Interests

My interests are mostly computer related. I enjoy playing with computers trying to make them do new and exciting things. This leads itself to many paths I take to achieve this. A benefit to this is the many skills I've developed through trying to use computers in different ways, and in part has helped me develop a career in I.T.

Some of the projects I have done are:

• Write many programs, including some which are public and downloaded by thousands of people.
• Create many websites. Public and accessed by many people.
• Run a full domain based environment in the house successfully with multiple computers for more than a decade.
• Create a Home Theatre PC setup in the lounge room as a complete replacement for the TV, while also linked to different computers around the house.
• Main administrator for a 100+ community computer LAN gaming event.

Many of these interests let me develop my skills as a professional in the I.T industry. Writing programs for instance, lets me understand the inner workings of the software I deploy and maintain at work. Creating websites allows me to understand the reason why a website is setup the way it is. Running a domain at home allows me to practice and test domain technologies in a safe environment yet still in a real world usage setting. Creating a Home Theatre PC and associated network allows me to discover ways to deliver multimedia content to thousands of computers. Being the main administrator for a LAN allows me to keep my networking skills sharp and deal with fast deployment and its associated problems in an low risk manner.

That's not to say that all my interests are one sided for developing my skills at work. Work itself also pays back into my hobbies as it allows me to know exactly how the real usage and deployment of technologies work. There are also many other ways that work assist. Everything is a 2-way street.

Some other interests I have are collecting movies and anime. I incorporate these interests into my computer related interests in different ways. Thanks to my Home Theatre PC setup, I can watch all my movies with the simple use of a remote, no need to find the disks anymore, and from any room in the house. I combine my interest in anime with my interest in programming and website creation by being part of an open source project to create a anime manager program and also host and run the website for the project.