Contents
A bit about me...
My nick is borrowed from the much loved and highly absorbing works of fiction written by Julian May.
If you like Fantasy and love Science Fiction and want a perfect example of the merging of these genres into a cohesive and transfixing series, read these books!
- The Many Coloured Land
- The Golden Torc
- The Non-Born King
- The Adversary
I identify with Kuhal Earthshaker because he was always second best in what he did (ugh like me).
He lost a loved one and overcame terrible hardship to survive a very difficult time in his world.
However throughout all of the disasters and hardship, Kuhal remained true to his ideals and was always honourable and noble.
This is an ideal I aspire to hence my adoption of the name Kuhal :)
If you read the books, this "spoiler" won't matter at all as he is not the focal character at all...
Kuhal on Family
My family is my most important achievement and my most important duty/love/activity.
I have two children; my son born in January 2000 and my daughter born August 2001.
We live in Auckland, New Zealand which has a sub-tropical climate (although that's hard to picture right now).
We are famous for our scenery (Lord of the Rings fame most recently), rugby, America's Cup, complaining about Australians who keep beating us in sports, and UnrealTournament :)
The only wish I have is that there were more hours in a day so that I could spend more than 1 hour a night on my hobbies.
After the children are asleep and the chores are done, there is precious little time to spend coding/playing/spamming and so on.
Oh well, maybe in the next reality :)
Kuhal on Games
- game = fun
- fun = good
- game = good
I'll play anything once and most things several times (until I beat you perhaps :) ).
I'm into many types of games as well as game formats.
It comes from many a rainy day playing Monopoly with my brothers and parents as I was growing up.
I was playing Chess at 4 and beating Mum at 5 (or so I am told...).
I was taught many card games as I was growing up as well as pool, darts (and other pub-related games).
I play hockey (that's Field Hockey to those in the USA) and Squash. At school I captained the Squash and Chess teams and vice captained the hockey team...
Why? Mainly because I'm pretty good and putting my point across and leadership comes naturally :)
These days I play online games and very little else. Why? Because my children are my masters :)
Computer Games
I play:
- UnrealTournament - (of course) - I have a little server set up for our gaming clan but truthfully, it's there as my test bed for deploying my mods...muahaha
- WanCatan - its a network version of 'Settlers of Catan' which is a fantastic board game by Klaus Teuber visit Mayfair Games at http://www.coolgames.com/ to learn more - incidentally, Klaus Teuber was the creator of Monopoly as well!
- Chess - visit http://itsyourmove.com - many online http games there for when I'm at work behind the pesky firewall
- BroodWars - I used to be a big online player but I haven't played in ages and ages - no times for a 4 hour marathon game these days...RTS's take a back seat to turnbased or action games where I can leave and come back a few minutes later
Board Games
I play:
- The Settlers of Catan - "Cities and Knights" which is an extension of the original incorporating more combative rules for those that like the extra challenge
- Risk - Haven't played in ages. Rather a basic game but good fun in a group of fanatics
- Diplomacy - I love this game but no time to play and nobody to play with. Pure strategy, guile and negotiation skills. No luck at all
- Cards - Various games like "500", "Euchre", "Black Lady" ...
Kuhal on Programming
- programming = fun
- game = fun
- programming = game
(false) Logic aside (hehe) programming to me is another type of game.
The rules are the language syntax.
The skill is in your ability to create new solutions.
As with games, experience allows for better success rates.
The best game to play is one where it is you vs yourself, trying for a personal best each time you play.
This is what programming is for me.
It's also my livlihood but that's secondary.
Predominant Languages
These are some of the languages I've needed to use to earn a living over the years
- Java/J2EE
- Visual Basic (various forms)
- UnrealScript
- LISP
- Various Unix Shells
- PHP
- MySql (and SQl in general really)
Languages of interest
Additionally I've touched on these languages for varying lengths of time for aspects of projects or just for interests sake.
- Perl
- C/C++
Mod Pages
Mod Ideas/Balanced CTF
Some programming related interests of mine.
Unfortunately I've never had time to follow any of them up farther than reading some theories and programming techniques.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- DirectX
- Game Theory (related to AI)
Kuhal on "the things that make me MAD"
MY pet hates are:
- Unfairness
- in games like UT when one team is stpacked with top talent and nobody agrees to swap
- in life when children (especially but not exclusively) are hurt by evil people
- whenever someone (ab)uses their power to hurt others - grrrr
- Abuse
- verbal abuse of any sort I dislike - especially online
- Keyboards - they are so slow. I want neural implants to allow faster human/PC interaction!
- Almond flavoured stuff (but I like eating almonds - especially chocolate coated ones!)
- agar - That stuff is just nasty!
- fondant icing - (spelling?) - that stuff that's on wedding cakes...yech
Current Projects
-September 2003-
I've been inactive for a long time as I lost interest in UT due to the local servers all going into disrepair. Fortunately things are better now and I can enjoy playing some more. I was los tin the land of Warcraft 3 editing for a few months there and as much fun as it was coming to terms with yet another scripting language, you don't get as much satisfaction in WC3 scripting as in UT scripting :)
I'm currently adding to SemiAdmin for UT which is a mod started by DarkByte and Evolution.
Chalkboard
Tarquin: Hello Kuhal. Welcome to the Unreal Wiki. That's an impressive amount of work you've put into UltraEdit!
ZxAnPhOrIaN: Hi, welcome to the wiki! :) :tup:
Kuhal: Err, thanks :) I chose the topic because I like UltraEdit but also I wanted to learn the ropes as it were. I tried to keep the look and feel as close to the standards I've been impressed with throughout the Wiki...
Tarquin: Your request for peer review kind of got snowed under heavy Site Navigation discussion... Wiki peer review is a bit odd at first, especially if you're coming from forums where people tend to post comments straight away. On a wiki, the tendency is that complete silence in reaction to something usually means that people like it. (or they don't get it yet and are waiting to see what it grows into). It takes some getting used to. I have the funny feeling that Application isn't the only page that gives a list of script editors to use with UnrealScript... I'm not sure, but it might be an idea to track that down & put a link to UltraEdit there too. It's nice to hear standards impress! I regularly reel from how disorganized this place is ... :D
EntropicLqd: Hi Kuhal - I came across those Julian May books many years ago - a storming set of stories. O yeah - a very belated welcome to the Wiki. Maybe I should add a section on vi :)
Kuhal: Thanks EntropicLqd and yeah the stories are cool. vi..lmao...Can you imagine modding unrealscript in vi exclusively? OUCH!
Tarquin: It's been said so many times... but here goes for one more...
http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99may/uf000621.gif
Kuhal: ROFL. It might be old but I haven't seen it before! That's funny...especially cos everyone knows that punch tape is the most hard core editor on the market! Especially if you punch it with a compass during biology class... )
Highlander: Hey! I use gVim (version of VI for windows) to do my uscript. Has some nice unrealscript highlighting.
Kuhal: O...M...G!!!!!! I never thought I would see the day :) I use UltraEdit. I know the minimum vi command necessary to cope with the small amount of unix scripting I have to do from time to time...
EntropicLqd: lol - that's a great cartoon. vi is OK once you've gone through the extreme trauma of having to work with it.
Tarquin: When I was doing my maths degree, they tried to get us to learn vi to program in Fortran 77. I rebelled, and spend 2 weeks solid learning to program TinyMUSH instead. Great fun, wreaked havoc on my sleep pattern. Still that's what 1st year is for... :D (the department were dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century and switched to Mathematica the year after.)