Every so often, I get asked a question about…well, something I do, some habit I have, and/or something I’ve written on the website. Usually, it’s fun to give an answer (although I can’t promise that I’ll give a great answer — it might not be all that well thought out, in fact).
And if it’s an answer you seek, you’ve come to the right place. I decided a while back that it was easiest to just coallate all the answers to the questions I get most often into one place, and publish them online for people to read. So here I go…
1) Who are you, exactly?
Good question, although not perhaps one I can answer. I suppose you could read over my resumé (which isn’t currently online, pending an update) and deduce that I am a computer engineer with a rather varied employment history and an enjoyment of cycling and various creative writing and/or computer-related projects. Or you could read some of the articles that I’ve posted on the site and deduce that I am a socially conservative Catholic (I don’t specifically declare myself Roman Catholic anymore, because I was raised partly in the Ukranian Catholic rite and still occasionally attend UC services) with a low tolerance for moral relativism and the dysteleological. Would that answer your question?
If not, then suffice to say that I’m a computer engineering graduate in my mid-twenties who lives in an apartment in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I’m married, if that’s the sort of question you’d care to have answered, and more importantly I attend regular masses at St. Joseph’s College, the Catholic college and chapel on the campus of the University of Alberta. I work in the IT department at Cranesmart Systems (”Get it up Safely!”).
I’m a member of the 59th Rover Crew (that’s with Scouts Canada, if you didn’t know). I spend most of my time either hanging out with friends or working, and when I’m not doing that I can usually be found cycling, working on a website or a writing project of some kind, taking photographs, or cooking. Or I’ll be writing another page or two of Human Ascendence, though I’ve lately been doing that somewhat less frequently.
Did any of that help?
2) What happened to the name “Withstand the Fury” that you used to go by?
I don’t really go by it much anymore. I don’t have as much time as I once did, and the Ultima Community has had to fall by the wayside as a result. I really have to get back in the swing of things there; even if I’ve stopped working on my Ultima project, there were a number of other projects out there that I thought were great.
3) What kind of a name is…was “Withstand the Fury” anyhow?
First, you have to understand that I was a huge fan of the Ultima series of games, so much so that at one point I was even making a homage to the series and also ran, on the side, a news site concerning all Ultima-related patches and projects currently in development. So is it any wonder that I was also a member of the Ultima Dragons?
My first ‘Dragon name’ was actually Canajun Dragon, although I’ve since retired that handle in favour of ‘Withstand the Fury’. Which, in case you hadn’t noticed, abbreviates to WtF Dragon, and I’m sure you have now caught the hidden joke in the name. There are some forums where my abbreviated signature gets ‘filtered’ to “*** Dragon”, which makes me chuckle.
4) Okay, but what are you withstanding the fury of?
Tornadoes? A 40 km/h headwind when cycling? The wrath and anger of those around me? Life in general? Unnecessary questions? It changes day to day.
5) What is Ultima?
One of the best computer game series ever made (programmed?), and one of the first RPG-type games to break free of the ‘hack and slash’ model of gaming in favour of ‘plot-intensive’ games that spotlighted moral and social issues and caused the player to seek non-violent solutions to conflicts and problems. I would also recommend you visit Ultima: Aiera and Dino’s Ultima Page for more information.
Sadly, there is no longer an ‘official’ site for Ultima, as the series (and the company that made it) has come to an end. You can still view the website for the last Ultima title, Ultima IX: Ascension, as far as I know, and there is also an archive of Ultima information on the Ultima Online website.
6) Are you gay?
Seeing as how I’m married…to a girl…who is biologically female…I think that this issue can more or less be put to rest once and for all. No, I’m not.
I get this question more often than you might think, enough that it’s worth in including on the list. The short answer is…well, see above. I’ve only ever dated women, and I don’t feel any desire to diversify in that department. That said, (dried) roses do factor into the decorating scheme of my bedroom, I’m not above lighting the occasional scented candle, and I love kitty-cats…and if that throws any sort of doubt your way, my job here is done.
7) I like your website…would you design mine?
I’m always up for a design project, but keep in mind that I’m starting to charge a fee for that service, except in certain cases where I’ll work pro-bono. But the determination of whether I do that is made by me, and the criteria are pretty narrow. And I’m fairly busy, so there’s always the issue of even being able to find a time slot in which I can work on your project.
8 ) Why do you take so many pictures? or Why do you always carry your camera with you?
In case you haven’t noticed from the design of my various websites, I am a very visually-oriented person, and most of my creative pursuits involve visual aspects in one way or another. Even my writing projects — Lost Sosaria was a written story made visual with a 3D engine, while Human Ascendence is a written story with visual “extra” information, like starship schematics.
I believe that even the ordinary world is in many ways extraordinary, and I set out often to capture those aspects and moments in which it is. Alternatively, sometimes I simply want to tell a story, as when I take pictures of a Scout Camp or while on a walk through Edmonton. And, since I’ve mentioned the Edmonton pictures, sometimes I want to describe a place, especially the place in which I live. There are a lot of reasons, but all of them have to do with creative interests.
9) You’re kind of a nerd, aren’t you?
Kind of?
10) Okay, quite a bit of a nerd.
That’s a little more accurate. Of course, it depends on what you mean by ‘nerd’. I mean, do you mean a nerd in general, or a specific kind of nerd, like a Star Trek nerd? Because then you’d actually be meaning to say ‘geek’. We had this discussion once, a friend and I (I think it was Brienne, initially). A ‘geek’ is like a specialized form of nerd (fixates on one thing). A nerd is kind of a ‘geek-of-all-trades’, as it were.
11) You’re really weird. or You have too much time on your hands.
Yes I am, and no I do not.
12) Okay, okay, okay…so would you be a ‘nerd’ or a ‘geek’ then?
Yes.
13) Nerd! or Geek!
Why yes, thank you!
14) What kind of camera do you use?
I shoot with a Canon EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT) 8 megapixel digital SLR camera. My primary Compact Flash card is a FotoSource 66X 1GB card, with a SanDisk Extreme 256 MB, a Lexar 12X 128 MB and a few others available as spares. In total, I carry about 2 GB of memory with me on a daily basis, although I don’t typically make use of all of them.
My primary lens is a Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS (image stabilized) lens, and I also have a generic 50mm f1.8 lens that I use when I want to do very sharp, detail-rich portraits, or when I want to shoot in lower light and don’t have a tripod handy. I also have a Lensbaby, with an optional 0.6x wide-angle adapter that makes it into an effective 30 mm lens, which I enjoy using immensely.
Typically, I shoot using the (P)rogram mode of the camera, with my ISO set to 100. The nice thing about digital SLR sensors is that you can get away with using much higher ISO settings than on a compact camera, with a relatively minimal sacrifice of quality to electronic noise. I’m wholly addicted to RAW photography, as it frees me from the need to worry about white balance settings and other parameter adjustments while I’m out and about — I can worry about such things when I have time at home for processing photos.
You can read more about the Rebel XT here.
15) Where did you get all the images that rotate in the site header?
I took all of them. Or most of them, at least. A few of them were taken by other people.
Well, okay, they’ve also been cropped and scaled to fit across the banner. But I figure that much was probably obvious.
