Connor’s Blog

I decided a few days ago that I was going to write a longer ‘About Me’ section on the blog, since a lot of people don’t know my history. So, here we go.

Part 1 – The Beginning

My name is Connor. I have had several aliases in the past, including Phoenix, Phoen, sh1fty, and Dr. Watz0n, which is my most recent one. I started building websites (with the help of my now deprecated book, HTML for Kids) back in 2002-2003. That was pretty basic HTML, including [b], [i], and [table] tags. Back then, they didn’t use DIV’s. Well, the didn’t teach me at least.

I pretty much kept to myself for a while, just making a few Invision Free forums with my friends. Played Runescape like every other internet n00b. Then I decided “Hey, why don’t I try and make computer games?” So I Google’d “Making Video Games” and came across this program called DC Game Maker or something like that (no, not the DC Tileset-based Map Maker, I remember that too :P). So I fooled around with this DC thing, didn’t like it. Then I was on this freeware website and came across this program called Game Maker. I clicked the link, went to the website, and downloaded Game Maker 5.3. This was in October/November 2004.

I spent a few (well, more like several) months working with it’s Drag and Drop interface and, well, made games! I didn’t find the Game Maker Community (GMC) until March 2005 (my original username was SevAdv, short for the game I was working on called Sevarian’s Adventure). Now, during this time I was working with Game Maker I was relearning HTML, as well as CSS and some PHP. Just figured I would mention because it looked like I went from [b] to MySQL queries :P. Anyway, I fooled around on the GMC for months, doing some stuff. Now, let’s jump forward more than a year to September 2006. This is my infamous “Break From the Internet”. From September to April 2007, I didn’t use the internet at all. I just stopped. But, when I came back, well, that is the real beginning of my story.

Part 2 – The Beginning of the Future

When I came back to the Internet in April 2007, I joined a forum called Game Maker Help, aka the GMH. There I met some of the very close Internet friends I have now, such as Jext, and my real friends, including Steve (aka InTheDark). At this time I also took a web design job for this kid named Andrew Wilson for this Half Life 2 mod he was working on. I don’t know, something about race cars, but I digress. As you know, Andrew is one of my good friends now as well. So, back to GMH. I made my first website (online, that is). Hosted on the now defunct Roxr Web Hosting. Was okay, not very good, but whatever.

During my hiatus from the Internet I was working on a top secret project called Alphino. Alphino was a Sub OS (Subordinate Operating System). I made it in Game Maker, as you could imagine, all drag and drop. Before I left the Internet, I joined a mailing list entitled “Sub OS Dev”, which included some notable people, including pythonpoole (Benjamin Poole, from Game Maker News blog and Scorptek) and NeDoIM, who made the NeDoIM Workstation Sub OS. When I returned from my break, the first thing I did, naturally, was check my email. After going through probably two hundred emails, I found one from the Sub OS Dev mailer, saying that a new forum opened up for Sub OS developers. Guess what? I joined.

My official join date was May 20th, 2006. I remember because it was so close to my birthday. Anyways, that is when I met my Gangsta G Tanner Cheliak (who was known as optifront). I never would have known him as I do now if I didn’t send him a Private Message (PM) telling him to team up with me to take down NeDoIM. Honestly, we each considered each other nerds during our early days. But hey, we’re geeks, right?

Sub OS Dev (2, as it was called) eventually collapsed. Well, Tanner and I pretty much deleted everything on it a few months later. Game Maker Help also fell (this was during the time that 64Digits was becoming popular, essentially taking out all of the little sites), which left most of us scattered. The summer of 2006 was fairly good. I made a new community (called Phoenix Forums), fought a war with Jext, became friends again, was stuck between two high schools, other stuff like that.

Let us once again skip ahead to February 2007. I started my new company, known as Dark Technologies (went to Dark Tech, then darkTech). Didn’t do much. Was pretty dead after the Spring. Oh well. The best part is here, though.

January 2008: This is when everything changes. Alex and I (Alex Claudio, best friend from school) are launching Masked Media in a few months. I am also working on a new web project, as well as a new software/web tech company to launch sometime this summer.

Well, what can I say? What a trip, huh? Summer 2008 is really, in my own opinion, gonna be so amazing that people will be like “He’s only 16?”. Yea folks, just a kid. But hey, that is when we are the best, eh?

January 2009: How wrong one man can be. In the past year, a lot has changed, but unfortunately, change that I wished to bring about never happened. It really is sad. That being said, 2008 was fun. A lot happened, both good and bad, but at the end of the day I am a much more grounded person, which is good. So, what’s in store for 2009? We’ll just have to wait and see my friends.

AIM – drwatz0n
MSN – connor [at] maskedmedia.com < - Not my real email :P
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/connormw