I’m generally known as Joshua. My main alias on the internet is “apollotiger”. As a note of some pride, it seems that searching “apollotiger” on Google returns roughly 1.6 thousand results, almost all of which concern me.
My website is named Fearchar for the Scottish clan that I came from, Farquharson. For those of you wondering on the pronunciation, it isn’t “fear-char”, but rather “fair-a-car” or “fair-a-khar” (IPA [ˈfɛɹǝxɑɹ]).
I do my best to keep this page updated, but it does occasionally fall behind. Each time I update it, though, I make a note of when the last update was so that someone perusing it can either be quite certain that it’s up-to-date or else poke me with sharp sticks until I update it again. This revision was written on the third of January, 2009, at about half past one p.m. in local (Pacific) time.
For easier reading, I’ve divided the rest of this into sections with helpful headings.
I was homeschooled from the tender age of seven until the not-quite-as-tender age of 18. I graduated from high school at the end of June 2007 and enrolled in UC Berkeley starting in August ’07 with a tentative concentration in earth and planetary sciences, geology specifically. My very, very specific field of interest at the moment is geomorphology, though that is, of course, liable to change. So far, my studies have been challenging but good – in the spring of 2009, I’m finally taking my first course on physics, which I’m greatly looking forward to.
I’m a strong proponent of alternative education methods—my first year of schooling (i.e., kindergarten) was spent at a Montessori school, and my years of homeschooling before entering an independent study program for high school were spent largely unstructured. Further, my four years of high school education were spent in an independent study program that was really wonderful for me: I needed structure, and I needed freedom, and it provided both. In the summers of 2004 and 2005, I had an experience I’d recommend for almost anyone else: I attended Not Back to School Camp and had some amazing experiences, met some amazing people. As great as Camp was, most of that occurred after the camp with its online community.
I’ve held a few different jobs, varying in duration from a three-year job as a library page to a three- or four-month job at a baking company driving to farmers’ markets and selling bread and other baked goods. I also occasionally design or program websites, the most recent of which was Buy Local Berkeley. Currently I work as a technical assistant making sure printers, etc., work.
A lot of my time is spent on the things I study (fancy that: the things I study are things I love!): I really enjoy geology, computer science, and languages.
Geology started as a course I had to take because of new rules at my high school’s independent study program, and blossomed into a love of rocks that (I am told) has probably been brewing since a very young age. My mom says that I always liked dirt, so I guess I was an earth scientist in the making. So far, I haven’t taken any particularly spectacular geological field trips except to Pt. Reyes and the Marin Headlands, where I saw blueschist, serpentinite, and an igneous intrusion, among other things. I look forward to many more geological trips, complete with bad puns in the back of the van (geologists can be very sedimental!).
In my spare time, which has reduced vastly in quantity recently, I procrastinate about updating various areas of this website and work on small programming projects that sometimes flop and sometimes fly (see gadgets and Umbrularium for examples of the latter). I program in PHP, Python, and have worked before with Postgre- and MySQL, (X)HTML, and CSS. I once knew C, but I’m not sure I can claim to program in that anymore.
I’m also interested in natural languages: I’ve studied Latin for five years, German for a semester, and a few more (Russian, Greek, Spanish) for various lengths of time. I plan to pick up the basics of a few more.
I also practice photography, most of which is catalogued at Umbrularium (also available по-русски and auf Deutsch). All of my photography to this point has been done on a Canon Powershot A520.
I also write from time to time—usually prose (most of which is linked from the index page of Fearchar.net), but occasionally poetry (sometimes even music). When I’m feeling particularly bold, I write poetry in Latin.
Politics and religion are something that I’ve long tried to avoid discussing. Recently, I decided that this might just be because of a weak backing for various political opinions. With the questioning of my own political stances, I gained confidence in discussing them.
I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of politics. I also believe that science is a valuable method for finding truth, and that those of us who are religious should embrace it, rather than see it as something strange and to be feared.
I support cleaner nuclear power and hydrogen fuel cells as an alternative to coal plants and fossil fuels, but am open to the presentation of new sources of (or ways of storing) energy. I also support switching over to something that isn’t fossil fuels really soon now, since global warming should be a top concern for all of us, and reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases is a good way to keep the earth a little cooler.
I find myself having some amount of respect for anyone with integrity, be they conservative, liberal, or moderate. I’m naturally not thrilled about people who have integrity pushing their religion on me or telling me that I’m a sinner because their holy book says so, but I have more respect for them if they’ll talk with me about their religion and how they came to it. As a side note on this topic, I’m not sure which I find scarier: the religious zealots who try to convert me, or the ones who firmly believe that I’m going to Hell for eternity and don’t make an effort.
Speaking of religion, I was raised a Quaker with a great deal of Buddhist literature, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi around the house to read. Two of the titles I remember best are Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by the latter, and Being Peace by the former. Both have affected my spiritual outlook on life, and, while I’m still strongly Buddhist-inclined, I’m not entirely sure that I consider myself Buddhist at the moment. My other spiritual beliefs are often poly- or pan-theistic—I like the idea of all divinities being facets of the same—but I’m also sometimes agnostic. It really depends on the day.
I heartily encourage dissent as long as it’s reasonable and reasoned. Praise is, of course, also welcome, but should also meet the same standards of logic. Feel free to send me an email (my address is “joshua” at this domain) or contact me by GTalk (username apollotiger) for best results.
If you’d like to talk to me or my friends, you might venture onto IRC: I’m usually in the channel #NBTSC on the server castle.nbtsc.org. If you’re interested in any of this, please drop in. If you’re interested in the schooling part, definitely drop in, as even if I’m not there, other unschoolers probably will be.
I hope to hear from you soon.