My name is Billy Moffat. I am 19 years old, and live in Sydney, Australia. I am between programs at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where I am studying Computer Science. I have been in a long-distance relationship with Rebecca Cameron on and off since March 2010. I also have interests in politics, theism, piano and computer programming. I also fully own, manage and develop the website meercat9.com.
University
I am between studying full-time at the UNSW Kensington campus. My program was originally a double degree in Commerce and Science (Advanced Mathematics). I've recently switched to a Bachelor of Computer Science. While unsure of my major, I'm leaning towards artificial intelligence.
Relationship
My girlfriend is Rebecca Cameron. She transferred to my school when I was in my final year. We met on her first day but didn't become friends until about 8 months later through another friend. I started boarding at her place during the summer of 2009/10 before moving to Sydney to attend university. By March we were in a relationship. As of November 2011 it's been roughly 18 months. [
picture]
Politics
I'm moderately left-wing with mild libertarian tendencies. To illustrate this, my political compass score of (-5.75,-1.85)
can be found here. Due to the political landscape in my country of Australia, I find it difficult to support or endorse any particular party since the differences between the ALP and Coalition are relatively mild and rarely in areas that I'm passionate about.
Religion
After dabbling in Christianity a lot when I was younger (mostly due to having friends at a local youth group and attending an Anglican school) I decided that religion wasn't for me. I was an atheistic general universalist from the age of about thirteen, but in the last year have become more aligned with the more general atheist views. Atheism means I do not partake in any religion and have no belief in a supernatural deity, and general universalism means that I do not think that the answers to questions of creation are important. While I have a great deal of frustration with
organised religion, I have absolutely nothing against those who are religious.
Music
In grade two I was taught the recorder as part of the typical primary school music class. After taking a strong interest, I took up the piano when I was seven. Nine years later I completed the AMEB piano course (the 8th grade examination) with the necessary (6th grade) theoretical component. When I was younger I would frequently busk and play for retirement homes. In 2004 I used a combination of the two to raise $2400 for victims of the south-east Asian tsunami appeal via the Lion's Club. There are a few old recordings on
my website, mostly covers of songs I played between 2004 and 2006. Nowadays I only play for personal enjoyment and rarely do anything other than orchestral-styled improvisation. In the future, I'm hoping to put some recordings of some of these on Meercat9.com.
Computer Programming
Since I learned basic HTML in 2005, I took a keen interest in all sorts of computer code. While I've used a lot of different languages, I specialise in HTML, Javascript, CSS, PHP and Python. I constructed the entire website myself without any aiding tools. I prefer to do all web design and programming in notepad (or similar text-editors) to maintain maximum control and learn more about the inner-workings of the internet (and well, for fun :P). In 2007-2009 I achieved near-perfect scores in the NCSS Python Challenge, and in 2011 helped tutor over 2000 high school students in a team of roughly 30 tutors. Programming and computing are such a passionate hobby of mine that I'm now changing my university course to suit these interests.
