Hi. Welcome to my biographical information homepage. Here's where you can find out the weird, wooly stuff that occurs around, or, more precisely, to me.

Anyway, enough dithering. Usually a homepage of this type would have some kind of information pertinent to me. Alright then. Consider yourself warned.

  BIOGRAPHICAL-TYPE STUFF

   who the heck is this guy?

My full name is Jan-Carlo Villarante Garcia, but everyone calls me Jay, largely 'cause they tend to stumble over my first name or, more often, my middle name. Currently, I'm living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Rain rain rain blech. At least the summers are great (we don't have the Prairie's sweltering heat, nor the muggy humidity of the East Coast.) Don't get me wrong, I love this city and wouldn't want to live anywhere else, really.

Personality-wise, I've been described by various friends as a widely but incompletely educated bleeding-heart conservative masquerading as a relatively personable misanthrope. And this is from the people who like me. Seriously, though, I really try not to think too hard about what kind of person I am, because this avenue of thought always leads to strange little cul-de-sacs. I mean, who you are can change with time and circumstance. You can be an utter saint and you can be a complete homocidal psychotic and your oscillation between the various extremes might well depend on whom you're with, what you're doing, and the phase of the moon. Having said that, I, personally, try as much as possible and as often as possible to be a nice guy. Unfortunately, this a process muddied by the endless permutations and complications that is modern life, but hey, you go with the flow and take what you can get.

Anyway, thankfully, I've declined to put up any more pictures of me (though I do have a doozy of me in a lab coat after an overly-stressful afternoon session). After all, I've always been more fond of being behind the camera, rather than in front of it.

• I spend most of my life doing School-Type Stuff.
  
• I also used to do stuff for The Science Undergraduate Society.
  
• And, when I'm not doing either of the above, I'm working.
  
• The rest of my time is spent with my friends.
  
• Here's my PGP key,Geek Code, and Angband Code
  
• I'm also fairly fond of doing a lot of other stuff.
  
• And, at times, I'm prone to furiously scribbling some rants and musings.
  

  SCHOOL-TYPE STUFF

   the stuff that happens in spite of a social life.

I graduated! Woohoo! Four years and a B.Sc. in Genetics. Unsurprisingly, I'm going back to school ('cause I love the place so darn much). Current plans include going back to the University of British Columbia, applying to their medical school or going back to do higher level and for-interest courses.

Most of my studies have had an emphasis towards my interest in genetics, specifically in developmental and medical genetics. Next year, I hope to be looking at more of the same, coupled with fun courses I didn't have time to take as an undergrad.

Here are some miscellaneous school-type links:

• The Alma Mater Society of UBC.
• The Faculty of Science at UBC
• The Department of Genetics at UBC
• Dr. Gosline's Biomaterials Laboratory.

  THE SCIENCE UNDERGRADUATE SOCIETY

   the other leading cause of insomnia

The Science Undergraduate Society is one of the University of British Columbia's student-run organizations which oversee the affairs of nearly a score of science-related clubs, functions, and committees. It offers rebates for its sports teams, holds a largely well-attended and popular affair called Science Week in the first week of January, and is largely responsible for publishing one of the campus' most intentionally humorous newspapers.

The Science Undergrad Society's Lounge is the place where I hang out all the time. Well, whenever I'm not in class. It's a great little place where the people are friendly (whenver they're not stressing out over finals), the networked Macintoshes are (or were) always for a game of Warcraft, Marathon, or Escape Velocity (until they got nuked, and the hard drives failed...) except when an issue of the paper needs to be produced, or when they're being used for nefarious purposes by the Science Executive High Command.

I also used to do more stuff for SUS. Before I decided to get a trifle more serious about my the entire studying thing, I used to write for the Science Undergradate Society humour newspaper, The 432 (don't ask me why we call it The 432). For the forseeable future, it looks like SUS has two full time and one part-time webmasters: Grame Kennedy, of Seer Communications (and host of the SUS site); Jeff Steinbok, all-around webhack, and me, lowly keyboard drudge.

Take a gander at some of my SUS links:

• SUS Quotes
• If SUS Hacks were Star Trek Characters...

  WORK

   i've been workin' in a coal mine...

I'm currenlty looking for a lab-related or computer-related on-campus job, so if you've got one, take a gander at my resume. (Which, come to think of it, is the only relatively serious page of mine on this site)

In the past, I've done stuff ranging from videography to clerical work to phone interviewing to keeping offices clean and restocking pop machines. Fun, character-building jobs. You know the type.

