Radu Luchian(ov)*:
Name and Pseudonyms
Throughout this web area and in my work and 'free time' activities I generally use two pseudonyms: Monicsoft and MoonSteer. In general, I use the Monicsoft name in technical contexts and the MoonSteer name in artistic contexts.
Radu Luchian is the name I should 'wear' in reality. My father's family (Luchian) fled Chishinãu just before the Russians took over Bessarabia after WWII. During the Allied bombardments of Bucharest, all his documents were destroyed and they had to appeal to the freshly changed authorities in the Moldavian Republic for duplicates. The appeal followed bureaucratic channels to Moscow, and when the papers were sent over, the slavic possessive suffix, 'ov' was attached to the name. I have way too many documents in too many countries on the the slavicized name, so I gave up the process of rectifying that error. I am stuck with the (ov) after my surname, though my son has the correct name. I have here a copy of a diploma of my Dad`s with the right name on it.
Here is more about me as a person, not only a name.
Monicsoft (Mon Icarien Soft), came into existence in 1984 because I needed a working pseudonym for my first BASIC programs. Before that, all I had in mind was reading swashbuckling adventures, epic fantasy and scifi, flying (like Amelia Erhart, who's biographical movie impressed me a lot), and building discrete transistor electronics to make a security system for my home. On Romanian TV they were running a science popularization
series; the main attraction was "Your Future House": a complete computerized home system. So I started researching on it... Some brochure whispered to me on a very convincing tone that people who want to learn about computers should start
with BASIC. That I did... Got a thick book on the BASIC implementation for a Romanian Home Computer and started writing... GAMES. With cats and mice, with canons and "Invaders", imitating the video games I had seen in game halls... All on paper, with a pencil. No coding, no flow-chart or top-down design, NO COMPUTER. Mom was impressed and took me to the hospital where she was working; they had purchased some PDP clones for the medical database. They gave me my first account so I can try out my BASIC skills. Then I went to highschool and that same year, the school purchased some Home Computers. And joined the newly formed Computer Club. The professor asked me to implement my "games", and (with a few syntax changes) they worked! (find here more programming stuff I did since then.) The closest Monicsoft got to becoming official was when I finished highschool and decided to start a small business (Monicsoft C&L SRL) together with a friend and classmate (hi, Silviu!). We were offering consulting services and hardware and software solutions. Some LED-panels for scrolling ads, some wind-pressure sensors (for monitoring the environmental data on some tall buildings), with the software to use them (Z80 Assembler drivers and Basic programs for the user interfaces). But then I was accepted to AUBG and the firm had to dissolve... I tried a few times to start a small business, offering Internet and Intranet services this time, but it's still more of a hobby than a job.
Icarus, the son of Daedalus in Greek mythology was the youngster who disobeyed his father's warning not to soar close to the Sun. How did they get there? They were hired to build the Minos Labyrinth where the Minotaur was trapped. King Minos trapped them inside as well, so they can't leak the labyrinth's secrets. When they escaped on wings fashioned by Daedalus from wax, wood shingles and feathers. Icarus' wings melted and he fell and drowned in the sea. For me, Monicsoft stands for the idea that the way to progress is through continuous failure. In doing Science we continually approximate the laws of Nature. In technology, we continually approximate Use Cases and create products for them, and User Experience (UX) to make those products easier to use. In any of those endeavors we have to keep an open mind for evidence and be ready to modify our theories accordingly.
If the many failures in my life are any indication, I'd say I'm progressing pretty rapidly :)
Here is more about me.
Related, not that I compare myself with Mozart's genius, but because I also like to play with names, signatures and pseudonyms.
When Mozart's wedding registry was unearthed from
Vienna's St. Stephen Cathedral early in the 20th century, it
listed his name as Wolfgang Adam, not Amadeus or Amade.
Most historians dismissed the entry as a misspelling or private
joke, but biographer Maynard Solomon suggests that Mozart's use of
Adam provides a rare glimpse inside one of history's great
artistic minds: Adam is the Bible's first man, whom God
makes master of earthly things; Mozart, on his wedding day,
became master of his own domain, finally shrugging off the
control of his devoted but domineering father.
<>From the time Mozart emerged as a musical
prodigy at the age of four or five, he was
the family breadwinner. His father, Leopold, guided his musical development
and arranged performances throughout Europe. Their relationship was complex. Mozart
desperately sought his father's approval, but chafed under his authoritarian
thumb. Leopold Mozart nurtured his beloved son's genius, but dreaded
"losing" him to adulthood. Unwilling to be "replaced" by a
wife, he sought to undermine his son's romances and disapproved
of his 1782 marriage. Mozart's wedding-registry entry could have been
a private assertion of personal freedom.
Because Mozart listed his middle name as Adam on another wedding-related document, it seems unlikely to be a simple misspelling. However, he could have been goofing around. Mozart loved to play with language and names. His letters are full of puns and wordplay, and some are written in code. He sometimes jokingly signed letters De Mozartini or Mozarti. He also toyed with spellings of his middle name, using Amade, Amadi, and Amadeus (translated versions of the Greek name his parents actually gave him, Theophilus). But Mozart did not take marriage lightly; for him it marked a transition into an adult world where he controlled his own destiny--much the way Adam controlled the destiny of Eden and mankind.