Where I Live

Physically, I live in Australia, in a satellite-suburb of Canberra. Being inland, so well-away from the temperature-regulation of the ocean, the region tends to fluctuate from around 0°C in mid-winter up into the 40°C range in mid-summer. As with much of the continent, the region is quite geologically stable (as much as any part of a planet mostly made of molten rock under high pressure can be). Being very inner-city, I don't have any risks from bushfires, although such do periodically threaten the outer city and surrounds.

It is a quite nice place: large enough to support a good selection of convenient services but not actually a crowded hive of humanity.

After 20 years working a mid-level technical-trades job, living in a crappy cheap apartment, and not running a money-pit of a private car I suddenly found I had enough money sloshing about in a managed investment fund to buy a small apartment right in the city. Or a city, Canberra being about $200k cheaper than the east-coast for the smallest apartment size available. This involved giving up about $40k a year in passive income to save $20k a year in rent (after accounting for all the ongoing extra costs of ownership) but it is a really nice little apartment, in terms of what specifically appeals to me (which includes a few factors the average person might consider a negative, but I rather like). I am expecting this place to be my home for the remainder of my life.

Yes, it is a very high-density complex, but there are plenty of grassy open spaces, and even a quite large lake within 100m walk, and there are lots of relatively-flat bike-paths all over the place (flatness being a major feature of the whole region, of course).

Also very convenient to shops which are likewise at most a few hundred meters away for the ones I need regularly.

I prefer to live in a small apartment, mainly for efficiency reasons. Or maybe I just mowed enough lawns as a kid that I don't want to ever again! This particular apartment has a primary outlook to the adjacent tower blocks, which actually appeals to me, being quite into CyberPunk (the 70's literary genre, not the 2020's computer game, though that looks fine too, from the play-throughs of it I have watched, though not quite my own preferred take on the genre). There is also a more naturalistic view from the windows and balcony, too, if you look sideways-enough!

What I do for fun

Being quite introverted, I don't have a desire to go out much. When I do, it is generally to do things such as:

• Go for a walk (or bike-ride) and a sit somewhere scenic.
• Take a bus for a day-trip somewhere scenic further away.
• Read a book or watch a video at home.
• Repair something, or less often, build something new.
• Play in virtual reality, usually teaching myself 3D modeling or simple programming.
• Write a book or short story... or at least work on one.

That is a pretty short list, but it covers the common things I get up to in my spare time. As mentioned, I prefer a fairly simple, low-overhead lifestyle and my recreational activities reflect that.

I am not particularly keen on traveling further than a day-trip away from home, though occasionally do so, generally having friends or family to stay with at the destination. I'm definitely not into clubs or concerts or festivals or anything noisy or crowded, which are situations I do my best to avoid. I am also not into shopping, beyond groceries and some specialised tools and equipment I can only order online from specialist suppliers anyway. And some cheap, kitschy, amusing junk that I also can most easily find/order online (or make myself!).

ICE

I have rather little in the way of personal possessions. Despite being (or possibly because of being) quite tech-savvy, I don't own a lot of 'tech toys' - nothing against people owning such things, but I don't have any personal use for them at present. Other than the obvious fridge, microwave, bed, chair, kitchen table and the built-in fixtures that are part of the apartment, my only other significant possession is my ICE unit otherwise known as my home workstation and server (and somewhat an art project in its own right).

It is very custom, being assembled from a rather eclectic mix of old and new components, some selected for function and others more aesthetic. Running open-source software stacks, of course. I've been running on OSS exclusively at home since around 1999, though at work I have generally used whatever they pay me to put up with. That mainly means Linux, though I am not married to that particular system and am often playing with alternatives too.

Games I Play

I am not hugely into computer games, though I occasionally dabble. Even more occasionally I find a game that can hold my attention for more than a few hours before I am bored of it. I am not a very goals-driven person, so collecting arbitrary points for no real reason (whether they are represented as a numeric score, 'gold', 'experience' or whatever*) doesn't capture my interest for long. I tend to be more interested in freeform content creation, so most of the games I play repeatedly will support that sort of thing. Games that play like an interactive novel can also grab me, provided the story is good and the movement through that story isn't arbitrarily difficult.

Rocks-n-Diamonds is a modern re-write of the classic 8-bit puzzler Boulderdash -- though I tend to spend more time in the level editor than in the existing levels: there's the freeform content-creation I was talking about! ... check the level-sets included in the supplemental levels pack, yup, I'm in there -- quite literally: one of the levels I contributed is based on a low-res picture of my head :-D, though I had more hair back then!)

Oolite is a modern re-write of the classic 8-bit 3D space trader/shooter Elite -- I have always loved the way Elite implemented the 3D radar: I've never seen it done as well anywhere else. There isn't much scope for content creation here, mainly because the universe of the game is pseudo-randomly generated. I have played around with creating my own custom ship and adding it into my local copy of the game though -- a low-firepower, very high defence craft for 'exploring' in without having to get engaged in combat so much (which is sort of the anti-thesis of the game's point, but ... whatever :-P).

Note that this isn't the same as the modern multiplayer online Elite Dangerous reboot - the one I play is single-player and much more basic - the owners of the Elite IP have kindly allowed it to continue to exist despite their new online game, on the condition that it not exceed the spirit of the origional 8-bit game (though they are allowed to jack up the 3D to modern levels) so full kudos to them for that!

Marathon is my all-time favorite plot-driven FPS and probably a significant genre-definer... but even then I have motivational issues with playing for any length of time. You may remember it from the Mac platform in the late-90's - it has now been released open-source by Bungie Software under their AlephOne project and ported to Linux and Windows by the community, along with a lot of visual improvements to bring it up to modern graphics standards. There are map-editors for this game, though (unusually for me) I haven't managed to get into those.

