Matt Anderson

Hiya folks! You've probably learned by now that my name is Matt Anderson. This page is provided for you to learn some other things about me. (The next paragraph is jargon-intensive. You may skip it if you wish.)

Like my teammates Jeffrey Frazier and Kris Popendorf, I am a computer nerd and have no reservations about saying so proudly. I've been around computers ever since my dad bought a Zenith with an Intel 8086, a megabyte of RAM, and a whopping 20 megabyte hard drive to complete his doctoral dissertation. I was 6 years old then, and all I could do with it was type some simple DOS commands and play Reversi really badly. Around 1994 we got a 486-66Mhz with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 200 megabyte hard drive. We got a 2800 baud modem and connected to the Virginia Tech modem pool and did things like download small games from file archives at Washington University at St. Louis and other servers. We were among the first to test ISDN (though the small downloads we did never used the service to its full potential). By around 1995, I had started doing HTML. Now, almost 5 years later, I've learned a lot more about web page design and the tools involved. Participating in an international contest like ThinkQuest is a far cry from my first page that said "Hello World!" with a unsophisticated GIF at the top made in Autodesk Animator. That's my life story as far as computers go. Our current machine is a Pentium 166 with 48 megabytes of RAM, one 2 GB and another 4 GB hard drive, and loads of upgrades and peripherals. Now we have a cable modem (you can see it between the left speaker and tower case on the picture above or below), a SOHO network in our house, I am versed in dozens of software applications, and I'm learning new things all the time.

You'll notice the caption on the picture of my computer below says "The Millenium Falcon." No, I'm not obsessed with the upcoming millenium (in 2001) nor am I particulary concerned with the government-named "Y2K" problem. Actually, I've started a tradition of naming our computers after spacecraft from Star Wars. My dad's laptop was christened the "X-Wing" and when we get our new computer sometime early next year, it shall be named "The Executioner" after the Empire's Super Star Destroyer. I'm thinking of naming our home network "The Galaxy Far, Far Away". Did I mention I like Star Wars?

The Millenium Falcon at day and at night.

For The Fibonacci Series, I acted as what could be called a designer. I wrote all of the HTML, made all of the graphics for the site (except for some illustrations), and oversaw the creation of the site's structure. It was my primary responsibility to see that the site be realized as a united, coherent, artistic whole. In addition, I wrote some of the content for the site, namely the Biographies section. I also did a few of the Flash movies and some light JavaScript work. I got to know Kris Popendorf when I lived in Logan, Utah for two years before we moved to Norman, Oklahoma. Ever since moving to Oklahoma, ICQ and e-mail have been our lines of communication, as they have been throughout this project. Even as I write this, I have a small window that shows me Kris's online status and allows me to communicate with him in a plethora of ways. I have this capablility with Jeffrey as well. Call it a pager for the internet, I don't know what we'd do without ICQ (and, I'll tell you, it sure beats that Instant Messenger thing).

I'm now a 17 year old senior at Norman High School North in Norman, Oklahoma. I take my studies very seriously, keeping a 4.0 grade point average taking fun classes like AP European History, AP Biology, AP Calculus, AP Statistics, and AEGIS English. The AEGIS "mentorship" program was started as an advanced math course by Dr. Drennan (see "Jeffrey Frazier") that later was adapted to english cirriculum. For the longest time, neither I nor Jeffrey were exactly sure what AEGIS meant as an acronym (though I had some ideas). As a word, aegis is derived from the name of the Greek god Zeus's shield and has since come to be used to describe a protection or sponsorship. I plan on studying engineering at The University of Oklahoma after I graduate this year.

I spend my free time reading, listening to They Might Be Giants and Weird Al Yankovic, and, of course, doing various things on the computer, like this. Feel free to have a look at my personal home page.