... story of my life

the official stuff

Oi! The name's Thomas Unterthiner. I'm currently twentysomething and intend to stay this old for at least a couple of years. I was born and raised in that akward part of Italy called South Tyrol, where people say they're able to speak both German and Italian and maybe even English, but most of them only speak that gibberish known as Südtirolerisch and end up not being understood by anyone. Then again, there's no such thing as someone speaking plain German ("Hochdeutsch") anyway, most people's English sucks wherever you go and there's only so many people who truly understand what I'm saying, no matter what.
I'm currently living & studying in Linz, Austria.

what people seem to want to know

I'm a geek. I'm interested in computers, math and science. The things I enjoy when I've got time to spare (a.k.a. "hobbies") include reading, taking showers and listening to music. If you talk to me, you best do that in German, English, Italian or Spanish. If that's not on the menu, try giving me beer: my undestanding of Bulgarian improves significantly after having some, maybe it also works for your language of choice :)

I like to travel, mainly because I enjoy sitting in trains and trying new types of alcohol. Also, it's a great way of collecting funny stories that you can use to interrupt those akward silences in conversations. And you get to know new people, which is also nice - most of the time.

If you feel like talking politics - which I usually don't enjoy, unless you've seriously thought through the issues we're talking about (and even then you'll risk boring me) - you might be interested in knowing that the political compass says I'm a liberal leftist. Which is fairly straight to the point, except for the fact that I'm not a very political person in the first place.

I like to disgust anyone with a sane sense of style with my haircuts (the look on my family-members' faces is usually priceless). I strongly suggest everyone should shave their head at least once in their lifetime (no, cutting it down to 3mm doesn't count as shaving, and neither does turning bald).
On a related note, mohawks are the best haircut ever (and I don't mean that frat-boy-version where you still have hair on the left/right sides of your skull). And yes, I regret cutting mine down, but it had to be done.

Contact

Instant Messaging

The best way to contact me is to simply use Jabber or join an IRC-Channel I'm in. Otherwhise, try one of the social networking sites mentioned below or use ICQ. If you really want to use annoying, unsecure and uncool Software, you could try to find me on MSN or Skype, but I'll probably just ignore you anyways, since I despise the programs and most people who use them.

Jabber
Blue-Tiger@jabber.ccc.de (no, that's not a mail adress!)
IRC
#suedtirol, #cpp, #cpp-games on euIRC,
#informatiker on Freenode,
#bioinformatiker on IRCnet
ICQ
93506457 ICQ online status
e-mail:
blue-tiger here's-where-you-put-the-at gmx dot net

social networking

If you feel like stalking me, there are a few social networking sites you might want to check out. Try facebook for general information or my libre.fm profile for more infos on my musical taste (or my last.fm profile for older info on the subject). You can also find me on the german StudiVZ and CouchSurfing.com.

current projects

Specific interests

Computers

I enjoy programming. My languages of choice are Python and C++. I know many more, but most of them suck. Except LISP. LISP is fun, but I've never come arround learning and using it properly.
I could pretty much go on about Computer Science for hours. My favourite topics are Machine Learning and High Performance Computing.
From time to time I enjoy Multiplayer games. I play a variety of different games, but tend to regularly come back to StarCraft and UT 2004.

My Geek-Code is 
	-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
	Version: 3.12
	GCS/M/S@ d? s-:- a-- C++ UL++>+++ P++@ L++
	E- W+++ !N o? K+ w !O !M !V PS+ PE- Y+ PGP- t 5
	X R !tv@ b+++(++) DI+++ D+ G++ e++>++++ h+() r-- y+>+++++
	------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
If you're interested, feel free to decode it.

reading

I usually read more than one book at a time. My current reading material is

The books I've read in the last few months are*

*(Sidenote: I've not updated this list since 2010... I hope to have time to update it again soon. But much of the later half of 2011 was spent digesting a Song of Ice and Fire. Which is awesome, and very recomendable :) )