y first UNIX account was through the OCF at Berkeley. The login had to be name-based and I didn't want 'yotter' and I -really- didn't want 'rachel' so I came up with 'raytrace'. My initials are R.A.Y. and all the other letters are somewhere in my name.

Anyways, the peon OCF admins were a bit confused by 'raytrace', so they went as a group to ask OCF sys admin god Keir if my login was OK. He shrugged and laughed and said, "why not?", so he's the one I have to thank for getting as name-unbased a login as possible.

After getting the first 'raytrace' account, getting it elsewhere was easy, even if they had that nasty name-based policy thing.

I had this dream of starting on a mad computer graphics career, but then I decided that giant machines of destruction were just more fun. And tiny ones are fun too. OK just robots in general. Have I mentioned the wonders of surface mount technology? Robot robot robot?

Sometimes people who don't know me ask me questions about raytracing. That always makes me chuckle.