Who is this Spiney Dragon (formerly known as Spinebreaker Dragon)?

Well, you have already thought that my name is not really Spiney, don't you? And Spinebreaker also sounds a bit weird, doesn't it? Well, at first I got my name from a mountain range in Ultima 7 - Serpent Isle, the Spinebreaker Mountains. I think it sounds good and impressive and it captures my behavior when I'm in a bad mood quite well. Also I thought that my Dragon name should have a connection to the game itself (I couldn't stand calling myself  ... F-15 for example ;-) But after I was on the Weyrmount for some time, I was getting used to being called Spiney. Well, that's it. :-)

Spiney in Real Life^TM:

My name is Wolfgang Karall and I'm 23 years old. I live in Vienna, the wonderful capital of Austria, and with me is my cute little doggy Gina. That means that my native language is German, that may explain some of those sentences on my site. But I thought that my homepage should be in English 'cause most of my friends on the net are from other countries than Austria and do not speak (or read) German or are capable of reading English quite well.

Things I like:

• computer games: Besides Ultima I like other RPGs like Wasteland, Fallout and the older SSI titles like Pool of Radiance (my first RPG on a computer). I don't like 3D shooters too much, but Jedi Knight was one of the best games I played in the last year (maybe because of the Star Wars theme, see below). I also liked Tomb Raider (don't kill me, Ama ;-), but I prefer the first over the sequel. I'm also a big fan of the Monkey Island adventures, but most of the other Lucasarts adventures are great too. The only genre of games I do not like anymore are strategy games, both real-time and turn-based, I have played too much of them on my old Amiga (Powermonger is still my No 1).
• music: I can't live without it. Not matter what I do, there has to be some music around. (A big thank you goes to Aradindae Dragon for the Ultima IV music patch :) I like many different styles of music, but right now my favorite artists are Moloko, Tricky, Gar bage, Primal Scream, Portishead, Björk, Morcheeba, Massive Attack, Rockers Hi-Fi, S ofa Surfers and Kruder&Dorfmeister, all played on my favorite radio station FM4.
• movies: I'm a big fan of sci-fi movies in general, especially I like Blade Runner (IMHO the best film ever made), Star Wars (looking forward to the prequels), Star Trek (plus the series). My favorite actor is Harrison Ford, with one of his best performances in the Indiana Jones-Trilogy. And Martin Scorsese is my favorite director, but with Ripley Scott, David Lynch and Kathryn Bigelow as close runner-ups.
• books: I started reading books when I was five years old, and since then I never was without a book for more than a week. After the first Star Wars novels were released I was hooked with them. Other authors I like are JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings was my first fantasy book and is still one of my favorites), Terry Pratchett (besides the Discworld novels there is also the great Nomens-Trilogy), Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Clive Barker and --for the little Sherlock Holmes inside of me-- the novels from Donna Leon.
• reading my daily newspaper, Der Standard, the best source of unbiased information here in Austria
• travel around the world (well, more around the Mediterranean so far) with an special interest in archeology and ancient civilizations (my visit in Egypt in 1997 was the highlight up to now)

Things I really don't like: (skipped minor pet peeves due to space problems)

• prejudices and racism: I think it shouldn't be a problem to live together without hating someone because of the color of the skin or cultural differences. So if you have to act like a racist I'll have to break YOUR spine.
• spamming: It's really annoying to download all those unwanted advertisement from a newsgroup or the email account, especially back when I had to pay for the telephone by minute.

Spiney as a student:

"Can you do Addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count." "She can't do Addition," the Red Queen interrupted. "Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight." "Nine from eight I can't, you know," Alice replied very readily: "but -" "She can't do Subtraction," said the White Queen. Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"

I am a student at the Vienna University of Technology. Right now I am studying computer science (after a bit of Raumplanung (don't know what that is called in English, someone told me it's civil engineering but I'm not sure about that) and geology) and I'm doing pretty --erm-- well. The only vicious things are the Mathematics-courses, 'cause our professors teach mathematics like Alice is tested by the two Queens in the quotation above.

Spiney as a Dragon:

My first Ultima was Ultima Underworld in 1993, which was also the first game I had for my first Personal Computer (had a Commodore C128 and Amiga before, but never played an Ultima till then). Right after I finished UW1 (I was hooked already :), I bought Ultima 7 - The Black Gate, which still is one of my favorite games of all time. Since then I was collecting Ultima games (shelling out lots of money only for the shipping costs from the US) and played and enjoyed most of them (I'm still working on U5 and won't play U6 and Savage Empire until I have beat U5, 'cause I'm playing them in the chronological order right now).

One of the first things I did after I had my university account for the internet was visiting Origin to look for news about Ultima 9. There I found much information about the Ultima games and the link to Ultima Dragons. After reading the Ultima Dragons Webpage (including the FAQ ;-) and a long time lurking the rec.games.computer.ultima-dragons newsgroup (it has been reorganized to .dragons later) I joined on the 29th of May 1997.

Now most likely you will find me on the Weyrmount or the Inner Spheres MOO (our place of retreat if the 'Mount is too lagged or offline), and sometimes I post in the  rec.games.computer.ultima.dragons and .series newsgroups.

And now for some information about me and my other personality in a short (and unreadable ;-) format:

BTW: Did I mention that I am Boss Fork Stealer of the Dragons? No? Then check out The Official UDIC Awards Page if you would like to be awarded with a title yourself.

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