Luanti is an InfiniMine-like voxel-based mining+crafting game (as is the better-known and excellent-in-its-own-right MineCraft - but Infinimine and its ilk have been around forever.... in fact, this type of game is really a 3D extension of the Rocks'n'Diamonds-type and dungeon-crawler-type 2D games of the 8-bit era in many ways). Though this game-type's basis on building with 1m cubic blocks has some inherent limitations compared to the arbitrary-shape-based virtual-world work I generally do (see below) it can be a lot of fun constructing in this form. Great fun exploring the auto-generated environments too.

The game in its raw form is rather bare-bones, deliberately: there are extensive 'mod packs' by a multitude of creators which can be added in various combinations to mix-and-match the specific kind of game you want to play.

Overte is a modern, distributed, open-source virtual reality system for providing user-created virtual worlds. It is at somewhat early stage of development. I have been involved from near the start as an alpha-tester which means I was invited to experiment/play on the very early, incomplete system with a view to helping the developers test different parts of it as they add features. The system is still a bit raw, but it is perfectly usable, and improving all the time.

OpenSimulator is a virtual world compatible with Second Life clients. It is quite solid, but being indirectly tied to Second Life has limited its capabilities quite a bit. A very good example of a geographically federated virtual world. I cut my VR teeth in SecondLife, moving to OpenSimulator when it became capable. The SL/OS in-world content-creation tools are extremely beginner-friendly, however this long-established environment is beginning to show its age. As I have become better at 3D modelling with Blender, my need for the beginner-friendliness has dropped off these days anyway.

Oxygen Not Included is a really cute tile-based space-base simulator. I had a lot of fun with this one and it was well worth the modest price Klei Entertainment (known also for their Don't Starve games) asks. I have, however, pretty much played it out to my satisfaction now.

I am a Sectarian Humanist

I follow "a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms [an] ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity." (from The Humanist Manifesto III).

I have no surname.

Glenn Alexander is two given names. I have no surname because I don't want one. My current birth certificate has a dash in the surname field. This stuffs around the government's computer systems no end. There is no legal requirement in Australia to have a surname (they checked that carefully before allowing me to abandon my former one) - you can pretty-much have any name you like as long as it uses roman characters and isn't for fraudulent purposes.

The reason that I have no surname is that they are irrelevant and unnecessary in modern society. Surnames and the way they are passed through male progeny is a throwback to the time when women and children were considered the properties of their father/husband. ie: a male was always the property of his father as denoted by his having that name and a female was the property of her father until married in which the name change signified that she was then the property of her husband. I neither wish to be the property of my father or to own my children. Besides, I know who my immediate family is and that's our business and no-one else's.

It has the further advantage that I use my two names interchangeably, so if there is another Glenn in the room, people can avoid confusion by addressing me as Alex. Though I generally prefer Glenn.

My name format does play havoc with some badly-conceived databases that demand a surname though, which is always fun.* I imagine if the government or a big corporation wanted to collate all the information they have on me, it will take longer and require more human intervention to do so than they might like. Sucks to be them (maybe they should take time to check if the web and database contractors they pay to do their data-work are actually qualified and aware of now-decades-established standard IT practices in this regard!). And I won't go into the multiple isolated online identities I maintain (for perfectly non-criminal reasons).

*I did read a book once with a character named "Hen4ry" (the 4 is silent). The character changed his name in order to screw with databases that refuse to accept a number in a name field. I'm not interested in deliberately screwing with databases and if they were competently implemented it wouldn't be an issue.

FAQ (Frequently Annoying Questions):

• How do you know who your family is? I remember what they look like and are named on account of having grown up with them. I even know their phone numbers!
• How do other people know who your family is? Why would that be any business of theirs?
• What if you get married? My partner would keep her existing name, which is far from uncommon these days.
• What if you have children? I'll probably want an epidural as I'm told it really hurts, especially for men! I'm sure they will survive having to remember who their father is without the shared name to help them. Besides, I don't really see the point in strutting about beating my chest over being able to father children - it isn't a particularly rare ability (and my testosterone is too busy killing off my hair follicles to have time for chest-beating behavior anyway). Likely I would choose one given name, their mother the other, and they can use whichever one they prefer in any given situation (just like I have been known to transpose my two names when the situation calls for it).
• Is this some kind of clever 'life-hack' to get around the local legal or tax system? No! Herp-derp there is no such thing, and if anyone is telling you otherwise, they are trying to sell you a scam (or have been suckered by a scam themselves and are desperate enough for it to be true to wilfully delude themselves, which is easy to ridicule, but is actually rather sad). If there was such a thing, removing myself from the local legal system would just make it equally legal for people (including the government!) to rob or murder me without recourse, so just no! My name is legally called a 'one-name' (even though I happen to have two of them - the term is historical). A surprising number of people have them, most just don't dig their heals in about crappy databases and the un-qualified people who have scammed their way into being paid good money to implement them, but working in IT myself, I have a very short string for that particular kind of professional incompetence. Besides, I don't mind paying (fair) taxes. They pay for the roads that I travel on and which are used to transport goods to the shops for me to buy. And for basic healthcare (since I live in an ostensibly-developed country). And for the educations of all the people that do all the other things that make my life more tolerable than living under a pile of sticks in the forest.

Related Resources:

• W3C (the formal Web Standards group) on handling name formats on computer systems.
• A Lighter BBC article: These unlucky people have names that break computers.
• A a local one from the ABC: Frustrated with failing ID checks, migrants change their names to fit Australian databases.
• Addresses are even more of a quagmire.
• And let's not get started on time and date! (I prefer International Date Format since it matches how we write normal decimal numbers (smaller digits/values progress to the right).