[orangecomputer]

I'm certainly reading! And with great interest at that, it's very interesting hearing of the other Australians who were in similar situations. I find it interesting too how a lot of those from America and other countries are quick to criticize the story and are shocked at how "you didn't have a mobile phone at age 13!?" or "I don't believe for a second that he didn't have an ADSL connection in rural Australia in 2002", or even the assumption that all our public schools in the outback of Australia were equipped with the latest in Pentium technology when in fact, some were as far back as 15 years out of date.

Thanks for the invite too. I don't know where I'd start with modern tech. I've been building up more knowledge over the years and started by purchasing each individual part to build my own system in 2009. I'm no whiz but I'd say I have a reasonable degree of literacy nowadays. The one thing I could use help with is getting started in modern programming. My head appears to still be stuck in the idea of using a simple text-editor-style compiler with no additional libraries, headers, (linkers?) etc required. I had a bit of trouble finding good tutorials that actually supplied the relevant libraries, headers etc for the code they were explaining, so it became difficult when they would expect that every new programmer knows straight away what the SDL header is for example, and where it can be acquired from.

[pm]

Outback public schools are lucky if they're equipped with more than one toilet.

There are many good tutorials on the Internet for a lot of things, but many make assumptions for things that aren't specifically code-related (libraries, linking, etc) that can be frustrating when you're starting. Consider it a rite of passage.

If you have any questions on anything (there's no such thing as a dumb question), again feel free to e-mail.