fast would be an extremely challenging proposition.

I feel very passionate about Astronomy and Philosophy as well. My language studies have led me to Nihongo (Japanese). I've long had a fascination for Asian History, Art, and Philosophy.

I was raised in a Military Family, so I had the unique opportunity to visit and live in places most Americans have not been. I was able to travel through Europe, live in Central America, the East Coast, the Mid-West, and the American West.

Being able to see many historical sites in person, not only fueled my imagination it gave me a better perspective of time and history. Many children grow up with the notion of castles, kings, princesses, knights and shining armor. I was soon disabused of these lofty notions after actually visiting castles and seeing how rough even the highest nobility lived. Or seeing the many cruel torture devices used on "criminals." Or rows and rows of stacked human skulls behind a cathedral, victims of the black plague.

By 5th grade, I made a personal study of World War 2. I read every book in the post library on the subject. While living in Germany, I also visited Dachau twice. I don't have words to describe those experiences.

I first encountered this UN*X clone in the spring of 1996, while still in High School. I was trying to learn C and I needed a cheap compiler. I ended up buying a C book and a Linux book which included two distributions. My fate was forever changed.

For whatever reason, I ended up partitioning my hard drive and installing Slackware. It had a 1.2.13 kernel, a.out, and libc4! You had to compile everything from a tarball. It was quite a hill to climb, but when I reached the summit I had a deeper understanding of what went on inside that beige box sitting on my desk.

What really inspired me was all the great screenshots. At the time, the hot Window Manager was Bowman, which later evolved into Afterstep, which spawned Window Maker.