User:Ronin~enwiki

I am Marcus Taylor. I was born in Chicago on June 5, 1979. However, I grew up in boring Bellefontaine, OH. The first college I ever attended was the University of Cincinnati but I left and pondered art school Columbus College of Arts and Design (Back then I was good with a pencil; strangely I could never paint. Though an art teacher once said one of my landscapes looked like some abstract paintings by some German artist and seemed sincere when she wanted to enter it in the school's art show. Anyway I would drop the choice and enter the University of Toledo. I left UT for nearly two years before coming back in fall 2003.

I am a computer enthusiast; at the age of twenty I purchased a computer of my own and have been enamored with them ever since. I dabble in Linux and while I recently and briefly set up a Windows XP/SUSE Linux dual boot, I've since removed both and made Fedora Core 5 my OS of choice. If all goes well, I'll get my hands on some old computer to run Linux off of.

Since 2001, I've become moderately competent at using PHP and I personally aim to teach myself the Python programming language and the Ruby programming language in the near future. Overall I don't do this for fun perse but as a means to build on my goal to satisfy my all consuming web design degree aspirations.

I have two working personal projects that make use of PHP and MySQL. The first I began in 2002. I initially billed it as a blog system (however, its becoming more of a content management system) called the RNS (revelation news sys) and worked off and on for the next year before quitting the project. I became overwhelmed with personal concerns and quit for a time. However, in late 2004, I returned to it. While this is strange to me, the death of my uncle in Dec 2004 seems to have inspired a renewed continuation of the project and the project is more complete than ever but I have yet to distribute it but as of this writing I continue to improve upon it. A working sample of this project can be found on my blog http://revelation6-79.com. The newest, is a program that easily allows a web master to easily set up his/her own online portfolio. The project is still young and underdeveloped however. I have come up with a generic name for it X-port. Before all this I once ran a fansite called brandynorwood.net but this project has been deceased for some time (Dec 2001).

Sure I love computers but I have other hobbies of course. Before becoming a strong computer enthusist, I generally enjoyed gaming and weightlifting in high school (I was not trying to become Arnold, just be in reasonable shape), I currently enjoy walking long distances and performing exercises to maintain my upper body strength mostly. I found this a must as I've had a few factory jobs that sometimes required repetitive lifting for long periods of time. i.e: It's one thing to just lift a hundred pounds once but numerous times for eight hours a day is another matter. In addition, I like to read books - primarily those that are themed on computers, history, sci-fi/fantasy and the like.

Lastly, I have miscellaneous side hobbies that involve studying world history (usually medieval and ancient history). This love of history is what inspired my love of the Wikipedia in the first place and I've made minor additions to articles on here but I would like to actually contribute something all my own. I have an interest in the religion of Islam and of the martial arts but have yet to formally commit myself to either of the latter yet.