Hi,
Welcome to markspace!
I am Mark Sibly, computer coder extraordinaire, currently located in West Auckland, New Zealand. I'm a big fan of blogs - well, the interesting ones anyway - so thought it was time to start my own.
Actually, I did have a blog for a long time - before blogs were cool no less! - but it was located on my 'commercial' site and I ended up being uncomfortable with the professional vs personal issues that arose - eg: customer: "but you said you'd do this!"; me: "hey, I was just thinking out loud!".
Hopefully, blogging in the googlesphere will reinforce the point that none of this is to be taken too seriously, and that my thoughts, plans and opinions are highly subject to change.
A bit about me:
* I became interested in computers at around age 10 (1977 - Star Wars year!) when I discovered a TRS-80 complete with an awesome "How to program in BASIC" manual while going into work with dad one Saturday. Been hooked ever since...
* I did a bunch of games on the Vic-20, Apple2, C64 and Amiga. Some I even sold for actual money! Then things got all 'serious' with the PC and the gaming side of things sort of petered out.
* Since then, I've mostly been involved in writing 'game oriented BASIC compilers' for the PC - BlitzBasic, Blitz3D, BlitzPlus, BlitzMax...yes, I like the word 'blitz'!
* I'm a capitalist at heart, in-so-far as I believe that everyone should be able to make a living at what they're good at. However, I strongly believe this has to be balanced against a 'public good': It's not always the 'best' product that wins in the end, and just because someone is making oodles of money out of something doesn't mean 'everyone wins'.
* I *love* music. In my teens and twenties, I put considerable effort into mastering the guitar. It didn't quite work out, but I had a blast playing in several bands along the way and still like to tootle around. Current bands of choice include TV On the Radio, DeerHunter, Marnie Stern (yeah!)...
* I also *sort of* love games - by 'sort of', I mean that I'm incredibly picky when it comes to games. I'll happily buy any Nintendo machine purely to play the accompanying Mario and Zelda releases (which means I end up playing approx 500NZD a pop for those games - but it's worth it IMO), but FPS's and anything remotely resembling an RTS or RPG just leave me cold. My loss no doubt - I'd certainly like to be able to enjoy a greater range of games - but in my mind there is just this HUGE gulf between the (serious) games Shigeru Miyamoto produces and everything else. In fact, I find it kind of alarming to see Nintendo pursuing this whole 'casual gamer' thing these days...
* I have also recently become something of an Anime junky. For people of, ahem, 'my generation', this may require an explanation/definition. Anime simply means 'Japanese animation'. It's not a genre or a philosophy or anything, it's simply a technique: animation. Therefore, to put it more precisely, I have recently become somewhat addicted to Japanese entertainment, which happens to frequently present itself in animated form. Actually, I suspect the main reason for this is budgetry - a voice actor is much cheaper than a real actor. But this just ends up being liberating for the creators - you don't need a mega budget to produce an awesome story via Manga/Anime, just a GOOD IDEA!
* I like writing and would love to one day write some fiction, but years of writing technical documentation for various compilers etc have left me a bit drained...hopefully, this blog will get me back in the swing of writing.
Anyway, that's enough for now. Future blogs are likely to be highly technical as I mainly plan to use this blog to share my experiences as a software developer, but I hope to throw in an anime/movie/album 'review' here and there.
Peace out!
Mark
