Personal
Other Interests /
Activities
University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band
· Participated in the band while at UMass from 1996 – 2000. Marched and played clarinet.
· Member of Field Staff, 1998 – 2000. Duties included teaching proper marching technique to rookies during Band Camp, distribution of music and drill charts to section, and organization of sectional rehearsals.
· Bus Parent, 1999 – 2000.
· Creator and webmaster of the Clarinet Section webpage, 1996.
· Notable accomplishments:
o Performed for President Bill Clinton at a Democratic Party rally in Springfield, MA, October 1996.
o During this time, the UMMB won the prestigious Sudler Trophy (1998).
o Marched in the Inaugural Parade, 2001.
· Marched with the Alumni Band at Homecoming in 2007 - 2009.
· Participated in a couple Game Jams. Hopefully I’ll get some time to finish one of them. =P
· Another hobby of mine is making webcomics. Here’s one that I’ve been doing for over 6 years.
Gaming
Once a week I head out to a comic store to play games with friends. Mainly I play Heroclix, a collectible miniatures strategy game involving comic book superheroes and villains. I also play and collect Pirates of the Cursed Seas and Star Wars Miniatures.
My personal taste in videogames leans toward puzzle games, especially casual games, and platformers. I regularly play Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. Often, I check out JayIsGames.com, especially the “escape the room” genre.
Some of my all-time favorite videogame series include Sonic the Hedgehog, Jak and Daxter, and Rachet and Clank. Recently I’ve enjoyed The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Mario Kart Wii and Half-Life.
High School
I attended Tantasqua Regional High School in Sturbridge, MA, class of 1996. Upon graduation I received the Perfect Attendance Award and the Band Director’s Award.
I started learning C in my free time, though unfortunately my programs have been lost over the years (or else I’d show them to you). Some programs I wrote:
· a Christmas carol sing-along program, where the lyrics were highlighted by syllable in time to the “music” (the duration and frequency of the notes played over the system speaker, which I entered into separate files by hand, so in hindsight it was probably out of tune), and included a dynamically created list of said music files by reading the file directory.
· a fighting “brawler” game, like Street Fighter, that drew the characters very inefficiently via screen paint commands.
· a “Chutes & Ladders” clone
· a couple different RPG/adventure games
I also created some custom levels/games for the game ZZT, so I think it’s fair for me to say I’ve had some experience in game modding and object-oriented programming.
Why “LZorro”?
LZorro is my Internet handle, and dates back to a username I chose back in high school for the mainframe we used in computer class (yes, that’s right, a mainframe). It’s short for “el zorro”, which is Spanish for “the fox” – dropping the “e” to make it look cool. I chose Spanish because 1) that’s the language I studied in high school, and 2) I didn’t quite like the French “renard”. But, I didn’t want to get confused with the classic hero Zorro, and I didn’t want people to get a negative connotation from the translation of “a fox” – “UnZorro”. So I opted for the definite article “the” instead, as most Spanish nouns are described that way.
But why “fox”? Because the word “fox” in Italian is “volpe”. ;-)
Other Links
www.andyvolpe.com – my brother’s website. He’s a historical reenacter and artist.
www.comicgenesis.com – free webcomic hosting
www.eztechgroup.com – provides hosting for this website
www.bostonpostmortem.org – Boston Postmortem, the Boston chapter of the IGDA
www.quickhit.com – free online football strategy game
more as I think of them
Last updated: February 8, 2010
© 2008 - 2010 Tim Volpe. All rights reserved.