Hi there, and thanks for your interest in my blog! Here’s a little information about myself.
So my name’s Matt, and I’m an ex-Grammar School student with four A-Levels. I’ve been heavily into Nintendo games for a very long time now – the SNES came out just after I got my original NES. My dad taught me to use an old BBC Computer when I was only about 2, and I’ve always been pretty good with computers and games. I even did reasonably well in a programming challenge we did at school called the British Informatics Olympiad, earning Merits and Distinctions in that. I was able to make a bit of money playing fruit machines on the side as a result of knowing how they used to work and being able to hit the skill shots involved.
As an aside, I wrote a couple of FAQs for the N64 games Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, for Mumbo Tokens and Banana Coins respectively. Please feel free to have a look at them!
As far as work goes, I’ve had two supermarket jobs on the checkouts while I was in sixth form and a couple of pub jobs. I also used to help out at two local youth clubs, and I DJed on a local radio station doing the Drive Time show and at a couple of local nightclubs for their student night and Under 18s disco, as well as doing the proper Saturday night a couple of times (this was paid, the others were voluntary), and I did a short stint in the Heart Foundation charity shop. I also volunteered a couple of times at camps for disadvantaged kids from Salford.
Currently I am a full-time carer for my dad, who has arthritis and is having trouble getting about. I get a small allowance from the DWP for this but it isn’t much; I’m happy to do it though because my dad’s been great with me all these years.
I’m terrible at sport though; my coordination is awful even though it’s different with video games. I do have a minor learning disability (Aspergers Syndrome) but most of the time this isn’t an issue. My social skills are not the best in the world and I can be a bit shy sometimes, especially with new faces, but I hate violence and never get into fights. I try to be friendly with everyone, as long as I don’t think they’re taking advantage of my niceness or something.
I’m fairly opinionated when it comes to politics – I consider myself a social liberal (straight but not narrow – a firm supporter of equal rights and reproductive freedoms) and I’m still on good speaking terms with my last girlfriend – I saw no need to fall out with her. I absolutely abhor human rights violations such as forced genital mutilation and oppression of women and minorities. I hate religion for what it makes people do; otherwise good people can do terrible things due to fundamentalist religion. Note that I have no problem with normal religious people and will never pick a fight about it; my hate is for the religions themselves and fundamentalist bigots.
Well, that’s pretty much all I can think of for now. I may add to this at some stage down the line. Thanks again for your interest in my blog!
Nintendo Challenges 
Hi avengah, it’s barb1 from Miiverse. I was looking through your old posts to find out what the number of participants were in the first few Shuffle competitions, and I read in one of your posts that you have a wordpress blog, so I thought I’d check it out. You don’t keep it updated anymore, but it’s nice to read this personal bit about you. Hope your dad is doing ok.
I figured you had Aspergers, I score very high on the AQ test myself (37), but I was never diagnosed. I reckon I’m a bit older than you anyway, and when I was in school, we didn’t really know what it was exactly. It seems a lot more common nowadays. I know people laughed at me sometimes, because I would take things literally, and I didn’t always get the joke. I know I felt very self-conscious about that. I don’t know anybody else who’s a bit different like that, so I enjoyed reading this.
Oh btw, I’m Belgian, Dutch speaking, but I lived in the UK from ’88-’90 and bought my NES when I was there (age 11). I’m a visual artist (mostly drawing and painting), and I also do some volunteer work at an art museum. See you on Miiverse!! XD
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Wow, I forgot I typed all that out! Thanks for the interest! 🙂 I guessed you might be a Dutch speaker based on you being from Belgium and not playing in French, but I wasn’t sure because your English is flawless – I thought you might have been an English expat or something!
I’ve been lazy here. I had good intentions when I started this but just lost interest in updating it. I can’t remember why; I probably got into some other game. I think I might have taken some more ALBW screenshots but I never did anything with them on here; if so they’ll be way back in my Miiverse history.
Thanks again!
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Hope it’s alright to ask for it here. Would love to find you on FB, but who do I look for? Don’t have a smartphone, so no miitomo just yet, but I don’t wanna miss any of your posts 😉
You can also send me an email >>> barpoe@gmail.com
Thank you!
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