Personal info for Jorge Arellano Cid
Name: Jorge A. Arellano Cid
Notes:
Here I'll write a bit about myself for those interested in getting a more informative picture of me. It's not a thing I'm very fond of doing, as I much prefer people to judge me from what I do.
I'll start by mentioning the things that are impossible to guess, but if you're interested in the academic part here's my resume.
I like practicing sports and especially love to play tennis! So much that I managed to continue training and practicing while studying at the University, up to reach the pro level! As you may figure I had never much time to participate in the local tour but when on vacation things changed.
It is interesting to remark that it was an extraordinarily well suited complementary activity for my studies. Sometimes after those brain-stressing study-devoted periods my brains were so tired that nothing else could be done but rest. Instead of that I picked up my racquets and went on playing hard. After a couple of hours I was ready to start again, and with a renewed mental clarity and forces.
I'm also interested in metaphysics and psychology, and so I have dedicated a lot of time to studying them both. I've definitively dedicated more time to metaphysics but I don't want to write about it here (please excuse me). Concerning psychology, I'm much more fond of cognitive psychology than of the clinical branch. I started reading and learning about it when I was fourteen or so. At the time, my mother taught cognitive psychology at the University (PUC) so go figure, I had all the books and a private teacher at home!
I specially like the work of J. Piaget, S. Freud and F. Perls. Along the years, picking a bit of every one of them, plus some doses of "Infusing thinking" I started to coordinate a tentative theory about (in lack of a better expression): "suitable cognitive sets".
Nota: o "conjunto cognitivo generador" donde generador implica adecuado.
I developed an educational computer game, in the form of a text adventure (plus some written material), to teach how to interact with and use computers, and tested some of the concepts there. The results were amazing!
People learned at their pace, with unexpected enthusiasm and dedication. The concepts were quickly or slowly assimilated depending on the player's interest and abilities.
Everything went right until the player realized that the game resembled their life (and they behaved as in the "real world" in a similar way that the personality projects itself over a chess board).
In brief, those that had no troubles with their present existence continued, solving the problems, practicing and learning! Quite a success, but those that were feeling uneasy with their life started to disengage from the game.
I learned a lot of things from the experience, and applied some of the concepts to Dillo's user interface. That's why I rejoice when people state in their recognition emails that one of the things they like most is the uncluttered or easy-to-use user interface. And it can be much better because it's still not finished nor polished!
Oh, I've said a lot! Let's finish with the studies part...
I graduated as an Informatics Civil Engineer, in Chile, at the UTFSM (6 years study plan + thesis + practices). At that time, late 1999, everybody expected me to continue with the PhD, and I was offered some choices. At the same time I was considering the idea of starting the Dillo project, and I knew it was impossible to undertake both endeavours at the same time, so I faced a decision.
I considered that if I went for the academic degree, in a few years I could have it done, and certainly benefit from it, but that would also mean that the world would have never seen Dillo.
I pondered both options and decided that the Dillo project and its objectives were much more important, and so I started it (and that's why you're here!).
The hardest part of being dedicated full time to the Dillo project has been to find a way to pay for my material existence. This is too complex a project to undertake on a spare-time basis, so there's no choice, it needs full-time dedication. Having made it this far, almost four years, living out of some ocassional income, restraining expenses to a minimum, has been an incredibly hard path.
The intangible rewards, though, largely exceed those of a lifetime.