auto-biography
Hi, my name is Ronald Anthony Richardson. You may not be familiar with the name now, but give me a few months. It’s a great honor to be allowed to enter such a great competition. My whole life has been involved with technology. Space science and computer technology are probably the only things that motivate me keep going each day. If you don’t believe me, ask one of my friends or family members. I started with computers at a very young age. I usually have to hide my “geeky” side in conversations because people just don’t understand what I’m saying. It wasn’t up until recently I actually found someone who understood what I was saying when the subject of computers came up. For that moment I thought that a Yale graduate in computer network engineering was the only one on earth who understood, although I knew that wasn’t true. That’s what it felt like. Imagine being sent to an alien world were no-one understood you, and you had an extreme urge to communicate, but you couldn’t because no-one would understand you. That’s how I felt for a long time, and the majority of the time, I want to talk about computers and space, but not a lot of people understand to a certain level.
In pre-school, all I ever wanted to do was become a fighter pilot. All I thought of were jets, jets, and jets. Till’ one day in the second grade. My teacher stopped everything we were doing in class and turned on the television. That day I witnessed John Glenn going back into space for the last time. I remember everything in details, because that moment changed my life forever. After that, my mind was set on going to space. All I read about was space, and I still do today. Soon I discovered the love of my life. She was 100 million miles away, but on those special nights only 54 million. The love of my life was Mars. My dream soon became life on Mars. Then targets beyond our solar system, but Mars will always be my first love. In the fourth grade while doing a lab experiment with magnets, I experienced there power and the power of repelling. The first thing that came into my head was a vehicle powered by magnets, a car that repels against a magnetic surface. Later I did more research end discovered superconductors. After learning all about magnets and superconductors I put together a blue print a propulsion system and space vehicle unit that would get me to Mars. To this day I still have it, the same drawing and plans. I believe in them.
Once again, my name is Ronald Anthony Richardson. You may not be familiar with the name now, but give me a few months. See, in elementary I built my first HTML website. In the 7th grade, I have a best friend we started a website about video games and all the stuff we liked. I coded it in PHP, I registered a domain, I understood the protocols of FTP and HTTP, and has a shared server hosting my worlds. That for me was a stepping stone to something great. Next I moved on to other web programming languages, I learned JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, I experimented with ASP and ColdFusion. The same year in 7th grade, I and my friend embarked upon a project beyond us. We craved to feel like Gods, as we planned our own “Massively Multiplayer Online Game.” I believe it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to make. I made one in PHP, but it was dull, it was boring. Well, anyways it was called “Oniwars Online.” The name was based off of our website www.onispawn.com, which is now sadly down today. We had 33 members including ourselves. It was no good. I then began learning the programming languages Python and Java. At that point I was experimenting with Linux. I had then mastered UNIX terminal commands. Later I discovered Python and Java didn’t seem to be the right programming languages to create the MMORPG we envisioned. By the 8th grade I was moved to another school. There I didn’t do much, but I did discover C# which led me to C++ because of the name similarities. At this point every programming language was a like. Functions and commands, just typed out differently. In 9th grade my best friend and I were back in the same school, but our dream project “Oniwars” had died. I went back to doing web programming, and creating programs for fun. I tried to make money off of it, but I never got any clients. In my grade no-one expected me to able to do the things I do, especially as a black kid.
Later I met a new good friend. I and he started a clothing line called “Phresh Gravity.” I did all the technical and business work, while he covered some of the business but a lot of the art. Phresh Gravity grew into an online magazine, at www.phreshgravity.com. My good friend Jacob is currently a graffiti artist and still works on Phresh Gravity. I and he were both very talented in art, I could draw, and he could paint. So we kept working on Phresh Gravity. Now were sold in fashion boutiques like NICHE from time to time, but we mostly sell our clothes and artwork online. Phresh Gravity was just a minor success to my technical side, but it was a great success to my “artsy” side. My true passion was still space and computer technology.
Then I was back, another chapter in my computer technology minded lingo. Recently I’ve been challenging myself with harder projects, and in the end they come out perfect. This motivated me to start my own personal website portfolio blog. It’s been running for almost a year now. My website is www.ronaldarichardson.com. I’ve became so much better at what I do. Later, when I discovered MySpace, I decided to code a similar website. I did and I finished, and I’m working on version 2.5 of it now. It’s coded in PHP and is completely free to download from my repositories. Life has been strange growing up, in my mind I can visualize a program or website, and then I can visualize the code in my mind. Now, my greatest project was next, my project that I currently work on daily, Verdis. Verdis is an operating system based off the Linux 2.6 kernel. I have dreams, plans, and goals for it. Verdis is my creation. It has become one of the most important things in my life. Making Verdis was tough; it’s compiled in C#. You can download and run Verdis on your computer for free at www.verdis.org. I call it the Verdis Project. One of the main goals is to provide a free operating system with free programs and games that are just as good as the ones you’d pay money for. Well on February 2nd I will be presenting Verdis to the CLUG at CPCC on the second floor at 10AM.
When the core content of Verdis was complete, and I had completed a Verdis repository. I felt inspired to start building a computer, a computer specifically for Verdis. The computer is still in development today, though I’m almost complete. It’s not an ordinary computer. It’s a nano based computer which means it uses the Mini-ITX computer motherboard architecture. It’s also energy efficient, it only needs at most 120 watts to power the whole machine, and believe me when I say it’s not a weak computer. It has a 250GB hard drive, 2GB RAM, USB 2.0, 2.5 inch DVD/CD Burner, and of course it’s running Verdis.
Related Biographies by me:
