Shiny new forum topic, cool!
My name's Mark, but I often go by "Spinny." Boring story; nicknames usually just happen, ya know? Any way, as is probably obvious, the Spinland thing is an outgrowth thereof.
About me. I'm a retired USAF officer; enlisted at 17 in 1979 and did 23.5 years before I was done, collecting a couple of degrees and a commission along the path. When I got out in 2002 I spent a couple of years trying to hack it as a freelance graphic artist (Spinland Studios), and generally not making much lucre. I primarily do 3D models, and sold a couple of add-on aircraft for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, but never really made the right connections to break into the big-volume realms there.
Nowadays I'm a software engineer for a tiny little sub-element of a big defense contractor. Job security is somewhat iffy these days but thus far I'm hanging on and it's paying the bills. I do web design and graphic design on a hobbyist basis when and as I can, and am always looking for odd jobs to whet my desire and hone my skills.
My favorite modeling tool is Rhino 3D, a NURBS based modeler. I've done a lot of stuff with it over the years, and have even been called on in my day job to do technical illustrations for some software documentation and for some high level ISO standards stuff my company is working on. Those are good times! I also use LightWave, though I'm not as experienced in its wiles and ways. Some day when the needs of sleeping and earning a paycheck become optional I'll devote more time to such things.
I picked up a copy of Xara Xtreme 4 some time back on recommendation of a couple of posts on a web design related forum; the price was right and I was interested in what it could do. Still not completely in tune with my inner vector-based artist, but after letting XX4 gather dust for a while I was hit by the double-whammy of a great deal on an XX5 Pro upgrade and the news of Gary's new book coming out. I dragged out my wallet for both and thus far have been very happy I did.
My primary bitmap editing tool is Paint Shop Pro. I used version 4 many years ago to do the illustrations for my Master's thesis, liked it a lot, and have been using the latest version pretty much ever since. I prefer version 9 to the later ones (since Corel bought them out) and I keep that one installed next to my version X2 installation for the times when the old ways seem the best. I've played with an older version of Photoshop (I think it was 7) in the past and to my mind there isn't a heck of a lot of difference except in price.
Personal slice-of-life stuff. I'm working on year 10 of blissful Marriage 2.0 (Version 1 was too buggy to be usable). I'm a little more than a year shy of the Big Five Oh. I have three kids, all in their 20s and now someone else's problem. I'm staff assistant to three cats, so the kids had to go. Spiritually I find the most kinship with the Pastafarians, and almost wish they really meant it--I loves me some spaghetti! Politically I'm an independent but if you had to put me on a spectrum I'd be rather left of center (whatever those terms mean). I mean, I drive a Prius but work for a defense contractor. How disjointed is that?
My "old" studio web site is still up, though calling it "active" would imply I've updated the gallery in this century. I need to work on that. Hopefully this new-found interest in Xtreme (as well as my interactions with Gary) will spark some inspiration to create new stuff.
And that's about enough for now, methinks. Glad to be here!
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." -- Frank Zappa
Good to meet you, Mark. Great to have you aboard! It's nice to see someone around here has the guts to say a little something about themselves. 
