“Why Should I Be Here?”

“He couldn’t possibly have anything unique or interesting to say; he’s a tiny drop in a sea of websites,” you might be thinking at this very moment. “What’s the point of another random tech blog?” you may ask yourself.

Here’s what I can tell you: I don’t know. Let’s just see where this goes.

Let Me Explain

I’ve been around for a while. I’ve been developing PC games, applications, and websites since my early teen years. I’ve been creating music since childhood, and publishing it myself since not long after. I was there during the dot com boom; I was there when that bubble burst; and I’m still here now, still working on things, still observing, and not going anywhere.

I’ve been an outsider in most of the industries in which I work for most of my life, giving me sometimes a more limited scope but sometimes a much broader perspective. If that doesn’t make much sense, let me give a couple of examples:

  • I started creating first person shooters on the PC when I was around 14. I made a few friends who were also interested in this vision, some of whom had some experience in the industry, but most of whom did not, and we formed a team. For a few years, we created things individually and struggled to get traction, and the team eventually fell apart without having finished anything. After that, I worked on my game ideas in the background, kept up to date on technologies, created small games for myself to practice and sharpen my skills, but have remained mostly on the outside of the game development industry this entire time.

  • I’ve been creating electronic music on my own since even before I was developing games. Over the years, I’ve acquired a lot of equipment in my home studio, I’ve learned many valuable recording and production skills, I’ve worked toward mastering my software plugins and workflow, I’ve self-published a few albums online, and I’ve created countless other electronic and industrial songs, most of which will likely never see the light of day, but all of which have gone toward making me somewhat of an expert outsider in the electronic music industry.

  • I’m really into home automation as well as DIY electronics. I’ve got more than a handful of Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, pcDuinos, and other custom electronics programmed to do my bidding. My temperature, security system, door locks, lights, entertainment and more are all inter-connected and controlled through automated means. From anywhere in the house I can speak a command and it’ll happen. I know a fair amount about these things, and have tried many home automation and electronics products myself. But I’ve never been in that industry, and nobody’s ever given me anything for free or asked me to review their product.

There are more examples, but I think I’ve made my point. I believe this gives me something of a unique perspective that is less tainted by the corruption that runs deep inside many of the industries in which I work (or have worked).

What To Expect

I’m just going to start writing about things: computers, websites, games, music, electronics, the Internet. I’m going to try to make sure the topics I write about are generally interesting to the type of people I expect to read my blog, but that may not always happen. My advice: Read what interests you, and skip the rest.

I’m a skeptic at heart. I will share my opinions in this blog, but I will never try and deceive you with “facts” that may not be factual, or with the assertion that my opinion is necessarily the correct one.

I want to share knowledge; I want to strip away the bullshit and the lies; I want to call things what they are, not what any person or group wants them to be; I want to educate and to be educated; and where possible, I want to contribute to making the Internet, and the world, a better place.

I don’t really want to focus on politics or religion here. That’s not what this site is about. I have thoughts on those things, but they don’t matter here.