I once wrote this out on maztekia.com, but the info was lost when it moved from static html to DMCGI. So; I guess I was born in 1985, time passed by uneventfully, I met a girl, she liked me, I had no time for her. I moved house, I got a new computer, I got the internet. And that's all until about 2001, where I started to get into Dragon Ball Z, yay!
Anyway, I was searching for multiplayer games (DBZ ones, of course!) and came upon Spar by team Ebonshadow (A game I never got to play..) only to find out it was disbanded and DBZ:Genesis was all over the place. So, I played a bit, messed around etc. Until I met a guy who's now a troll and a half, Radittzu234 (or something similar) who offfered to teach me to 'code byond' in exchange for dimes... He never really taught me to program with BYOND but he did give me the inspiration to start looking at tutorials and to move into the forums. The forums were pretty scarey then, and I can imagine to any newbie it still is, but I asked my few newbie questions that were answered by Gazoot and Sariat. Both of whom I consider friends now :) within a month of posting I came to the conclusion that the name mazarot sucked (Too DBZ-like/unoriginal) and suprisingly Maz was free, so I took it and stepped into the Lord of the w00ts shoes. Time progressed again, with me making a nice little skating game, then Dracon making a much bigger and (better) skating game. After talking to digitalmouse about BYONDfest I had added him to my pager. Then one time I spotted him online, so I joined him... In Chatters. That started the whole ball rolling, I stuck around and talked to digi and Xooxer about Chatters, what would work, what wouldn't, how the admining could work etc etc. Eventually digitalmouse started hosting Chatters and I came in full time. This was the days before Mertek joined so it was quite empty most of the time, but it was fun. Anyhow, in that chatroom I met all the oldbies and started to really improve my programming. I remember being astonished to find out how young Alathon was, and how old Xooxer is. In those days there was the Chatters elite, the UOP's, we had extra powers that don't exist anymore like ghosting so you can talk with all the other UOPs without others hearing... Aww. We were young, and Chatters was innocent.
Anyway, I met Jon88 & splattergnome in Chatters, and after a while people started saying how come I've never done anything (except occasionally help on the Chatters codebase... (occasionally being the most important word there)) worthwhile, so I started out making a clone of Castle of the Winds which if I can recall was started on the eve of the Iraq war two years ago maybe, it's a while thats for sure. Jon88 was roped in because he could do soem funky tricks with Javascript to emulate some of the functions that are in the original, splattergnome was to be our dungeon master. :)
Jon88 went beyond the call of duty and kept working on CotWs and thats what got us all together, splatter would be at every hosting session and provided morale boosting. But slowly the inspiration lacked, just like most projects do over time. Around that sort of time I was having girlfriend issues that made it hard to concentrate on programming, and then I went off to Uni where I planned to carry on CotWs. Alas, the halls of residence have this great fast connection, it's just so damn restrictive that it's not worth doing. I could have sat and programmed CotW's in my room all alone, I probably should have done, but I never had the libraries I needed as I tinkered with my PC too much and it would need formatting ever 2/3 months.
Up until this point you can consult my livejournal for deeper information (I advise against it however, it's just me talking about my ex girlfriend and occasionally CotW development)
So this is the bit in-between the period where I dissapeared from BYOND, during the last month of being at home and being in the BYOND community in general I started getting into the 'security' scene and needed a new alias. So, after seeing Panzer Dragoon Orta lying on my floor it was quite obvious to me what was a nice name. I did some googling, to see if anyone else was using it and I took it. (Two days after, I tried to get the BYOND account orta... It had been taken a day earlier and I still can't remember if I took that account...) So, I talked to a friend about buying a new domain and therox sounded like a cool email address; orta@therox of course, I demanded it be a .org because I still stick to my theory of freedom (as you'll see later) of source etc. So, I took therox.org and orta became me. I eventually split up with my ex-girlfriend, who I'm still good friends with. She's ace :)
Anyway, I wanted to do some serious programming at Uni, so I planned to hang with all the guys who are better then me, but to my suprise it was quite different. The majority of people doing Computer Science were ex-VB programmers, or had no programming experiance at all! I was mortified... Luckily, I met a guy or two who had some real experiance and we talk a lot still. I realised that it was people who were older then me who I would get the most from, notably Phil Price a 3rd year that has taught me so much this year.
Anyway, the friends I stuck with now all are on therox.org and I've learnt so much from each of them.
In effect, in my absence from BYOND I've got more friends, got C# under my belt. Moved to the dark side and changed my whole view on life.
and now?
Well, luckily the public releasage of the BYOND Blogs coincides with my return back from University to my unrestricted broadband. So I'll put my PC back together, throw Windows on it and start getting CotWs back up and running. I owe it to those hardcore few who've been bugging me for the past 2 years!
And here's some of the key things that have happened recently
Got my hair cut... Again. and
That one explains itself really! Have a good day, thanks for reading =D
