Hi, Welcome aboard.
Small world - I went driving close to your home area a couple of weeks back. I also went to LaTrobe during the same time you were there - I was even working as a codemonkey/research assist, under your supervisor I suspect (was it Liz?) On Wed, 20 Mar 2002 00:31, Marcus Crafter wrote: > Hi All, > > Following the introductory email tradition :-) > > My name is Marcus Crafter and I'm 27 years old. I come from a small > country town in rural South Australia called Mount Gambier, but are > currently working in Frankfurt, Germany, in a project at the Dresdner > Bank. > > My history with computers starts quite a while back. My father > works back home in Australia at a company which supplies office > machinary to various companies around our small town. When I was > about 7 years old he brought home our first computer, a Texas > Instruments TI-99/4A. I was immediately hooked, and would sit > there for hours typing in old TRS-80 games from various magazines we > found at the local library. > > After the TI-99/4A, my dad brought home a newer machine, never to > be heard of again, known as the Sharp MZ-700. The MZ-700 was > where I learn't about 'peek's and 'pokes's, and those funny > 'data ...' sections at the end of basic programs :-) > > About the same time I also played around with the Commodore-64's and > BBC's at school, mainly writing graphical programs and seeing what > hires graphics these machines could do (if any :-) ). > > After a while my dad started selling IBM compatibles as they > were termed back then, and an Amstrad 2086 found it's way to our > house running DOS and Windows 86, I think packaged along with > QuickBasic at the time. > > Not long after, I discovered the Amiga, and when I turned 18, > bought an Amiga 500 from one of the local dealers. Amazed at > it's graphics and sound capabilities I ended up getting right into the > Amiga Demo scene, getting my hands on as many demos as possible, > like Substance from Quartex, Enigma from Phenomena, Global Trash > from Silents. The list goes on... :-) > > Games never really interested me that much apart from a few, it was > always what extreme things people did in demos with their hardware. I > still get a little lump in my throat when I think back and remember > discovering what such demo's could do on my little Amiga. :-) > > After high school I went to LaTrobe University in Melbourne. I > studied Computer Systems Engineering there. I graduated in > 1997, specializing in software engineering, specificially cross > platform user interfaces. Java was quite new then, and was a > big part of my thesis. For my project I ended up writing a gui > builder using AWT which was a challenge when I found out what > (little) AWT could actually do :-) > > During University I reentered the PC world, but thankfully discovered > Linux and was able to abandon the DOS/Windows world. I haven't turned > back since, and now use Debian Linux both at home and at work. > > After graduating, I started working for an Australian company > which sent me here to work at Dresdner Bank in Germany. My latest > project at work is where I came across Avalon, through Cocoon. > > We use Cocoon to power an internal portfolio management system. > After learning about Avalon while going through the Cocoon source I > started to refactor our home-grown classes in to Avalon components and > hence ended up here on avalon-dev. > > Currently I've been working with Leif on the profiler/instrumentor > package, and look forward to making that a killer app. It has so > much potential :-) > > It's great to be part of a such a high quality team and I really > look forward to learning a lot more about software engineering > and design. > > Thanks again! > > Cheers, > > Marcus -- Cheers, Pete --------------------------------------------------- Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will." (Actually, this is Finagle's law, which in itself shows that Finagle was right.) --------------------------------------------------- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
