…Me

Hi, I’m Christopher. I usually go by the name Ralthor on the Internet because Chris is such a common name. Ralthor is a name I rolled from the D&D Dwarf handbook many many years ago when I needed a good Dwarven name for the text based MUDS I was playing at the time. I’ve stuck with it ever since. It has a secondary effect that it is a combination of Rand al’Thor (Rand al’Thor), the main character in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, which I at one point in time loved so much I named my son after him (Randall). The name was created well before I started reading Jordan’s books, but it sure is a nice coincidence.

I am a Software Engineer at a major defense contractor and a fairly recent CS graduate with a minor in history. I love to program, I live to program. I also love history and have a love/hate relationship with politics. Between raising my son and programming all day at work I try to find the motivation to work on my own projects, thus this blog.

…This Site

This is my blog. It exists for two reasons. The first and primary reason is that I needed a launching point for my code, ideas and other creative projects. I tend to start a lot of projects, but never finish them because I don’t have anything to do with them (i.e. share it with the world). I love to learn, but more than anything I love to share what I have learned. On of my favorite quotes is by Leon Gautier, France’s version of Tolkien from a literary historian point of view, “The knowledge that I have given you, and the methods that I have taught you around this oval table are not yours to keep for yourself alone, unused; and still less have you the right to use them as weapons to fight God or religion. Above all things, never make a sacrifice of Truth.” I would perhaps word this different, but first part emphasizes my general feels on knowledge. It is useless in one man’s mind (or at best will only be an aid in getting that person rich). Knowledge is only useful when it is shared and obtainable by others who wish to use and expand on it. I have started many projects and never finish them using the excuse that I didn’t have any way of sharing them. This will hopefully remedy that.

The second reason is that I haven’t made webpage in over a decade (back when frames were popular). I knew HTML, a little PHP, barely any javascript, some SQL and nothing about CSS. There is a definite trend towards thin clients and a lot you can do with AJAX, so I wanted to pick of some of those skills and this was a good way of doing it.

…The Content

Blogs are supposed to have points. I’m not entirely sure what this one is about.

This is a personal blog, but its not about my life. I will post stuff I write/make and it is not likely to cover one topic. Primarily, this site will be a launching point for my art, programming. I may talk about programming, but I will more than likely just most little apps I make or point to other websites I create. I will probably post stuff about technology that I have thought about. Perhaps reviews/analysis of books or products I have used. I may go off on rants to vent. I am sure I will not be able to refrain myself from talking politics and promoting Libertarianism.

To summarize, I don’t exactly know what this site is about yet except for a general statement. Its not about me, it about my knowledge. Hopefully, this will evolve at some point.