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New Zealanders making it harder to hate computers

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Friends and family

Facebook has a page for me.
Roger Burgess is my best friend and was one of my Stage 1 computer science students from 1998. Now he works in Christchurch as an I.T. expert for Nurse Maude.
Andreas Kacofegitis was my ex-flatmate when I used to live in 29 Tika Street, Riccarton, Christchurch.
Timothy Moss is my ex-neighbour from when I used to live at 511 Manchester Street in Christchurch.
Graham Dockrill was another one of my Stage 1 computer science students in 1998. Now he runs a successful Web design company called Hairy Lemon.
Diane Maclagan was my classmate during the years of 1992-1994 while I was at university studying mathematics. She was always getting better grades than me, which was very damaging to my ego, and to top it all off she is now at the University of Warwick. The best that I can do to try to beat her brilliance is for me to try to make my Website a lot cooler than hers. I hope that I have succeeded! You can find pictures of her using Google Image Search.
Tim Sturge is another of my classmates from 1992-1994 while I was at university studying mathematics.
Frank Pearson (who died in 2003 at the early age of 63) was my uncle (father’s older brother) in San Francisco.
Chris Wright was an old school mate from the years 1986-1991 at Christchurch Boys’ High School. Although he died in 2015 at the early age of 41 he was a grand-master chess player, one of only three in New Zealand! He worked as a professional chess tutor tutoring young players for the junior world championships. If you are another graduate of the class of 1991 then I would like to get in touch with you.

Favourite people

Bjarne Stroustrup. Creator of the C++ programming language. My feeling about C++ is that if it hadn’t been invented yet and I was as intelligent as Bjarne Stroustrup, then I would have invented it! Esoteric Information Warning: I believe that Stroustrup got his clever and useful idea of C++ classes and privacy from the Simula language.
Richard Stallman. Founder of the Free Software Foundation, the GNU Project and principal author of (among other things) the GNU Emacs text editor, the G.C.C. compiler and the GNU Debugger, which ultimately led to the GNU/Linux operating system. He’s also quite a character as I found out when I went to one of his lectures. Esoteric Information Warning: I believe that Stallman wrote Emacs by copying the existing Lisp systems at M.I.T. where he worked, and wrote G.C.C. using the design decision of having no calls to the free C library function so that it ran with a bigger memory footprint than other compilers but vastly simplified the design of the program. This worked because the memory requirements of the program are proportional to the size of the source file being compiled.
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States of America. He led the United States through its civil war and freed the slaves and was asassinated at his moment of greatest triumph: the preservation of the Union following his victory over the Confederate States of America. Quotes attributed to him include: ‘‘Keep your friends close, keep your enemies even closer’’ and ‘‘No man stands so tall when he reaches down to help a young child in distress’’.
Mahatma Gandhi was a charismatic leader of India whose views on passive resistance influenced such luminaries as Nelson Mandela.
Charles Darwin who excelled in his arguments for the theory of evolution via natural selection and sexual selection.
Richard Dawkins who in his book The Selfish Gene updated Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution by natural selection and sexual selection to include such developments as the discovery of D.N.A. in 1968. In his book he expands upon the arguments for evolution and shifted emphasis from creatures of the same species competing with another to that of selfish genes selfishly spreading themselves in the gene pool.
Linus Torvalds for inventing the Linux operating system.
Barak Obama was the 44th President of the United States of America.
Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States of America.
Jacinda Ardern was the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2019 - 2023. She was a charismatic leader who featured twice on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert .
John McCarthy (who died in 2001, aged 84) for inventing the Lisp programming language, and founder of the A.I. labs at M.I.T. and Stanford. Click on the following link for information about Common Lisp including a video interview with John McCarthy. This link was provided to me by Bryan Innes (Email: bryan <dot> innes <at> wiht-email <dot> com).
Shawn Hargreaves for producing the multi-platform games library Allegro. I wrote my first P.C. game called Dangerous Driving under Allegro and I have used it to write six computer games.
Eli Zaretskii (eliz <at> gnu <dot> org) for helping me overcome my install problems and learning difficulties with GNU Emacs (via the Internet newsgroup gnu.emacs.help).
DJ Delorie for producing a GNU system inside MS-DOS called DJ.G.P.P., short for DJ’s GNU Programming Platform. His first name is not an acronym but is literally DJ which causes much confusion on the part of banks who insist that DJ stands for something. I have adapted his motto: ‘‘Making it harder to hate computers’’ to ‘‘New Zealanders making it harder to hate computers’’. for my Website.
Frank Tipler for writing a book explaining how religion will eventually become a branch of science. I have written an article about his book on my Website.
James Gosling for creating the Java programming language,
Nelson Mandela (who died in 2013, aged 95) for his ability to unite people for a single cause, namely equality for all, regardless of skin colour. Because of his achievements he is often referred to as ‘‘The Father of the Nation’’ (namely South Africa).
Bill Gates who along with others founded Microsoft. Because of his tremendous success in business we all love to hate him, but it is hard to deny his intelligence that caused him to succeed so dramatically. For example, when he first wrote the Microsoft Windows operating system it ran like a dog at the time but he foresaw that computers would rapidly get a lot faster than they were at the time, rendering Windows usable. He also recognised that people tend to favour standardisation in the field of computers, and foresaw that his operating systems would become the default standard. Despite Microsoft’s present domination of the computer software market I believe that a free operating system (such as GNU/Linux) will ultimately triumph.
Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the World Wide Web.
Sir Edmund Hillary (who died in 2008, aged 88) is probably New Zealand’s most famous New Zealander. He was the first person to conquer the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest. Then he re-payed his debt to the local Nepalese people by building schools and hospitals for them. Although he is now dead, Hillary is the first living New Zealander to appear on our national currency. It must have been believed that the probability of Hillary turning into a child molester was low enough to risk placing his face on every $5 of New Zealand currency.
Sir Peter Jackson who put New Zealand on the map as a place to make high quality high computer graphics content films such as most notably Heavenly Creatures, The Lord of the Rings movies and King Kong. His earlier splatter films (such as Bad Taste and Braindead) are worth a look too.
Mike Leigh is one of the world’s greatest living film directors. All of his films are groundbreaking in different ways. Happy-Go-Lucky, Secrets & Lies, Career Girls, and All or Nothing are emotional dramas that are impossible to hate, whereas Vera Drake and Topsy Turvy are compelling period drama, and Naked is dark and shocking, although too dark for most tastes.
Kim Stolz from America’s Next Top Model. Why is that the most attractive women are lesbians? (This is just my opinion of course!) You can find pictures of her using Google Image Search.
Shawn Johnson is an Olympic gold medal winning gymnast who is particularly gorgeous to look at. You can find pictures of her using Google Image Search.
The Wizard of New Zealand is one of Christchurch’s most famous living individuals. His views on women are controversial. When I saw him one day he was talking about a woman who complained about getting bruised fingernails from clawing the eyes out of her husband... to which I replied to him: ‘‘You're trying to become a woman in the 1950's sense of the term’’. He then quickly changed the subject to something less controversial: the history of religion. And that was when I left him.
Disclaimer: The above list is not meant to be exhaustive!

