Craig Berry

I'm Craig Berry — software designer by day, web developer by night and on weekends. My anime-obsessed daughter Lenore is busily trying to outdo me in both fields, while my wife Lauri has her own array of hobbies and interests (for example, she has an encyclopedic knowledge of central European burial practices). Lauri claims she will have pages for me to link here Real Soon Now. Meanwhile, you can also pay a visit to my brother Douglas, who's a bit like me only weirder. Be afraid.

If this page is too static for you, check out my journal, where up-to-the-minute incoherent ramblings and rants may be found for your reading pleasure.

Home pages are always a bit awkward to write; it's hard to know what anyone reading this might actually care to learn about me. Though I am strongly tempted to indulge in a binge of "my favorite sites" mania (starting with The Onion), I'll restrain myself and list only a few of the more interesting, quirky, or otherwise appealing selections.

Some of my projects

	I am the webmaster for (and a member of) US Grand Lodge, Ordo Templi Orientis. OTO is a Thelemic fraternal society, similar in some ways to Masonry (though it is not connected with modern Masonry). As webmaster, I've contributed most of the technical plumbing for the site, along with some of the content.
	Thelemapedia is a free, user-contributed encyclopedia of Thelema and related matters such as magick, mysticism, occult history, and comparative religion. If this sort of thing interests you, go get involved!
	I have been involved in several open source and free software projects. I am the author of Orb, an HTML preprocessor which remains inexplicably (and gratifyingly) popular with a small group of users despite being ten years old and long left in the dust by more recent similar alternatives. I have also contributed to many other projects, including Turbine and Jetspeed.

Other interests

I'm quite interested in Aztec mythology and mysticism. And yes, I do know that's not what they called themselves, but if you say you like the Nahua or Mexica you get blank stares, especially if you pronounce the latter correctly.

Fellow obsessive-compulsives will get a kick out of Today's Calendar and Clock, the page which allows you to answer the question "What time is it?" with exhaustive and numbing precision. Be a hit at your next party!

Combining Aztecs and calendars (and hey, who doesn't, after all) brings us to Prehispanic Calendars, which discusses the fascinating details of Mesoamerican timekeeping.

Another strong interest of mine is astronomy — if I didn't live in light pollution hell, this interest would be even stronger. Good places to keep informed on what's (literally) up are JPL (Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, at the University of Arizona). The latter includes an area titled The Nine Planets, which offers a breathtakingly detailed tour of the planets, moons, and other important bodies comprising our solar system.

And even though it's tragically light-polluted, there's no place I'd rather live than El Pueblo del Rio de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula...a wonderful city with lots of cool things to do and see.

If you want to talk about LA rather than just fling yourself into it, I highly recommend the Wild Grape mailing list. It's a low-volume but high-quality discussion forum where Angelenos (and would-be Angelenos) discuss Los Angeles history, geography, politics, economics, current events, and whatever else comes to our fevered minds. Among its other claims to fame, this list saw the first publication of Brady Westwater's brutal exposure of Mike Davis's lies, one of the landmark intellectual events of the 90s for us LA ponderers.

When not in Los Angeles, I like to backpack in Joshua Tree National Park, an incredibly beautiful desert area. Not only does JT offer weird rock formations, diverse plant and animal life, and wonderful solitude — it also has very dark skies at night (see above).

The US Government and other groups periodically attempt to limit free speech on the Internet. If you value free expression, online and elsewhere, find out more about Net censorship and what's being done to fight it.