About — A Brief Biography
Introduction
As you're probably figured out by now, my name is Matt and I travel quite a bit. Hence the nickname Uncle Traveling Matt, which is from the 1980's TV series Fraggle Rock.
I live in Hamilton, New Zealand most of the year and am the eldest of three children (two younger sisters). My name comes from the first book of the New Testament, though I'm not from a particularly religious family. I'm sixth generation kiwi with family located throughout New Zealand, Australia, California and the UK.
I speak English, Italian and (a little) French and have a very slight british accent mixed in with the kiwi one; my family spent some time in england when I was young.
Education
I was a Philosophy major at University for a still incomplete Bachelor of Arts degree, and have more than 10 years experience in the IT, Graphic Arts and Print/Publishing Industries. I also hold several industry qualifications—various Microsoft certifications and I am an Adobe Certified Expert and Certified Instructor in Photoshop (from version 4.0 onwards). I was one of the first 5 people in Australasia to receive Photoshop expert certification.
Work
During the day, on those when I'm working at least, I'm a Software Engineer programming front ends for web applications and mobile phone applications.
My company does a large amount of outsourcing for other development firms, besides developing web-based software applications in-house. I do a lot of high end XHTML, CSS and JavaScript work, of similar ilk to Google Mail that make web applications work with the speed & ease of their desktop equivalents.
In addition to front end development I am adept in the PHP, Perl, Java, SQL and several other languages.
Interests
Outside of work I enjoy skateboarding on my Sector Nine Cosmic 2 longboard—the boardwalks of the LA area beaches (Long Beach, Newport) are ideal for this; apart from the occasional "No Skateboarding" signs, lol, but when has that ever stopped anyone. I also like to surf went I get the opportunity too (not nearly often enough). I also rock climb with friends a couple times a week and run on a regular basis.
Performance cars seem to be in my family's blood, and I'm no exception, if it doesn't have forced-induction (turbo/supercharged), I probably won't be driving it. I'm also a fairly proficient mechanic—not one of those people with a car that looks all "bling-bling", but wouldn't know con-rod from a v-belt if their life depended on it.
Travel
I like to travel as you may well of guessed, to date I've been to (one occasion if not more)... England, Scotland, Wales, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, United States, Hawaii and Tahiti...
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Uncle Matt Fraggle
— The Traveler —
After leaving Gobo his maps and the only copy of his book, "History of the Universe, Part 1," Traveling Matt Fraggle left Fraggle Rock to to explore Outer Space. It took him no time at all to make his first discovery - the world "out there" is inhabited primarily by Silly Creatures , multi-sized, two-legged beings with bizarre habits.
For instance, by holding an upside-down bowl on a stick, these creatures can make water pour from the sky. Also they entertain themselves by watching flat Silly Creatures who live inside a box; they feed round, shiny objects to the Pavement Creatures who are rooted in the ground; and they unquestioningly obey the magic Beast with Three Eyes—one red, one yellow and one green.
Uncle Matt records his discoveries on postcards which he sends back to his nephew, Gobo. Gobo considers these postcards to be scientific documents. His friends, particularly Red, consider them to be hooey. Nevertheless, Matt feels he is doing Fraggledom a great service, and he will continue to do so until he can find a way back home.