Adam Hough

Email : adamh@spots.ab.ca, houghrb@bix.com

Hi!

What I'm currently doing

I'm a student at DeVry Calgary in Alberta, Canada, working on a BSc in Computer Information Systems. I'm always looking for part time work while I finish off my degree so if my resume leads you to believe I'll be able to benefit your company, please give me a call. I already have an English degree from Bishop's University in Quebec.

What I was doing...

For the first half of 1996, I was stuck in Ottawa, the nation's capital. I went out to Ottawa in January 1996 to work for Wonder Computers before their initial untimely demise. I did look for work in Ottawa to no avail despite firms publicly crying out that they were unable to find anyone capable. Hmm. Not to sound bitter, but where exactly do you get that infamous 3-5 years experience?

Computers. Naturally.

I'm an ardent Amiga user -- this is a bit of information about my current setup (excuse the computer nerd in me :-).) I'm also an AMUCer, a member of the Calgary Amiga Users Group. I (and AMUC of course!) organised a tradeshow called Amijam'95.

The new owner of the Amiga is Gateway 2000 of South Dakota as of the 27th of March 1997. They succeeded when VISCorp of Illinois has dropped out of the race. For those out of the picture, after Commodore died, the Amiga was bought by ESCOM, a German clone manufacturer, which also promptly went bankrupt. There have been rumours of an Amiga curse circulating...

I also ran a bulletin board specifically for the Amiga running Sycom Design's Excelsior Pro software. However I was considering moving over to a newcomer on the scene, Zeus due to a rather more extensive set of capabilities, but my move to Ottawa meant I had to close it down. The value of BBSs in these days of cheap Internet access of minimal at best, so I've honestly no idea if I'll ever open it up again. Of course, a dead power supply in the BBS machine doesn't really help much.

I do own an NEC Ready 7022 Pentium Windows '95 box for games and compatability, but the Amiga is still the favoured box.

You can frequently find me in #amiga in IRC. Alternatively I hang around an Amiga specific IRC network called ARCnet. Standard IRC clients work, although there's some proprietary stuff as well. For recommended IRC clients and other Amiga software, have a look at this page. Recently I've wandered into rendering as well.

There is a new arrival to the Hough collection of interesting computer gadgets: the USR Pilot. This handheld, pen-based PDA is very very very very very very very very cool. It's not as cool as the Amiga, but then nothing is. Not even a PC with Warcraft 2. But it's still extremely neat. Ok, the Apple MessagePad 2000 looks a bit cooler but it's about four times the size and ditto in price. If you've not taken a look at this bit of equipment and you're getting fed up of losing bits of paper, being unable to use microscopic keyboards, and (periodically) losing your PDA with all your bits of information on it, this is the machine for you. Look, the handwriting recognition is sufficiently good that I can take notes at university using this thing. Accurately. In full. And there's an Infocom interpreter out for it. Wishbringer with a writing based interface. Very cool. It runs for weeks on a single pair of regular AAA batteries under constant use. It comes with really good PIM software (mirrored on the host (sob) PC.) Try it. I think you'll like it.

I used to be an Apple ][ afficionado, and, to a certain extent, I still am. I even have an old Apple ][ tie as sold by Windfall. The Apple ][GS and Macintosh just didn't grab me though which is why I migrated away from the core. I do however still play with an excellent Apple ][ emulator called Apple 2000 for the Amiga. You just can't match "Wilderness" or "Lemonade" :)

For those with a hankering for the nifty new front in non-mainstream personal desktop computing, there was a rather nice new machine called the BeBox which looked like the Amiga 1000 for the late 1990s. Recent developments have involved Be dropping the hardware side of the business in favour of producing just the PowerPC base OS for Macintosh and Mac-clone hardware. If this Amiga things never works out, I may yet end up heading in that direction.

Another interest, pursued when I have the time, is MUD2. This is an absolutely stunning text based multiuser game, and blows the hell out of any others I've ever seen. Highly recommended. Currently the only instance of it running is on mud2.com in Canada, run by the author of the Visual C++ Unleashed books.

Non-Computer Interests

Non computer interests include things like kayaking and bicycling, science fiction and fantasy literature, comics (on hiatus due to being broke (sniff) as well as miniature cars. I don't normally watch a lot of TV but that's not been really the case recently... For those who're interested, http://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~binde/sf/ index.html is an amazing source of material on comics, science fiction and all sorts of other bits and bobs. Typically my stereo blasts while I'm at home, so if you live in an adjoining building, you might just overhear what I'm listening to.

Furry Friends

I also have two cats, Smokey and Kiri, who take up an inordinate amount of my time...usually time I'm trying to sleep in.

Superfluous Extra Bits

The below sample is just a superfluous sound effect for you to use. Enjoy. If you're a Paramount lawyer, go 'way :)

WARP1

My father's home page is here.

And for those people who wouldn't leave me alone (you know who you are!), here's the What's New listing.

As can be guessed, this pages always under construction -- after all, what web page isn't. For feedback on this set of pages, please use this form. To see more about SPOTS, my ISP, follow this link!

This page was last updated on the 19th of March, 1997 and is Voyager Enhanced