Minouris

Mike (Michael Owen) Norrish, or Minouris, is a Java programmer from Wellington, New Zealand, and is a great fan of many things, and hoarder of vast quantities of DVDs, books, and CDs. He currently works as a software developer for a department of the New Zealand government.

General Information

Mike was born in Wellington on July 4th, 1978, and continues to be flattered that the Americans have a holiday in his honour. Most of his childhood and teenage years were spent in Blenheim, New Zealand, before moving back to Wellington to pursue a degree in English Literature and Classical studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

A somewhat indifferent student, and being much better with computers than with textbooks, Mike left university midway through his degree to pursue a career in web design, largely to pay the bills, and, after pursuing a somewhat erratic career path that included working with Autocad and ASP eventually settled into a stable career as a Java programmer, despite his only tertiary qualification being a polytechnic certificate in using 3DS Max. He remains in Wellington.

Interests

Mike's primary interests are an all consuming love of Doctor Who and classic rock bands such as the The Moody Blues and Pink Floyd, as well as Anime, Battletech, and assorted authors most notably including Terry Pratchett and Lois McMaster Bujold.

He has been programming since an early age, starting with BASIC on the Sinclair ZX-81 at around age 7, and continues to do so for both fun and work, as well as persuing other computer related fields, such as Computer Aided Design and general Linux tinkering. He has one open source project to his name, Blizzaga Media Library, which is a desktop Java application designed for randomly deploying music to a mobile device, notably the PlayStation Portable.

He has, at times, been an avid writer, with numerous original works, fanfiction for Doctor Who and Gargoyles (TV series), and, in his late teens, some very bad gothic poetry. Recently, this is largely reflected in the extremely detailed technical documentation he writes in the course of his work. For the purpose of writing articles such as this, he will refer to himself in the third person, to be more in keeping with an encyclopedic style, and occasionally resort to blatant toungue in cheek.

Personality

Mike is an extremely laid back individual, down to earth, but a little naive socially, preferring to associate with a relatively small group of people that he knows well than to frequent large venues, largely due to Aspergers Syndrome (which hampers interaction with others to a degree) and Epilepsy (which renders most of the louder clubs in Wellington off limits due to the strobe lighting).

Despite this, he is very sanguine, and happiest when entertaining those around him- although he frequently receives death threats for his excessive punning- and is known for an uncharacteristically uninhibited habit of breaking into song for no apparent reason other than for the sheer joy of it (most people don't seem to mind this, as he's actually quite good at it!).

Relatively reserved, but regarded as something of an oddball, in childhood, Mike identified with goth culture for several years upon arriving in Wellington as a deliberate contrast, but is now more of a bohemian, general harmless eccentric, and shameless geek.

Origin of the name Minouris

"Minouris" just sort of popped into Mike's head one day, although when queried the usual explanation given is that it is a concatenation and slight alteration of his first and last names. He has recently discovered that it is also an old lowland Scottish word that roughly translates to "minors", or children, as used in the following passage:

"That incais it

salhappin aney puir minouris to depairt this mortall lyff … throw defalt and want of sustentatioun fra the … executouris or intromettouris with thair parentis guidis or geir, the … executouris or intromettouris sall pay … half of the … guidis and geir … to the

taskeller and reveiller of the minouris quha begis and deis for want."

It has the advantage of being almost entirely unique as a handle, whilst requiring only standard alphabetical characters.

Minouris is used as an online handle rather than his proper name largely to distinguish himself from a distant relative with the same name (and a far more notable online presence and academic history), as their similar careers, personalities, and even appearance (as reported by common friends and acquaintances- the two have never actually met), has caused some confusion in the past.