Day 15 – Earliest geek experience

What qualifies as a “geek experience”?

I have already posted about my first introduction to computers and so far I only concentrated on the computer side of my geek life.

But being a geek isn’t restricted to just computers.

I am also a geek when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy, though to a somewhat lesser degree than I am a computer geek.

Some of the earliest sci-fi I was introduced to is most likely Doctor Who.  I absolutely loved it, even though in my tender wee years when I first saw it, it scared the heck out of me.

I cannot remember how old I was when I first watched Doctor Who, but it must have before my teens as I remember watching lots of re-runs of Doctor Who during my early years in high school.  At that time, I was already conscious of already seeing episodes for the second time.

As for my first recollection of fantasy, it was most likely in the form of fighting fantasy books written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.  Actually I’m amazed I still remember their names.  I was probably around 9 or 10 years old again.

I enjoyed those choose you own adventure type books so much, for class assignments I’d create my own stories. Spending forever to map out story lines and chapter paths and passing it around my mates at school to read.  The stories tended to not be very long because it took so long to map it all out, but everybody seemed to enjoy my adventures.

So looking back and reminiscing about my early childhood, I am beginning to notice a pattern.  I don’t really remember much about my childhood with only a few fragments of flashbacks, but it definitely seems the early 80’s is when I began to get my geek groove on.

Day 14 – Favourite computer conference?

Tech Ed. Need I say more?

For the last two years I have missed out on going to Tech Ed New Zealand because I had foolhardily scheduled the births of my son and daughter to coincide with the biggest Microsoft event in New Zealand.

This year I am finally free, with no impending births, to attend this big event in Auckland.

Except for one thing.

I am no longer sure if I want to be away from my family for two night and basically three days.

I have been to Tech Ed twice, both times I was foot loose and fancy free.  Now, I have other priorities.  It is a real shame the conference is never held in Wellington or at least has never been held here in my short memory.

Another conference I do enjoy which is held in Wellington is WebStock.  I managed to attend this five day event two years ago and it was great.  Especially since it didn’t involved flying to Auckland.  Hopefully I get to attend again in the future, perhaps even next year.

In the meantime, Tech Ed is still my favourite and perhaps as the time draws near I will be more keen to actually attend.

Did I mention the food is great? ;)

Day 13 – How did you become such a geek? Career? Personal interest?

I was born to it!

In my post for Day 01 I covered this to some degree and I’ll build on it here.

Back in the early 80’s when the C64 was king I discovered computers.  Well… I didn’t discover computers! Computers become part of my consciousness.  Without the being a cyborg part though.  Though that would have been cool!

From the age of 9 or 10 I was just fascinated with computers but it wasn’t until I was 14 that I got my own – a Commodore 64.

Just now I had a recollection of an old TV show I loved called Whiz Kids.  Apparently it only ran for one season though at the time I had no notion of seasons I only knew the show was on and then the show was off and sometimes it would come back the next year again.  But this show was one of many that introduced me to the idea that computers can help you do stuff – even fight crime and right wrongs.

Alas I didn’t actually pursue much in the line of computers for a long time.

I took whatever classes that were computer related in high school and straight after high school into university I did start a bachelors’ degree in computer science which was left incomplete after three years of playing an awful lot of arcade games and pinball.

But then there was a significant gap where I didn’t do anything very computer related at all career wise.  I still tinkered away at home but I never had the impetus to use my talents to being a career in the computer industry.

I was still a geek, but it wasn’t until 2002 when friends finally convinced me to take my geekiness and make some money from it.

And so in May 2002, I abruptly quit my job, moved to Wellington, signed up for a one year course in computers and I was away laughing.

From that point onwards, I just got more and more geekier as my confidence and knowledge grew.

It was also the time when I met my best bud @NZCoderGuy as he was starting the same course.

So as far as I’m concerned I have always been a geek.  Computers have always fired my imagination and I can not see a day when computers, gadgets or technology in general would not be a significant part of my life.

Day 12 – What area do you want to expand your skills into?

Too many, if any!

There are way too many areas I could really expand into and the goal posts have a habit of being overly mobile.

Currently I am looking into moving into ASP.NET MVC 3 and making (automated?) testing a bigger part of my application development.  The most recent testing methodology I’ve been looking into is Business Driven Development (BDD) as opposed to Test Driven Development (TDD).

To help with BDD I have been testing out SpecFlow.  This is and awesome tool for turning structured human readable requirements into actual testing code which you can compile and put through your test runner.  I just think it is fantastic and makes writing unit tests so easy and even helps you by supplying you with the basic code you need to insert into your test classes and then all you need to do is fill in the logic.

For years now sadly, I have been meaning to get into testing frameworks but have found it very hard to get my head around it all.  SpecFlow has begun to significantly break down that barrier.

There is plenty more areas I could go into, but ASP.NET MVC 3 and BDD/TDD are my main focus for the immediate future.

Day 11 – Favourite hacking environment–music, light, seating, etc.

I take what I can get.

My hacking environment is a corner of the lounge.  There are not a lot of options.  It does mean I’m warm in the winter but distractions are my worst enemy.  Though I tend to tune out everything when I’m really concentrating while hopefully still managing to keep a ear out to keep tabs on when the kids or the missus still needs something of me.

I tend to not listen to music while coding, though classical can be soothing sometimes.  If I listen to anything it would generally one of a handful of podcasts I subscribe to.

I prefer the desk to be well lit but not too bright.

I sit on what ever is handy and tend to like to have a foot stool nearby.

I find too much heat a killer of concentration so I tend to prefer the room temp to be a little of the chilly side.   I have been known to be a little frugal on heating even in the middle of winter. Having a young family now has changed all that now.

There is nothing all that special with my environment. Just as long as I have power and an internet connection I am all good.

Day 10 – Picture, screenshot and specifications of your primary computer

The funeral is still to be scheduled…

This is a hard one to answer as my primary computer has recently died and more important priorities have taken precedence so for the meantime I only have a substitute primary computer (laptop).

• HP Pavilion DV9700
• CPU – Intel Core 2 Duo (T9200) 2.5GHz
• Memory – 4GB
• HDD – 500GB

Not much to say really.  It gets the job done for now – just.

 

The specs for the proposed resurrection for my old primary computer is…

• CPU – Intel Core i7 960 3.2GHz
• Memory – 6GB Triple Channel (though possibly 12GB by the time I get around to upgrading)
• Gfx – Asus GTX460
• Mobo – Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R

 

Unfortunately, it may be a while before this puppy sees the light of day and it while probably wont be the same as listed above to meet the components specs of the day.

Day 09 – What OS/distribution do you run?

It’s not my bag, baby!

I basically sculled back the blue Kool-Aid years ago.  Mostly running Windows 7 with a couple stragglers still on Vista.

If I do fire up a VM for a linux distro, it tends to be Ubuntu for no particular reason, but it tends to not hang around for long.

I do still miss Amiga OS – those were the days…