  FRIENDS! (no, not the show)

   aren't they lovely?

Friends. Most everybody's got 'em. Most of mine I made in high school. Many more of 'em I met at SUS. My friends are the primary reason that I don't have a dull and monotonous life. Bless 'em.

Here are a few photos of my friends. The attack of the killer photos. This is, not surprisingly, a picture- and therefore bandwidth-intensive page, so consider yourself warned.

  PGP KEY

   cause I don't write personal letters on postcards.

Ostensibly, encryption exists to keep other people from seeing what you don't want them to see. The American government, amongst others, has a, how shall we say, minor problem with this (they seem to change their rational yearly, and this year it's "child pornography on the Internet"). From the clipper chip to the ridiculously conceived public-key escrow concept (in all of its variations), the American government has made it clear that they too want to be able to screen the activities on the 'net. And considering that last year, governent agents were granted more warrants to wiretap phones than in any other previous year, it appears that what Joe Citizen is doing is very much on their minds.

I believe in encryption, not because I have something to hide, but because I don't want my private mail (or other tranmitted digital format) publicly available. If I did, I wouldn't encrypt it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation exists as a kind of group forum to fight for our digital rights. As they say, "Support Encryption, the envelope for the digital age."

   -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
   Version: 2.6.1

   mQBNAzE5+IkAAAECALCAidz9Xmyh7KGfjlvMp9hY6PCPhuvxUOPlv6xOBddVMUeK
   Bv9TX/FnZIY0sSA6qCeLssbmurCUCBx3YIQ/RkkABRG0IUpheSBHYXJjaWEgPGpn
   YXJjaWFAdW5peGcudWJjLmNhPg==
   =+NpC
   -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

  VARIOUS CODES

   modern day secret-handshakes.

I'm a geek! Hear me roar! (oh, as if this site wasn't big enough proof)

For more information about Geek Code, see Robert Hayden's excellent (and illuminating) Geek Code page.

   -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
   Version: 3.1
   
   GS/L/MD d-- s-:+ a-- C+++>++++ UBX+ P+ L++ E+ W+++(-@)$ N++ o K+ 
   w@(---) O? M+(++) V? PS+ PE+(-) Y+ PGP++ t+@ 5+++ X++ R++>+++ 
   tv+(-) b+++ DI++++ D++ G++ e>++++ h! y++** 
   ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

   -----BEGIN ANGBAND CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 1.0

Ang 2.8.2(W) CPM "Elbereth" HEMF Hp:781 Sp:337 AC:159 L:42 DL:58(56)
             $:4M A++ R++ Sp+ #at:7 w:Ringil H+ D+ C- S+ PV+ c++ 
             f- s++ h d I+ So- B

Ang 2.8.3(W) WPM "Magen" HEMM Hp:920 Sp:401 AC:124 L:50 DL:125(120)
             $:5M *A* R+++ Sp++ #at:4 w:Calris(+7) H+ C- S+ PV++ c++
             f-- s++ h- d++ So- B

   ------END ANGBAND CODE BLOCK------

  OTHER STUFF

   the leading cause for insomnia.

Anyways, I have a lot of fascinations, interests, and obsessions, (usually found somewhere on the media-hobby-entertainment spectrum). You know, the usual meta-nerd/geek stuff, like role-playing games, videogames, or various books, movies, and bits of music. Occasionally, they stray into weird areas, like the random weird-innuendo quotes heard around and about the Science Undergrad Society's office/lounge, or dabblings into tiles. Usually, they keep me from growing bored. If I'm lucky, they also end up being rather enlightening, but I don't tend to count on it.

  RANTS AND MUSINGS

   focussed navel-gazing.

At times, something (or, more rarely, someone) will catch my interest. I usually then begin to obsess over the entire subject, and the usual end-result of this activity is some form of scribbling or other, jotted down on whatever was handy. Now, to be honest, I've been writing on and off for the past several years, and some of the things that I've written have had the fortune of seeing the light of day. The rest of 'em, well... some of them are funny, some of them are little more than vitriolic rants, and the rest are of absolutely no interest to anyone but myself. However, I am cursed (or blessed) with the inability to tell which is which, so here they are, and I'm leaving them up to you to sort out. Enjoy.

Various ramblings
• Vancouver transit.
• Sixteen stories and falling.
• Slackers, Skaters, Sexual Warriors: Confrontational Subculture.
• Reviews About Books on Movie Reviews.