 Nickname:
"Matt"
Real Name: Matt
Age: Born in June, 1945, the replacement for WWII.
Resides: I am not certain that I do but I reside a mile north of Tampa, Florida,
USA which is about 140 miles WSW of Disneyworld for non-Americans.
Occupation: Retired for 14 years. Let the working stiffs figure out how I did it.
Favourite websites: www.giwersworld.org I am never humble. But there are others, www.whatreallyhappened.com and www.antiwar.com and of course my son's www.technobabel.org has to be mentioned.
Favourite application, game, and program of all time: Atari Starshot, (see below).
What are you working on right now: A complete todo list on everything I am playing, developing and working on at the moment would be worth developing but it might discourage me from doing anything. I guarantee nothing earth-shaking. Nothing which will be even noted in passing much less remembered. That should be a great relief to the world.
What is your current Wallpaper/Screensaver: http://www.giwersworld.org/computers/linux/tux1-800.jpg And back out of the URL if you like it to get other sizes and the script to make it using povray from www.povray.org
What's so special about your computer room: It is also the living room and has a couch for crashing which also mitigates against another marriage which from experience is likely for the better. And it has a DVD and VCR and multi-tasking it all with the computers. (If you see this as your future as a geek it has much to recommend it. My life is my own. What else is a geek?)
How many computers do you have: Three on the LAN at the moment running linux. One off-line that was eaten by a Windows virus and not motivated to get it back online. A future Intel machine to run linux awaiting assembly. Two retired Intels and one aged Unix box. I think that is all without digging down a few layers. Unless you count an old 486 modular CPU that never left the desk drawer for failure of what seemed a good idea at the time.
What was your first computer: First used was a Sylvania time-share back in 1967. The first owned was a Bally Arcade and a cartridge version of Palo Alto tiny Basic. The next was an Atari 800.
Do you remember the first program you ran on it: On the Sylvania time share, the earliest near field sonar array analysis. This was an example while self-teaching Fortran. It changed things in military sonar research. On the Arcade, the first look-and-feel Atari Star Raiders before one could become a millionaire by suing over look-and-feel.
On the Atari I wrote a lot of programs and sold sixteen to Compute! and a few to some other publishers. The most popular was Atari Starshot. I sold about one in three if you want to calibrate my success rate. I still get occasional "are you him?" emails.
Geekiest moment of your life: The day I realized the in-house government experts telling a mere manager like me about programming standards did not know what they were talking about. Actually it was not that day but every time after that I did the right thing by playing to their ignorance which they so proudly told me.
When did you first realize you were a geek: When I got tired of learning new languages just for the fun of it. There needs be a 12 step program for geekdom as long as the higher power is not a new language. One must realize each of the steps is not a new language. It's the compiler, stupid!
If I was a program I'd be: How do I know I am not? This is a very troubling question.
Favourite quote: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
What do you do when you're not at your computer(s): Sleep. Grocery shopping. Running needful errands. Dates of course but she is into computers too. They have all been for the last 20 years which is how we meet. Nothing lasts. Maybe it is the couch.
You have a time machine that can only be used once. If you use it you won't come back. What date would you set it to, and what ONE thing would you take with you (not a computer): Rome, 1AD, with a ton of sugar for personal wealth or with an encyclopedia of science and technology in Italian and an Italian-English dictionary of course. "We will put a geek on the moon in our Millenium!"
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The Truth Behind The Geek (*creative liberties taken for the benefit of the reading audience)
Matt says he has nothing to impress the younger geeks. After you have learned your first half dozen languages the rest are annoyingly repetitious and the differences are very geeky. The first half dozen were the solution to all your programming problems just like the next half dozen promised to be. "These days I use shell scripting, the built in linux programs and Free Pascal as a last resort. The Zen of programming, the simplest tool for the job. If you think in C++ "Hello World" demands C++."
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