A Brief History of Naranness...

Travers Naran was born in 1971 in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Milky Way, Local Group. Although a normal child in most respects, he was very imaginative as a child and used to compensate for a lack of Star Wars merchandising with Lego, used paper towel tubes, cardboard boxes, sofas and anything else that was at hand.

He grew up in New Westminster (although there was a brief stint in North Burnaby near SFU which he still won't talk about except with close friends) with a lot of friends and a variety of child-hood experiences, including living next door to a family that were Jehova's Witnesses AND Amway representitives!

He attended Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary school in New Westminster, a public school, where, despite the best efforts of the teachers, he learned to read, do math, get interested in science, be creative and very imaginative and be a smart-ass. It was during this time he learned the fine art of "Pissing your teachers off" by failing to do homework in a timely manner, but acing exams and tests.

It was during this time he discovered computers, specifically the Commodore 64. Except for the lack of memory and software, he would still be using it today. In the afore mentioned elementary school, where science class consisted of writing down a blackboard full of notes then reading silently for the remainder of the period, he escaped from science class via the subterfuge of claiming to go to the washroom then not returning till the end of the period.

During this time, Travers Naran hung out with and helped the Gifted Students in their enrichment class (held in the computer room) and used the Commodore 64's. The Enrichment class "supervisor" didn't seem to think it strange that a kid with a C/B average was helping the Gifted Students with their enrichment exercises.

Then came high school at St. Thomas More Colligeate. A private parochial school in Burnaby, B.C. which had 15-minutes of fame for having three Christian Brothers hauled off to Newfoundland on assorted sexual and physical abuse charges.

There, he dragged his average up to a B/B+ average and discovered he had a nack for computers and science class (although Chemistry managed to baffle him ocassionally).

STM, as the school was affectionally called, had a library with a remarkably good science-fiction section and Travers began reading it avidly. Isaac Asmimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury were some of the first authors he tried, and he liked them. He went on to Larry Niven and didn't get the point of Ringworld. But he perservered!

He continues in his attempts to write, despite the pleas from some Lord of the Rings became the book by which Travers judged all other books. Tolkien's detailed and living world called Middle Earth reached young Travers Naran and influenced his life forever. It was about the same time he discovered he enjoyed writing science-fiction and fantasy. His first attempt at writing a complete short-story occured during an English exam. The original version was panned by the critics (mostly his English-12 teacher who thought it was disjointed and without point so he gave it a C). But then he re-wrote it and it became "The Day the Earth Crak'd". It sucked, but it was a start! To this day, he continues in his attempts to write, despite the pleas from some in the SFU Creative Writing club not to. :-)

Later, Travers tried to decide between a career in Astronomy, Engineering or Computing Science. Astronomers rarely made money except for Carl Sagan, and there was too much homework for engineers. Computing science it was!

So, Travers has now finished his B.Sc. in Computing Science and wondering why it took him so long. But he has had many and varied experiences in his 23 years of life, which shall be documented in these home-pages.

He's worked at Radical Entertainment in downtown Vancouver for three years. The first game he worked on, Fox Interactive's NBA Basketball 2000 has just been released.

Currently, he is working for a GIS Consulting company working in the utility sector.

Travers Naran does not live somewhere in Washington state with his family and five cats.