At the time of writing this introduceyourself blog post, I have been a member of the SteemIt community for less than 1 week. I am still learning how to use SteemIt, so please forgive me if I get something wrong here.

My username here is TrisquelWhare, but you are welcome to refer to me as just TW if that helps. That alone raises all sorts of questions, doesn't it? Why do I call myself TrisquelWhare? What does TrisquelWhare mean? Why don't I just use my real name? As you get to know me, these conundrums and more will (hopefully) start to make sense.

Why do I use a pseudonym?

Over the years I have adopted many different pseudonyms. Sometimes I'll even go by more than one name simultaneously, to represent specific aspects of my personality or my interests, in different places on the Internet. There is often an assumption by the establishment and the gatekeepers of online communities that I am doing this for misanthropic reasons, such as sockpuppetry. I have even been chastised and censured for this behaviour in the past.

My use of pseudonyms is not intended to get around the rules, to purposefully disobey, or for any such Machiavellian plot. It is, instead, my way of representing the multifaceted nature of my personality and my interests. I have Asperger Syndrome, but unlike many Aspies, I am a philomath rather than having the common Aspie trait of being hyper-focused. The way that I have taught myself to handle my inherent philomathy is to subsume a multiple personality disorder. I have never been formally diagnosed with MPD, (as I have been with Aspergers), but it almost becomes something I aspire to!

To put all of this into simple terms, I am on the Autism Spectrum, but rather than having a very narrow range of specialization (as is common amongst those of us with ASD), my interests are broad, and as a result can be rather shallow. Instead of knowing a whole lot about a few narrowly defined subjects, I tend to know a little bit about a wide range of subjects. This can be just as frustrating to those around me (and to myself) as the more common Aspie trait. What it has meant for myself personally is that my focus tends to jump regularly from one thing to the next.

What does TrisquelWhare mean?

As you can probably tell from the CamelCase, there are two words in my username. Trisquel is the computer operating system which I am currently running. Whare is the Māori word for house or home. Together it means that my home runs on Trisquel GNU/Linux. Again, this username reveals disparate aspects of my personality: I am a computer geek, and I am a proud New Zealander. Neither has anything to do with the other.

If you decide to follow my account here on SteemIt, you will be exposed to a wide variety of information, as my focus shifts. You will no doubt find lots in here about computers, but specifically this can range from gaming, to software development, to theoretical debate about free software principles, etc. My core beliefs tend to guide my interests, and one such core belief is in fairness and equality, hence the article I have already posted in my blog about the extortionist monopoly of The Trusts in West Auckland. Follow the #WALTAG and #LetWestAucklandChoose tags for more on that subject. I will write about some of my favourite free software, and will post links to #freeculture content which takes my fancy.

One final note here, is that I am a New Zealander, and I do tend to write in New Zealand English mainly, although I have been on the Internet for so long now that I am used to seeing American spelling more frequently, such that I often will get confused between the two. Please forgive me if I am not consistent with my own spelling because of this.