There are a lot of people who have been key, at least in hindsight, to my development.

I haven't really thought about populating this topic, but at a glance..

Alive ∞

• Maybe I'll be able to add to this list..

• Jordan B. Peterson

  • Since before he became wildly popular.

• Louis Rossmann

  • Since before he became wildly popular.

Probably ∞

• Eric S. Raymond

  • I don't even know how to describe why.

• Richard Stallman

  • Somebody has to be "that guy".

Dead ∞

See On the death of software, and it's programmers and

• Cynbe ru Taren (Jeffrey Prothero)

  • .. who I know from Mythryl.
  • I deeply regret that I never grew capable enough with the language, or helped with the project, and I abandoned the idea of becoming a programmer. Before learning he was ill, I was honestly thinking of grovelling to have him mentor me.
  • I did, however, learn from both his example and conversations on textual communication. Keeping these in mind has changed the way I think and write.

• Karen Kenworthy

  • .. her death is what made made me really think about this topic.

Important ideas ∞

I have a bit of a diary elsewhere, which I will port into this list one day.

• Computers

• DOS

  • I tinkered a whole lot.
  • .. and scripting in 4DOS
• BBS'
• Being gifted my first alias.
• Archivism
• Roleplaying
• Microsoft Works 3.0 for DOS

• Hating Microsoft.

  • This had a significant ideological influence.

• My experiences with Software

  • .. and taking notes with the hopes of one day fixing them.
  • I'm sure there are many notable programs, but I'd have to do a lot of depressing soul-searching to remember them.

• Windows 3.1

  • Going toward my own Windows "3.12" and beginning a lot of tinkering with later versions of Windows.
• My experiences with Hardware
• The Nike of Samothrace

• The Commodore 64

  • I abandoned my DOS computer altogether and delved wholly into the c64 when it had already been fading from interest for years.
• Lucid dreaming
• sleep paralysis
• Philosophy and discussion as primary entertainment.

• Oldschool computer topics.

  • Especially Oldschool demos and Oldschool music.
• Peer-to-peer, Lopster (etc) and Music
• Thought-provoking movies.

• Linux and Open source / Free software

  • Slackware and Blackbox were important first steps.
  • Lubuntu and Openbox were important next steps.

• Wikis and eventually MediaWiki

  • I wrote three thousand articles in three months.
• Deep influence in a couple of major wiki projects.

• I broke Google.

  • nofollow was for people like me.
• Genius as an intent.
• Hackers.
• Intelligence as a general topic, and paired with Archivism.
• Projects as a concept.

• sh and scripting languages on Linux.

  • Zsh in particular
  • my many shell scripts.
• Quiet computing
• Portable computing
• Firefox

• Programming

  • How To Become A Hacker
  • The Manager FAQ
  • Ruby in particular, and my later Ruby mentoring.
  • I would later make a willed decision to abandon trying to learn to program.

• Documentation as an interest I had been holding in mind for some time.

  • If you can't program it, document it.

• YouTube

  • I was particularly interested in the early atheist community.

• Games > World of Warcraft

  • Though I got into it primarily to learn Lua, I stayed for the raiding.
• How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

• Direct and significant involvement with a few Linux distributions.

  • The only one I let myself be recognized for is Unity Linux.
• Compiled Website
• The Internet Archive Wayback Machine

• Mythryl

  • Though I didn't do much programming in Mythryl, my experiences with it and its progenitor Cynbe forever informs the way I look at the alignment of documentation and presentation of information.
• Writing

• WordPress was only acceptable because of BlogText.

  • Why I will move away from WordPress, guaranteed

• Games > Path of Exile

  • .. its developers show the right way to make a game, interact with its players and maintain a strong moral philosophy.
• Babun, briefly Cygwin and then directly into VirtualBox.
• Possibly Games > World of Warcraft Classic

• Probably Games > Ember