I post a lot of my weird wacky humor, but haven’t actually posted any useful or real information about who I am. So in this post I shall try to keep these answers as truthful and serious as possible. Okay, so the serious part is a stretch, but at least the answers will be completely true!

Name:

Ryan Martinsen

Birthday:

March 12, 1982

How tall are you?

4'28" 1/2

Where are your ancestors from?

Norway, England, Wales... to name a few.

What are your hobbies?

Swing dancing, Fly fishing, Camping, Hatred of olives, Swing dancing, Swing dancing, Lindy hop (the type of swing dancing I prefer) , Savoy style (the type of lindy hop swing dancing that I perfer) , Hollywood is fun too (another type of lindy hop swing dancing) , Blogs , Writing weird humor articles , SEO (Search Engine Optimization... not SouthEastern Ohio), Firefox, Most things computer related, and the list goes on... (ie. swing dancing) .

Firefox is a hobby? Isn't Firefox a web browser?

Yeah yeah... so it's more of an obsession than a hobby. Same goes for hating olives.

Where do you live?

Have I told you how much I love brownies? Oh and chocolate cake? Pastel de tres leches tambien me hace salivar. Having said that my address is... oh wait. They'd probably be bad by the time they arrive in the mail. Nevermind. I live in Utah.

Favorite food:

It changes daily. For example, on Tuesday it's 3 for a dollar hard shell tacos at Del Taco! Other days it's hawaiian pizza, lasagna, ice cream, and tortilla chips with melted cheese. Other days (yes the previous foods were for ONE day) ;), it's that really good orange chicken stuff from Panda Express. I love so many different kinds of food. I really like Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and Peruvian food.

Favorite sport:

I don't really care to watch sports unless it's a local college football team, but even then it's rare. I like to play basketball more than any other sport.

Favorite music:

Jazz! Basically anything you can swing dance to.

Favorite cars:

I'm not much of a car guy. You see, I don't fit comfortably in small cars. Of course there are the mid-sized or large cars or whatever, but I still feel they're all "small" even though some probably have as much or more leg room as some SUVs. Jeeps are nice.

Favorite movies:

Napoleon Dynamite, Star Wars (all), Princess Bride, Spider Man I and II, and some others I can't remember (I must really like them if I can't remember what they are!) If I ever think about it, I'll update this when I know what they are. :-D

Favorite season:

Winter for skiing, spring for newness of life, summer for hiking, camping and fishing, and fall for the pleasant weather and changing leaves.

Favorite holiday:

Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Valentine's day is good if you have a girl to spoil.

If you weren't a progammer, what would do for a living?

No idea.

How did you get into programming?

Short answer: 1996 by a game called Chip’s Challenge.

Long answer: I wish I would have written all of this down as it all happened so I’d know all the actual dates. Dates are approximate. I’m pretty sure about the years, but not the months.

Before I discovered the internet computers were mostly boring to me. Wait, without the internet they still are! :) My first introduction to the internet was on a 1200 baud modem using AOL 2.0 or maybe it was 3.0. It didn’t take long to move on to better things (partially because of the huge bills I was running up on AOL). I was soon crusing with a 14.4 modem using Netscape on Windows 95 instead of Win 3.11. In 1996 at the ripe old age of 14 I got addicted to a game that I believe came with Windows: Chip’s Challenge. I got really far and had lots of codes to advance to the higher levels. I decided I should make a really cool website that had all the codes on it. All of the big games had sites like that, why not one for Chip’s Challenge? :-P So I found some how-to sites and started learning HTML. My first site was hosted with Netcom, our ISP at the time. Netcom was aquired by Earthlink I believe. I don’t think I ever actually posted any of the Chip’s Challenge codes on the site. I got too excited learning how to do other stuff. I remember when I learned how to make tables. What an exciting day that was! Seriously, I remember showing my family members how cool it was. I don’t remember their reactions, but I’m sure they said some really nice things like “gee wiz, that’s swell.”

About the same time, I got interested in windows programming and focused on that instead of web development. I found a trial version of VB 5.0 online and enjoyed it to a great extent. For Christmas of 1997 my parents got me Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition. In early 1998 I started a small website to give away freeware I had written. In 1999 I realized a couple of my applications could be sold. So I started selling Close Popup, Mr. Internet, and shortly after Mouse Trap. I also worked with friends who started an internet development company.

And so the story continues today. As Nick Bradbury put it, it’s the “Aha!” moments that happen every so often with new technologies or whatever that got me excited about this stuff, and continue to keep me excited from day to day.

So anyway, that’s all for now. If you have any questions about me, feel free to ask! I’ll answer just about anything you throw at me as long as it’s clean and not too personal. Just post a comment on here or drop me an e-mail.