User:Compman
Hello, I'm Matt, also known as Compman, and Devartdude among other aliases. I am a webmaster, student, and software developer - among other things.
Pre-Computer Era
[edit]My life before I first got into computers is particularly uninteresting. Most of that first five years was spent moving from place to place due to my father's job in the Army, until he decided to move into the reserves and we settled down in the heart of Georgia.
Enter Computers
[edit]The Whiz Kid
[edit]I have a number of different interests into computers, and I'm willing to confidently say that I know a lot more than the average person about them. However, all of my knowledge and interest can be traced back to my initial facination with fixing computers.
The first computer that my family had was a Packard Bell with Windows for Workgroups. The archaic machine was my first introduction into the world of silicon and software. I mostly spent my time playing little trivia games. That was until the day that I had one that wouldn't work on Windows for Workgroups. So we were forced to upgrade to Windows 95, which introduced the style of Windows which we're all so familiar with today.
It eventually got to where I'd spend hours on there trying to fix a problem or complete some task. While I did tend to make more trouble than I stopped, I didn't do what my dad did and go through deleting every file he didn't recognize (which just happened to include every system file on the computer!).
Soon enough, my parents got tired of having to clean up my messes, so they paied for programming a computer building lessons.
Software Development
[edit]The first programming language I learned was Microsoft BASIC. I wrote a few simple programs here and there and eventually got bored with it. Due to the limitations on BASIC I couldn't do anything of real substance. It wasn't until my interest was resparked later that I picked up on it again.
I first seriously started developing in 2000 when I discovered Cybiko. My first project was CybiHacker, a game where you break into corprate servers to steal money for paying off a debt. CybiHacker was very successful and I released a demo of its sequal called "CybiHacker 2: On The Run", but the project was never finished. Shortly after this I taught myself Cybiko C and I wrote another successful program called CyX. CyX was a completely new user interface for Cybiko. It was very basic and was designed to mimic the look and feel of KDE. However, it still needed improvement. I started the CyX2 project which was also never finished. In keeping with the suit of user interfaces, I also wrote a program called SUI (Simple User Interface), which served as a command line interface to the Cybiko, and finally DeepAccess, which gave Cybiko B2C developers quick and easy access to some useful functions that were not already in the B2C API.
In my post-cybiko days, I've focused on development in more than one way. I've started a number of C/C++ projects, but none have been finished for one reason or another. It usually is because the code becomes too complicated for me to maintain. I have also since taught myself PHP and SQL then focused on developing applications geared towards the internet. I use those technologies in all of my own websites, and I've also done some contract work for others to make some cash.
The Building of Computers
[edit]As a result of the numerous problems that I caused on the family computer, my parents decided to pay for me to build my first computer. Back in the age when 500Mhz was fast, I was running a very old 100Mhz machine. Behind the times, as usual.
A few years later, a Christmas morning came around when I found the pieces to build a computer sitting on the downstairs sofa. I was elated - this meant that I would get to build my own computer! The new system ended up being a 300Mhz computer with an AMD K2 running under the hood. I was amazed by the speed with which I could work.
More time passed and I eventually upgraded to a 700Mhz processor which served me well until recently when I upgraded to and AMD Athlon XP 2600+ processor which powers my system to this day.
Webmastering
[edit]In the beginning, all of my pages were static HTML. This worked find until I started my Cyibko website, CyWEB, and I found out how hard it was to maintain a news page using static HTML files. As a result, I upgraded to Toranto, which was a Perl news program that made my life a lot easier...
Linux Fun
[edit]To be completed...
Bloggin' It
[edit]To be completed...
Outside Computers
[edit]To be completed...
The Presant
[edit]I'm currently the webmaster of [ThePenguinMafia.com], which is my personal blog.