Daniel Wrong

I have lived almost my entire life in the metro Atlanta area. Suburbia is not exactly an exciting place. Consequently, I've always tended to escape through reading. Naturally, my preferences are for stories that take place in exotic locals, historical periods, or nonexistent worlds. Primarily I've read science fiction and fantasy, though, lately, my genre of choice has moved in the direction of historical fiction where authors must deal with the facts of the real world when resolving situations (no magic or advanced technology to save the hero, just strength, speed, intelligence, and guile.)

Quite often when I read, I have a tendency to want to add to the story, that is, to have the characters deal with issues the way I would. As a result, I have dabbled a bit with writing. Quite a lot of what I have written is only partially finished. I have a tendency to get bored with a subject rather quickly, though I do have one complete novel, the adventure Get Me Bigfoot!.

Though I studied art at the University of Georgia and have a BFA in painting, I did not discover my medium of choice until several years after graduation. Part of this was due to the lack of coverage of such an art form in school, but the primary reason had more to do with the level of technology at the time. The form of visual art that I practice is known as 3d Rendering.

Rendering is the creation of images using software to simulate the effects of light on virtual objects. The early forms of this software, known as raytracers, accepted a text file description of a scene. Using language remarkably similar to C++ code, one would specify the size, shape, location, and texture of primitive objects, then specify camera and light information. The raytracer would process the text file in a manner similar to a source code compiler. However, rather than generated and executable computer program, the result would be an image file.

The problem with the early raytracers was that they were CPU intensive and very slow. A simple image could take days to generate a rather simple image with just a few spheres and pyramids. I had played around a bit with them in my high school days with my top of the line (at the time) 386 pc, but due to time constraints gave it up in college. By the time I graduated a new generation of Render engines was being released. The first that I picked up was Bryce3d which specialized in landscape generation and complex textures. Not long after, I discovered Poser, which made generated images of people so easy, that it almost felt like I was cheating. Lately, I've been working with Vue d'Spirit, which is similar in many ways to Bryce, but a little easier to use and a lot better at adding flora to scenes.

One of my favorite hobbies is making mead. I first tried mead in 1999. A coworker had made some and brought it into work for everyone in the group to try (remember, this was the dot com boom, and as software engineers, we could get away with drinking at work). I thought it was pretty good, but that was about as far as it went.

Flash forward to summer of 2006. I had managed to remain employed as a software engineer throughout the lean years of the dot com bust, but now I had to work a whole lot harder to keep my job. Plus, I was no longer a bachelor living in an apartment, but instead was married and living in a house (no kids yet though). I was really no longer able to pursue time intensive hobbies.

One day I was painting my living room and had the TV running in the background. There was a movie on called "The Thirteenth Warrior". It's a Viking movie based on the Michael Crichton book "Eaters of the Dead". In one scene, they mention a drink made from honey. It made me remember trying mead years before. For some reason, it stuck in my head. A few days later, I had some down time at work, so I googled it. I found out that making mead was really quite cheap as far as hobbies go and it was also not very time intensive. So, I decided to give it a try. I was hooked durned quick.

I soon discovered though that I one problem though. Though I enjoyed making it, I just didn't like the taste that much. Everthing I made was either so sweet it was like pancake syrup or really strong and dry. The problem I determined was that I wanted something more refreshing - gulpable, not just sipable. The answer (at least I hope it is) is braggot - a medieval variant of mead that is part ale.