Useful Websites

Favourite TV programs

Free computer programs that I find useful

  • IrfanView is a Windows graphics program. It has a lot of useful features such as cropping, re-sizing, format conversion, batch conversion, gamma correction, image effects, etc. What's better is that this program works under GNU/Linux using the program Wine.
  • Goldwave is a Windows sound sample editor program. This program also works under GNU/Linux using the program Wine. Warning: this program is not free but at least it is cheap.
  • Exact Audio Copy (E.A.C.) and Foobar2000 are a pair of applications that serve as a superior replacement for Windows Media Player for the purposes of (respectively) ripping and playing music files. Foobar2000 is superior to Windows Media Player because you can change the artist name and album name of multiple music files at the same time, whereas with Windows Media Player you need to change them one at a time. Also the random play feature of Foobar2000 also is more random than Windows Media Player’s random play feature. E.A.C. is superior to Windows Media Player because it rips tracks with fewer errors. I have a 1 TB Hard Drive for the purpose of storing my entire CD collection (655 GB *.flac files) so that tracks can be played at random with no repeats for over 5 weeks of continuous playing. This gives better performance than most radio stations and anyhow is better than any radio station because it only plays songs that I like and have chosen to be in the play-list. For those of you who are interested in my stereo, here are my specs:
    • WireWorld U.S.B. cable connecting the computer to the DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter).
    • Naim DAC-V1 DAC and Headphone Amplifier. See the following review about the Naim DAC-V1.
    • Sennheiser HD 800 Headphones. See the following review. This is the best product that Sennheiser make and it is so good that, in conjunction with the Naim DAC and Headphone Amplifier, it makes C.D.’s sound like crap. I need to upgrade my C.D. collection to 24 bit 96 kHz sampling rate files or even better: 24 bit 192 kHz sampling rate files.
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