Welcome to the Daedalnexus v2.0

Bio

Hi there!

I'm Brian, and I'm the webmaster of the Daedalnexus and the blogger responsible for Thoughts in the Daedalnexus. I've been running the Daedalnexus and blogging since '02. However it is that the network brought you to visit, welcome! Since you clicked on the "Bio" link, presumably that means you're interested in learning a bit more about me, so here goes.

I'm an electrical engineer by trade, an analog circuit designer and high-speed digital circuit designer by training, and I'm blessed to generally enjoy my job. I've worked in the tape storage, telecommunications, and now areospace industries, and I've worked enough manual labor to know how good I've got it. There's nothing like working in a rollerblade wheel factory in 110 degree heat (in front of a fan) wearing long sleeves and jeans for 10 hours a day, waiting for the next time the polypropylene fails to cure in the oven and the hot-and-still-liquid plasticd blows up in your face to teach you how to appreciate your more-or-less white collar job.

I'm also a frustrated author. Frustrated mostly because I have more ideas running around in my head for speculative fiction (mostly SF) than I have time or opportunity to write. The blog's great at providing an outlet for my political, social, and cultural frustrations, but it's not usually the most creative outlet. At least, not yet.

In addition, I live in the Denver metro area and I'm married with one daughter and one son. And we have two cats, Seamus and Moire.

As far as hobbies goes, here's a quick rundown:

Role-Playing Games: In elementary school, I was introduced to the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but there wasn't anyone to play with. It wasn't until reaching Penn State that I found people willing to play RPGs, and I rapidly fell in love with ShadowRun, a combined fantasy/cyberpunk (dragons and assault rifles) RPG.
Over the years, I've played 1st and 2nd edition Shadowrun, Hero, Rifts, Mage - The Ascension, In Nominae, and all three and a half editions of Dungeons and Dragons. I've been the Game Master (GM) for ShadowRun games which lasted years, until I finally got burned out on the ShadowRun world and decided to strike out on my own. I'm lucky to have a group which has three women, 3 couples, and my wife is one of the players. So many RPG groups are men only....

With any luck, the world I've created and the ShadowRun-based rules system will be playable. I've got friends who are "volunteering" to be my ~~guinea-pigs~~ playtesters, and I'm hoping that the world will also be a jumping off point for writing cyberpunk fiction for publication. And I've been building a huge DnD 3.5 world too. It'll be nice to be GMing again....
Anime and Animation: I've enjoyed animation since I was a little kid watching Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner cartoons with my Dad on Saturday mornings and going to see Disney films in the theatre. I'll even admit that I watched some worthy cartoons (Animaniacs and others) until I went off to Penn State. Unlike many of my peers, I realized that many cartoons (but not most by any stretch of the imagination) were targeted as much at mature viewers as children, and in some cases more. Just look at some of the subtly sexual connotations in Animaniacs or the very adult off-hand comments in Beauty and the Beast or the harsh ideas of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Not to mention the pure artistry of both Fantasia concert features.
I was first introduced to anime (Japanese animation) growing up and watching the english-dubbed Star Blazers and Robotech series. I didn't realize that these two series, which I loved as a kid, were Japanese. When I was introduced to anime proper at Penn State (via Ranma 1/2, both dubbed and subtitled), I fell in love and started watching nearly everything I could get my hands on, from Ranma to Tenchi Muyo, Demon Seed to Demon City Shinjuku, Neon Genesis Evangelion to Macross Plus, Bubblegum Crisis to Cyber City Odeo. I watched a lot of great anime, a lot of terrible anime, and some great anime that others felt were terrible and vice versa.

But the most interesting thing about the anime was that the good stuff (from my 20-something perspective) was the stuff that was obviously targeted at audiences who were mature enough to want the same drama, comedy, and romance that they watched in the best Hollywood and foreign films. Movies like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cinema Paradiso, La Femme Nikita, Life is Beautiful, Four Weddings and a Funeral, or The Matrix, but all done via the medium of animation. At the time, Disney was the only supplier of animation in this country, and as enjoyable as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid were, they weren't targeted at adults. So much of anime was, and still is.

I'm pleased to see that competition between Dreamworks SKG and Disney is slowly driving up the quality of both company's animation. Now, all we need is a domestic animation market. I can think of a great many anime lovers like myself who would be thrilled to watch high quality domestic animation on par with Japan's.
Watching Movies: Beyond animation, I enjoy watching movies in general. Sure, I generally prefer science fiction, fantasy, action, and comedy to drama (most guys seem to, and I'm not too much of an exception in this regard), but I've been lucky enough to see some truly great movies over the years. Some of the best were The Matrix, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sleepless in Seattle, Mr. Holland's Opus, Silent Running, Saving Private Ryan, Star Wars, various Star Trek movies, Cinema Paradiso, La Femme Nikita, Life is Beautiful, and Terminator. This is not an exhaustive list by any means.
Science Fiction: I was blessed with parents who taught me a love of reading in general, and whom had an impressive collection of the classical science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury. Reading the novels and short stories of the greats generated in me an absolute love of science fiction. Specially loved novels are "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card, "Dune" by Frank Herbert, and the "Foundation" series by Isaac Asimov. And through science fiction, I was introduced to fantasy authors like Tolkien and, much more recently, J. K. Rowling.
But I was also lucky to have parents who introduced me to science fiction on television in the form of the original Star Trek series. I recall fondly eating dinner in front of Star Trek and coming home from grade school to sit, entranced, watching Captain Kirk and Scotty deal with the Doomsday Machine or having Trouble with Tribbles. When Star Trek - The Next Generation came along, it was a foregone conclusion that the entire family would watch it, and we did. Since then, I've been happily sucked into such TV series as Star Trek - Deep Space None, Star Trek - Voyager, Enterprise, Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Futurama, Battlestar Galactica, and others.

Let us not forget the movies. I've seen so many science fiction flicks that I couldn't possibly list them all, even if I wanted to.

The best science fiction is never really about the future - it's about the present, reflected via the mirror of an unknown future and the creator's imagination.
Webpage Development For some reason, I enjoy putting hours into developing websites. This includes doing Photoshop image development, coding HTML and some Javascript, learning CSS, etc. It's a lot of work, but it's a hobbie that I get a great deal of pleasure from.
Photography: I love taking pictures. The hard part is seeing the picture, not the actual taking of the photo. I especially like taking black-and-white and outdoor shots. I hope to be putting some images up on the site in the Creativity section eventually, but I offer no guarantees of when that'll happen.
Traveling: While I haven't really done a ton of traveling, I've enjoyed nearly all that I've done to date. Everywhere I go I find beauty, both created by human hand and naturally occurring. I try to live my life by the maxim "The true voyage of discovery lies not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes," but I still enjoy visiting new places. Luckily, my wife also enjoys this and is, in some ways, even more driven to travel than I am.
She's already made me promise to get her to Hawaii.
Hiking: I've sorely missed this hobbie of mine in recent years. It always seems so hard to make the time for this, especially since I keep moving farther and farther from the mountains I love to hike in. With any luck I'll get up into the mountains with my daughter this summer - I think she'd love it.