Hello World! This is my first ever blog post, not only at OSU, but also in my entire life. As someone who grew up in the early 2000s, I have always heard about blogs but have never spent much time interacting with them in my daily life. As a novice blogger, I plan to take this first blog and introduce myself to the world.
My name is Ethan Pilskalns. Most people get the first name with no problem, but my last name has always been the cause of hesitation and awkward pronunciation. If you sounded it out, it could be broken up as so: Pill – scowl – inz. If you’re wondering, the origins of my last name are from the country Latvia, and means Castle Hill. My family would always joke and say that our ancestors used to be royalty and lived in a castle there. However, the only link to royalty I ever felt was that my sister was a royal pain while growing up. (Just kidding, I love you, Ari).
Here are some other interesting things about me: I know how to play the piano very well, in fact. I won awards in high school at my local university for playing in competitions. I also grew up playing hockey, rock climbing, skateboarding, and various other physical activities. However, the main interests I always had were computers, technology, and video games. This doesn’t surprise me looking back, as the early 2000s had a huge technological boom.
The first interaction I can remember having with computers and video games was watching my dad play Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64. From that moment on, I was hooked. I learned everything I could from the limited resources I had at the time, as this was before every kid had an iPad with access to the internet. I would read books, magazines, and anything else I could find to learn more about how the technological side of the world worked.
Over the years, this progressed into learning programming, making my own simple games in Python, and realizing how much more there was still to learn. This thirst for knowledge has pushed me all the way to now, where I still want to learn more about how computers work and how to express myself through them using programming in all of its various formats and facets.
This brings me to my last year at Oregon State University, where I am excited about all the projects I will be working on this upcoming year.
-Ethan Pilskalns