About Me Main->About Me

A Picture of the Author! It's me! Or, it would be me if I could draw better.

Hi all. I am Norman K. Floyd, the author of this website. I am a 21 year old university student. Um, well, yeah.

To my friends on the internet, I'm simply known as NKF. A rather uninspired nickname, but it works.

Feel free to peruse my curriculum vitae. It's not impressive, but, in time, it might be.

Now, perhaps a little background about myself is in order. I was born in 1980, and raised in the country known as Malaysia for the past 20 years of my life, in the beautiful state called Sabah, also known as the Land Below the Wind. While I was born in Malaysia, I'm technically an overseas born New Zealander. Strange, yes? Well, I am part Kiwi in any case. In 2001, since my father was retiring, the whole family moved to New Zealand. This is where I am now.

I'm an ex-La-Sallian. That is to say, I attended La Salle high school as a boy until 1997, where I took my school certificate exam. I later attended Inti College Malaysia, where I took a bachelors in information systems degree. My forte is biased more towards computer science, but I was placed into information systems instead. I did not complete the course at Inti, mostly because of the move to New Zealand. Instead, I transferred to Massey University, where I am currently studying. It's a little frightening to know that I've reached the pinnacle of my academic life. Where will I go on to next I wonder?

I could have been an ordinary person and got a proper hobby like fishing, or stamp collecting, but oh no. I just had to be different. I had to become a computer geek and get interested in programming. I'm somewhat familiar with C/C++, Visual Basic and have at least rudimentary knowledge of HTML. But is it a hobby? Probably not. A general interest, yes.

While we're at it here's a professional interest of mine. The link will take you to 'Gamedev.net'. Yes, I'm interested in developing games -- or I dream that one day I'll be able to produce a simple game of my own. I don't actively participate at Gamedev.net, but I do enjoy reading the discussions on game design and general programming on the message forums. Sometimes the discussions are fairly insightful.

Drawing is another hobby of mine. Some of you who know me may already know that I like to dabble in art. Well, sketches mostly. Cartoony sketches. You won't see much of my work here, as I rarely have any gems to display. Nevertheless, when I do, I will. Those of you who remember me from '99, will recall my X-Com fan-art. I started off with digital art (done mostly with the mouse), but have gradually progressed back to traditional media, having being repulsed by my fairly bad mouse-art. While I'm not at the computer, people have known me to go scribble crazy, especially when bored -- or during dull lectures. It's terribly addictive. Probably detrimental too. I wonder if they have chronic artist support groups? Heh.

One other interest of mine is writing. Now, I'm not a very good writer. I can't even write a story without rewriting it over and over again until it's warped beyond what I'd initially intended. I've tried writing a few short stories for several years, and I still can't get them done. Yep, I'm that bad. Nevertheless, it's a hobby I enjoy. I'll probably improve some day. Speaking of writing, here's a personal favourite link of mine that I would recommend you visit sometime -- it's a fairly amusing source on learning how not to write. It leads to website called 'Website Number 9', a repository for Mystery Science Theatre 3000-like stories that make fun of poorly written literature. They are written in the style of the MST3k television series (which I've never seen), by Best Brains, which is a series that pokes fun at bad movies. You could say that Website #9 is the equivalent of MST3k for bad writing. If you do decide to visit it, might I suggest reading the MST'ed "Eye of Argon". It's a hilarious read.

Since I enjoy writing, it's should be no wonder that one of my other favourite pastimes is reading. I mostly enjoy reading fantasy books. It doesn't matter whether it ranges from Tolkienesque sword-and-sorcery fantasy stories all the way up to space operas with star faring capital ships. I sometimes like the occasional detective novels - even an occasional modern day novel will do too. But above all, I like humour. Combinations of other forms of books with humour works best. So this brings books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, Goscinny and Uderzo's Asterix series (technically a comic, still...) and books like Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy right up to the top of my list of favourite books. J. K Rowling's Harry Potter series has also become a fairly recent interest of mine. I have also been known to enjoy a few corny Westerns or two. I suppose, to me, the actual genre of the writing really does not matter, just as long as the story is compelling, exciting or at least does not drag on and on and on and on, ad infinitum.

Well, that's that. The rest of this is just extranous, still: If you have any questions about the website in general, check out the About the Website section. It probably won't have the answer to everything regarding this website, still, have a look nonetheless. You can even send e-mail to me at normankf@xtra.co.nz.redherring. Just remember to delete the 'redherring' before you send a letter. I'm a little paranoid about e-mail address harvesting on the internet, so I take these silly little precautions.