About Peter S. May
This page is supposed to be one of those perfectly harmless personal description pages. You know, the kind with a picture or two of me on it, plus a rundown of a few of my interests and personal characteristics. It's not complete, and it's always in flux.
For the bullet-point-oriented, here's a short list of some of my (aspiringly) polymathic dabblings:
- Computer programming
- Perl
- PHP
- C (and C++ if that's actually necessary)
- Java
- A bit of C#
- As far as anything else, try me
- Electronics
- PIC microcontroller programming
- Information security
- GNU-based operating environments
- Ubuntu (and other Linuxes)
- OS X, on occasion
- Cygwin, for when people refuse to give up on Windows
- Free Software evangelism (though I refuse to be as stubborn or antisocial about it as rms; I don't want to scare people away...)
- Humanist geekery (in other words, embracing non-initiates instead of treating them as outcasts)
- Hacking/tinkering, by no means limited to other computers but all disciplines
- Music
- Piano—though I'm not particularly good at it, rather fumbly in fact, some appreciate that I have some latent talent
- Singing
- Module music/chiptunes
- Acting
- Theatre
- Voice work
My name is Peter. I very much prefer "Peter" to "Pete". To me, "Pete" lacks a certain degree of refinement which I know I have but do not always choose to exhibit. Additionally, "Pete May" is phonetically unpleasant. A few people already call me "Pete" and may continue to do so, but the use of the name "Pete" in reference to me is deprecated and should be avoided in new relations.
In writing, my name is almost always "Peter S. May". When using my full name, people variously call me "P.S.M.", "P. May", "Peter May", or "Peter S. May". When I speak my own name, it is "Peter S. May", but the "S." is silent.
My education is in computer science, with a concentration in computer security and information assurance. However, when it comes to computer work, I consider myself more talented, more experienced, and more interested in programming and software development.
As a computer user (and, usually, enthusiast), I am conversant with unixish environments such as Linux, Mac OS X, and other places one might find the GNU environment, and equally so in Windows environments (especially ones in which I can install Cygwin). While not nearly as fastidious or obnoxious as Richard M. Stallman, I am a supporter of free/open-source software and I oppose software patentability and DRM.
I act in certain moments of leisure. My CV in community and student theatre is fairly significant for a computer guy. As far back as the fourth grade I've been in theatrical productions, in such roles as the narrator from Into the Woods, the aviator in The Little Prince, O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty-four, Count Yousekevitch in Neil Simon's Fools, Big Julie in Guys and Dolls, and Eddie (the first time) and Riff Raff (subsequent times) in the annual campus shadowcast production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'm told that my speaking voice is rich and my singing voice is decent. I would very much enjoy being a voice actor; influenced in childhood by cartoons, Muppets, and The Firesign Theatre, I have a genuine interest in doing voice characterizations for radio comedy/drama and animation. I don't really know where to look, but my eyes are open.
I was too young in the 1980s to call myself a true "child of the '80s", but I was very precocious. I believe myself to be of the latest vintage which truly knows anything about the Atari 800, the Commodore 64, and microcomputer BASIC. I have to admit that it bugs me just a little that kids five or six years younger than I am wear the Atari logo for fun when even I barely know what it truly embodies.
I was 6 when the Berlin Wall fell, and at the time I didn't know what that meant. Retrospectively, I find the attitude of Cold War-era America pretty interesting. I know the last part of the Emergency Broadcast System message (the part after the 853Hz/960Hz duotone) by heart and will recite it on command when appropriate.
I hate talking politics. Politically speaking, I am apathetic first, skeptical second, and (lowercase "L") libertarian third. I recognize that the United States is massive and thus has a lot of inertia. Because of this, it's so hard to make sweeping changes, for better or worse, that I don't gripe too much if the greater of two complete doofuses made it into office. I do vote when I'm legally able, but I don't have a great deal of confidence that my vote matters. I believe that if you prefer one candidate over another, you have a responsibility to vote. I believe those here in the States who don't like any running candidates are right to stay home and do retain the right to complain about the result. If U.S. ballots bore a "none-of-the-above" option, the abstainers would certainly lose that right.
If there's something you feel I've left out here, you know what to do.
