Bits about myself
I became fascinated with computers during my teens back in the mid 80's. It all started with
the mysterious powers of the Commodore 64.
How could it be that after typing long enigmatic codes into it, it
would display a program? Magic of the highest order!! Although I spent lots of time playing games
on it, I also learned to program in BASIC and wrote several programs. Later I got an
Amiga 500 and started
collecting demos and games
which I still enjoy to this day. Those demos and games had an
enormous impact on me due to their fantastic graphics and music. I would not be doing what I
do today if it wasn't for those Amiga productions.
Since 1998 my favorite computing environment is Linux,
a variant of the Unix operating system. What I especially like
about Linux is high configurability, open nature, and the rich command shell environment it provides.
This gives me much freedom and increases my productivity in many respects.
I can configure the system in great detail and make it a very comfortable operating environment.
The local standardized documentation system, and the source code, lets me quickly find out about an issue at hand.
The extensive amount of various command tools, along with the shell, makes a powerful interactive and scripting
environment that facilitates high productivity.
And finally, Linux teaches how to do things the Unix way,
which I found to be the most rewarding and educational experience that no other operating system has given me.
I'm self taught in everything I use computers for, and after all these years I still find them
fascinating. Overall I'm more of a generalist and like to do a bit of everything, though mainly graphics and programming.
Most of my programming is done in Java,
Perl
and the Bash shell (and awk, sed, grep, etc).
I'm a fan of the Unix Philosophy, the
worse is better approach to programming, and
the KISS principle.
I'm a frugal computer user
and like to maximize their lifetime through the use of smaller and efficient programs, proper configuration, and
regular maintenance. I don't need many Mhz to be happy, as that gives me a better feel for how things work -
which is useful when writing software.
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My hardware
In a true geek fashion, here is a list of my computing hardware in current use (as of 2006-09-10): HOST....: main.eon.net HARDWARE: 800Mhz AMD Duron, 512Mb RAM, 20GB HD, 40GB HD OS......: Linux 2.4.32 (Slackware 9.1) MAIN USE: programming, webmaster, research, etc HOST....: gfx.eon.net HARDWARE: 2Ghz AMD Athlon, 2Gb RAM, 160GB HD OS......: WinXP MAIN USE: art making, win compatibility testing, researching games HOST....: amiga.eon.net HARDWARE: Amiga 4000 (30Mhz MC68030, 16MB RAM, 540MB HD) OS......: Amiga OS 3.1 MAIN USE: researching games, watching demos HOST....: mango.eon.net HARDWARE: 200Mhz Pentium MMX, 64MB RAM, 30GB HD OS......: usually Linux/Unix of some sort MAIN USE: security and network testing HOST....: (not connected to the network) HARDWARE: Amiga 500 (7.09 MHz MC68000, 1MB RAM) OS......: Amiga OS 1.3 MAIN USE: researching games, watching demos 
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