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About me

Here's some stuff about me. I'm not very interesting, so feel free to leave this page at any time.

That's me, surprised to see a BSOD in Linux. It's actually a screensaver!

General

Name	Christopher Williams
Age	23
Location	Mesa, AZ
Gender	Male
Orientation	Straight
Status	Married

Specific

I'm a general-purpose nerd. I really like hacking on computers. It's my favourite activity besides sleeping and eating.

I like many different sciences, such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, math, electronics, and computer science.

I like cheese. It's one of the most perfect foods. It's good stuff. I highly recommend it.

I like taking long walks on the beach. No, wait. How'd that get in here?

More specific

I started programming when I was kind of young, say around six-ish, with BASIC on my family's Commodore 64 (which I still have). Now I program somewhat regularly in C, Z80 assembly, 68000 assembly, TI-Basic (TI-86, TI-92+), Bash, and Perl. I know C++, but I don't care to use it; I can do object-oriented stuff in C just fine.

I occasionally write programs and functions for some of the TI graphing calculators. I've written a multi-threading function set for the TI-86. That was probably my greatest accomplishment on the TI-86. Yay for me.

I'm trying to write a Unix-like OS for the TI-92+ and maybe the TI-89. I've gotten system calls to work, and multi-tasking almost works well too. I'm trying to think of a good name for it, but all I have so far are Punix (the working name), Penix, and Anux. I could go the Linus route and name it Chrisix or something, but that just does not sound right.

I wrote a little Perl CGI script to give me (almost) shell-level access to the freestarthost web server. It's limited to doing things that don't affect the shell's environment (that is, changing the current directory, environment, etc. don't work). Sorry, it's in a password-protected area of my web site, so keep your grubby hands outta my shell!!

I really like to research for fun divers subjects within various sciences, such as sound, digital electronics, telephones, etc., and I usually write little programs (usually in C) to help me understand the subject better. It really helps a lot to write programs. If nothing else, it's good programming practise.

I know HTML and CSS, though I haven't used them very much until I started this new web site. I could spruce up this site with a bunch of eye candy, but I'm sort of a minimalist. Less is more. Simpler is better. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Sorry, I got a little carried away with 1984. :)

Besides computers, I like model rockets and models of other vehicles. I like to build rockets from scratch, sometimes no more than an engine, cardboard fins, drinking straw, and a glow-stick, all held together with hot glue. This kind of rocket is really cheap and easy to make, so I don't bother including a parachute. Sometimes instead of a glow-stick I like to put some pellets from fire-crackers in the top of the engine (where the ejection charge is). That's fun. I've even once (or twice) separated hydrogen and oxygen from water through electrolysis in a water bottle and glued the bottle to the top of an engine. It didn't fly very high (it actually went almost horizontally shortly after take-off), but the bottle combusted quite nicely with a loud BOOM and a bright flash. I don't do much of that any more, though, ever since I learned it's illegal to launch model rockets in Arizona. Those were good times.

I like to do other fun but illegal stuff besides rockets. One night I made a few "fire crackers" out of black powder inside plaster of Paris. They blew up very loudly. One chunk even flew toward me and hit my thigh, leaving a triangular-shaped bruise. I got in trouble with the law for doing that. Needless to say, I haven't done it anymore since then (yet). As you can see, I'm a real trouble-maker. Ha.

OK, I think that's all for now. I might add more later.