antiaircraft

So... you want to know more about me? Well, there's not really that much to know, but if you're feeling persistent, I guess you can run through my ramblings.

My usual display name is "AA"; most people call me AA (short for my Neopets username, antiaircraft) or Theo (short for my real name, Theodore). I'm 20 years old, male, and hold a degree in Robotic Engineering.

I am a content staffer here at TDN. I've written, re-written and edited quite a few articles, and am the de facto mastermind behind all our ad blocking content, Altador Plot solutions, and much (but definitely not all) of our Altador Plot coverage. I also do a lot of programming and general coding for the site. Somehow I've managed to end up as a senior staffer on the team. x_x I don't know how. I could have sworn I was a newbie just yesterday...

I am an avid reader who enjoys good books (and often not-so-good books) from most genres, although I suppose I'm particularly partial to science fiction, fantasy, and espionage thrillers, seasoned with a little satire. My favourite authors are Eoin Colfer, Terry Pratchett, and Lydia Rogue. Both the Artemis Fowl and Discworld series reflect my reading tastes quite well. They're both made up of many excellent books, and come highly recommended from me. :yes: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the novels) is another one of my favourite series - however, as much as I love what I've read so far, I must sadly admit that my reading of the books is incomplete. :( On a more positive note, computer analysis tells me that my writing style is quite similar to that of Douglas Adams himself! :O

That's right, I do enjoy writing (mainly fiction), and have written quite a lot of stuff so far (no novels yet though). You could probably find a few scattered examples of my work around TDN forums, but I do try and collect them together on my deviantART account for readers' convenience (I appreciate critique and comments of all sorts ;) ). I've also been published in the Neopian Times a couple of times, but I'm definitely a calibre or so below the usual grade of authorship you'll find in there.

I am an obstinate advocate and user of free and open source software (follow the link for a full explanation of the concept). I try to avoid proprietary (closed-source) software whenever possible, partly for philosophical reasons, but mostly because the free and open source alternatives are far superior. As much as I like to spread the freedom, I do try and avoid going off on technical/philosophical rants too much, but I do apologise if I've managed to lull you to sleep with one or two of my posts. :P That said, I am an experienced Linux user, so if you're interested and/or need technical assistance, feel free to drop me a line (or post in Computers & Programming, where I often hang around and give technical advice on other issues as well).

Programming is my passion. I love doing it, and I am very, very good at it (though probably not nearly as good as I think I am (: ). Aside from the programming I do for TDN, I've contributed some testing and development work to Mozilla Firefox before, and am currently an operating system developer working on Fedora Linux. If you happen to be running Fedora, you'll definitely want to avoid using GNOME Do, Specto, GEntrans, or the PHP YAML extension, as I've worked extensively on those pieces of software (meaning they're liable to fail without warning, and probably cause a nuclear catastrophe in the process :whistle: ).

Well, that's all the titbits I can think of for now - I don't have anything more to say about myself really. I hope I sufficiently satiated your appetite for information. :)

(Thanks to the IC, although this title probably belongs to Spritzie now)

(Even more thanks to the IC!)