Clemens Eff Hofreither

NOTE: All of this was current in, uh, 2002 or so. Both the facts and the opinions may have changed since. I'm leaving it on for historical reasons at the moment...

Clemens F. Hofreither

mail to: clemens (dot) hofreither (at) gmx (dot) net

I live in Austria, and I'm about (Fall 2002) to begin studying AppliedMathematics? at the Johannes Keppler Universit�t in Linz. Yes, that implies that I am fascinated by mathematics. Other than that, I do a lot of programming in my spare time, which - inter alia - got me the job I'm working at this summer.

At my summer job, I participate in a project to control and supervise automobile factories, but in my spare time my programming interests are obviously targeted at a slightly different direction. Precisely, I do a lot of game programming, with all its related issues like 2D graphics, 3D graphics, network programming and so on (see the link above). I feel CeePlusPlus is the LanguageOfChoice for this area, so this is why I'm pretty proficient in it (or at least I think so, I'm sure other people would disagree). Lately, however, I've started using LuaLanguage in my projects as a ScriptingLanguage and am delighted with its simplicity and easy way of extending applications.

At work, I have just learned using CsharpLanguage and the MicrosoftDotNet framework. Considering it's a MicroSoft product, it's amazingly simple to get productive results with. (As much as I hate admitting it.)

Another interest of mine is the LinuxOperatingSystem; although I have to admit I still use the evil MicroSoft MicrosoftWindows operating system (currently in its 2000 variety, which is better than the 9x's I've used before) in daily work, I love playing around with my Linux system; for instance, I've tried writing some modules for the LinuxKernel with good success. Another nice thing I've accomplished is setting up the Linux system in such a way that I can boot my Win2k machine to Linux just by inserting a special boot disk; the Win2k box then gets the kernel from the Linux system, imports some NFS file systems and is fully functional, including the KDE graphical user interface.

Of course, I'm not an all-computer person. I have several (often it seems to me, too many) other interests, including:

Music. Some of my favourite bands are Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sigur Ros, Nine Inch Nails, Tool... I guess I'm pretty much on the alternative side of music. I personally play the trumpet, the electric guitar and a bit of keyboard. I've also done some experiments with electronic music on the PC, very interesting.

Chess. Lately I've started playing the GameOfChess, mostly against computer programs and online against other people. I'm fascinated by the way grandmasters build up a delicately balanced network of mutual protection between pieces and use this network to strike at weaknesses in the opponent's position which they identify by careful scrutiny and analysis. Now obviously I'm not getting anywhere near this level, but I'm at least trying. See PatternsInChess for an interesting discussion.

Astronomy. Another pastime of mine, though I'm not too successful with this as of yet. I just have a not-too-exciting small reflector and have tried to find some of the easier objects with mixed success. A good planetarium software helps, though.

As I look at this list, I realize that all of these things have at least some connection to computers. Should I be worried now?

Hey, have you seen the Game Programming Wiki http://gpwiki.org/ ?

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