Hey there.
I’m a twenty something year old student currently studying software engineering. I work as much as I can at one of my casual endeavours and play around with different gadgets, games and software in my spare time. I have little patience for conservatism in a world with so many problems and actively support causes like aid for the developing world and climate change.

While I’m doing first year at university, for the third year in a row, I have finally decided to pursue my interest in technology and IT. I have always been interacting with technology, in one form or another, and would like to share some of my earliest technology experiences with the world.

Gaming 101

Years ago, my father started up a DOS computer and opened SkyRoads, a very basic game where you control a spaceship and have to stay on designated platforms. I remember spending hours and hours playing the game and trying to get past certain sections. Afterwards, the family spent even more time on different games, Monkey Island, Blaster Games, Pin Ball, Muppet Treasure Island and even a weird version of Titanic were regular appearances in our gaming sessions. Since then I have gamed on and off with my favourite series being Halo.

Gadgets 101

My first memorable “gadget” as for most people my age was a Tamagotchi. That little pet and I were inseparable for quite some time. After that I had a Game Boy, which had some of the most memorable games I’ve played. I remember distinctly a soccer game that I would play on car trips and the Pokemon games that would waste hours upon hours of time.

My next gadget was a laptop that had some weird clunky dock thing that made it into a desktop. It looked so silly and clunky, but it was a working computer that I got for christmas, just for me. I’ve had several computers over the years and every time I was given an upgrade, it was so exciting. I quickly learnt how to customise the settings, reinstall and change the OS and spent time searching for the best software I could find.

In late primary school I was given my first mobile. A brick with an antenna sticking out that would only make calls on the odd occasion it wanted too. This was a bit disappointing at the time as it would not play snakes, which was the thing to do on a phone. Since then I have gotten better and better phones and currently reside in the iOS camp.

As long as I can afford it, I will try out any gadget I can, my only exception being that it does not come from either Acer or Logitech. Way too many bad experiences for both of them.

Software 101

While I love my gadgets, the software and it’s usability heavily impact on the joy I have when using them. For example when I open a PDF and Adobe Reader opens up slowly and crashes after trying for a couple of minutes, I think of how much promise the technology has that was not delivered. I mean transferring a document over a network to another country to be read by someone you don’t know, that is amazing compared to the post and messengers of old. The most enjoyable software I’ve used recently has been Dropbox, which is a cloud storage solution that stores all of my work. No longer do I need to worry about USBs or syncing things as Dropbox handles all of those problems with little or no interaction from me. I enjoy seeing software working to solve problems in elegant and easy to use ways, and hope to soon contribute to the building of even better software.

Web 101

The first time I made a website was in high-school, and I used Word to make an information page on Egypt for an assignment. I remember it was fun to develop, but I look back on that early attempt with a giggle. After that my father gave me a low level domain for his site which I have maintained ever since. I’m currently working on approximately the sixth iteration of the site with only a couple being completed enough for publishing. I also created the website for my fathers business for an assignment. I have learnt everything I know just playing around and look forward to learning more about web development in the future.

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Henry David Thoreau