I'm a 22 year old computer science major in college with a passion for learning. To be honest, I hope to become a polymath, a renaissance man. There are a few topics I steer clear of, but almost any topic is of interest to me in some way. The education methods commonly used and their materials are not always helpful, though many try their best. So, learning outside of the structured halls of academia has been a big part of my life.
Games were introduced to me at a young age, and the first I owned were Tetris, golf, baseball, Batman and Wheel of Fortune for Gameboy. They were a birthday present at five or six years old. Since then I have enjoyed playing games of most genres.
Besides those two, I'm interested in food, drawing, writing, reading and many forms of designing. Probably more I could put here, but they escape me right now.
I am about half way through my computer science degree. The languages I'm familiar with are C/C++, Java and Game Maker Language. The last is for the program Game Maker which is free for the lite version and $20 for the Pro version. Not the most powerful, but it's useful.
In March 2007 I joined thousands of others who participated in Project Top Secret. Unlike many others, I'm still active and was named as a finalist of the "designer" contest. The prize was the directorship of an Acclaim game project. I'm glad I didn't get the directorship due to the time it would consume, making the next thing impossible.
I am entering an initiative into education funding competitions like The Mind Trust's Education Entrepreneur Fellowship. Hopefully I'll win one and get a big step closer towards some goals of mine. If not, maybe this blog will help me get the contacts and recognition to achieve the same goals.
Tensai is my usual nick name, which can mean either "genius" or "natural disaster", in Japanese. One day in my high school Japanese class I was going to say "I'm a genius" in Japanese as a joke, and came across the interesting double meaning. So, on good days I'm a genius of a natural disaster, and on bad days I'm a natural disaster of a genius. Most people that know me well either say it fits me, laugh, or do both. My mother did both. Unfortunately it is usually taken as a user name, so I looked for other possible names to use.
Igen Oukan is what I got by trying to put my name into Japanese. "Igen" is the transliteration of Egan, and was one of two possibilities. My high school Japanese teacher originally used "Igan". However, when I looked it up in my Japanese-English dictionary, I found that "Igan" means stomach cancer, and "Igen" means dignity. Not a hard choice to make. Steven doesn't transliterate into Japanese very well because of the "st" and "v", so I tried translation instead. Steven means crown, from behindthename.com, and "Oukan" means crown. They are flipped around to fit the Japanese name style, and because I think it sounds better that way.
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