A Splinter In My Mind

“You there, what is your profession?” If King Leonidas were to ask me that question, I’d humbly respond, “Hacker, sir.”

Of course, that scenario would be impossible, since it would require my birth to have occurred several hundred years before Christ and computers to have been ubiquitous in ancient Spartan society, but I had to get a 300 reference into my About Me page, one way or another. Notice how this page links to itself through the hyperlink in the previous sentence? That right there is an example of recursion. The usage of recursion in programming is like nuclear power; in the hands (or mind) of an adept hacker, it can lead to elegant code, but in the wrong hands—well, that topic warrants its own blog post.

I prefer the word hacker to programmer or developer. The former connotes a spirit; the latter two are unimaginative and uninspiring. The spirit I speak of (or in this case, write about) was captured perfectly in Paul Graham‘s essay, The Word “Hacker”. Hacker is a controversial word. To the mainstream media, it means a person who breaks into computer systems or creates viruses or steals the banking information of unsuspecting computer users. To the hacker community, it means a smart, creative programmer, who hates being controlled and is a bit unruly. So, that’s me, a hacker. To call myself a hacker must mean I think I’m smart and creative—hey, what can I say?

I live and work in the city of Winnipeg, which is located in Manitoba, a province of Canada. If I were to describe Winnipeg in one sentence, it would be: If there’s a bright center to the universe, I’m in the city that it’s farthest from. At work, I program in PowerBuilder, a relic of a bygone era of computing; I will mention it no more on this website. Outside of work, I enjoy learning about and hacking in all sorts of programming languages and technologies: Perl, Java, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL—yadda yadda yadda. Ruby on Rails is the latest addition to that list.

But there’s more to me than just programming. I have a beautiful wife, whom I love dearly. I love typical nerd movies, such as the various trilogies of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Neither of those compare, however, to the greatest movie and trilogy of all time: The Matrix. The metamorphosis of Thomas A. Anderson into The One is a story that has captivated me like no other. With its multiple layers of interpretation, The Matrix trilogy has appealed to my intellect in a way that no other movie has been able to accomplish, either before or since. I also love Fight Club, 300 (as is obvious), Wanted, and old Clint Eastwood westerns.

In my youth, I was a metalhead. Now that I’m older, has anything changed? Absolutely not! I remain a loyal headbanger and humble servant of the metal cause. I grew up listening to bands, such as Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, and Ozzy Osbourne. Then along came others, such as Metallica, Megadeth, and Motörhead. Today, it’s System of a Down, Sevendust, and Godsmack. But one band has eclipsed them all and sits alone upon the metal throne: Iron Maiden, the greatest band to have ever existed. I have idolized this rabble of British hooligans since my teens and my reverence for them is just as strong now as it was then. As the flag-bearers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Iron Maiden released classic albums, such as The Number of the Beast and Powerslave, and created melodic masterpieces, like Phantom of the Opera and Run to the Hills. It simply doesn’t get any better than that. I also enjoy grunge, other forms of hard rock, and electronica.

I relish playing around with technology in general and computers in particular. I’m fascinated by the nature of human intelligence and related subject areas, such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology. World history has also been an interest of mine since I was a youngin, especially the histories of ancient civilizations and of Europe from the Middle Ages to modern times. I am an avid reader. And last, but certainly not least, I have a passion for writing that is equal to my passion for programming; hence, I created this blog, a forum for me to express myself through the medium of the written word. My intentions with this blog are to have fun and not take myself too seriously.

Up the Irons!