Maura has been on the internet for quite some time now. Since 2020, she has been accumulating knowledge on how to use computers better, and not just any type of computer. She's been trying to use older hardware and software from before 2014, and loves the challenge associated with doing such.

She simply doesn't see the drawbacks as a nuisance when operating this way, and manages to play her favorite games and create stunning pieces of art regardless of the limitations she imposes on herself. In more recent years, she has been stumbling on the next hurdle in her existence: Creating her own space on the Internet to communicate and share work with other people. She has made numorous static personal home-pages, including this one, but has yet to make a successful online service that other people can use and contribute towards.

Maura isn't just a programmer, she's also an artist! In fact, her dream job is to become a manga artist in Japan some day, but most days lately she has been pouring this energy into making user interface mock-ups and drawing with her mouse in MS Paint when she doesn't have any more energy to code. Hopefully she can find the motivation to continue her story-telling side!

She also makes videos on various video sharing sites, ranging from videoblogging and skits, to Minecraft letsplays and speedpaints. Oh, and now I've mentioned how she plays Minecraft specifically. You could say she goes with a more "retro" vibe when building things in modern versions, but they're right at home in the older versions of the game she often plays by herself and rarely with friends.

So she's very creative, you could even say a Jack of all trades. Is she a master of none? You could say that, but having so many creative hobbies means that there is infinite potential to generally and gradually improve!

Martha the Media Machine!

Martha is an HP Pavillion a6110n. When I found her in a thrift store only for $15, she was in a sorry state. Her power supply was dead, and later on I found out that the thermal paste had been at least partially some kind of tacky glue! It's all behind her now though, she has a second hand functional power supply and proper thermal paste. What she was first used for was to tinker around with Windows Vista on a proper system, given that's what she was shipped with and was on the hard drive. I even recovered her to factory state when I got her working!

Eventually though, I had to format her with a linux distrobution to try and use her as a server. When port forwarding didn't work, She sat for a bit, then became my firewall. But now, She has transformed! Gone is the old unreliable 350 gigabyte hard drive, and in her are 14 terabytes worth of spinning disk goodness. (Two one terabyte drives and two six terabyte drives.) Hence why I now dub her the Media Machine.

The Ruby Red R(Acer)

The Ruby Red Racer has been my go-to portable system for a while now. Being it's rare to find a laptop of this age with a working battery, let alone at a computer store's e-waste pile, I just had to pick it up. I did have to buy it's hard drive ribbon cable, as the person who dropped it off took it out with the hard drive, but being that was only $15-$20, I wasn't too upset. It's a Acer Aspire 1410, just barely not a netbook with its under-powered 1.4 gigahertz Intel Centrino CPU. I had taken a break from using this computer for working on stuff, but seeing as the computer I was using instead's battery puffed up, it's going to stay my primary mobile machine for a bit.