I've had many identities on the web. When I first got on in 1993 as a young and unsure freshman in college it was typical to have a handle; an alias for the new identity one created for themselves online. I don't remember what I started with but over the years I've assumed identities under a bizarre caravan of names, names like Everyman, Hobbitwerk, Metadeveloper, Donkey Kong, Sophtwarez and Parse.

I can't shake the past. Look online hard enough and you'll see its remnants in places beyond my reach, locked into the past but as with everything on the internet, archived whether your posterity would have it or not.

And yet let this mark a new beginning. A line in the sand between what was and who I am now. t3rse (pronounced like the adjective terse) is inspired by the Perl programming language and the ability to express idiom and intent in short form. t3rse is all things David Seruyange; it is my programming projects, my services, my ideology and my nuances.

And who, pray tell, is David Seruyange? I am a software developer living in South Dakota. My Ugandan extraction is the story behind the last name. I've lived in many places, most recent before moving to South Dakota is southern California just shy of the city of Angels.

What is this blog about? This blog is about things I find interesting and the things that go on inside my head. That is what gives the symbol "t3rse" meaning. Robert Pirsig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was writing about perfection and he said the following about getting to perfection in craft:

Some could ask, “Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?” The answer, of course, is no, you still haven’t got anything licked. You’ve got to live right too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together. … The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.

The motive behind this blog is to work on what's inside so that my outer self can benefit from processing what is on the inside. Part of that work is writing about it; being definitive, forcing an explanation so that the ephemeral thought can become a more concrete foothold on the path of being better. I hope other people find value in my efforts of doing so; I know this is a favor I've received from countless blog entries and web sites since those early days in my dorm room on a Powerbook 160.