About

Hello, you’ve probably clicked the about button for one of several reasons. I’m going to cater to those who want to know about this website/me.

I’m Lionel Jitro, my real name is James, but that is a far less potent label in the eyes of the google. If you really want to know how the name Lionel Jitro came about, click this sentence that leads a double life as a hyper-link; scandalous.

Tada. Were you tempted to open a new tab? I hate that about hyper-links that expand hidden text. I open a new tab and get the exact same page. People that hide text with hyper-links are just horrid. Now for the story.

The first name, Lionel, is obviously a copulative compound of lion and el. El, according to Wikipedia, is a “Northwest Semitic word meaning deity”, take from that what you will, but it is irrelevant to this story. Lion on the other hand is rather relevant.

I was once out and about, and whilst outing I was simultaneously drinking. As I was out I met someone who was also about. Noting his wobbly stance I predicted he had been out for about seven more drinks than me. A short story long he saw my hair, which is something like , and stared for some time. After the said amount of time the words “You are like a LION, your hair, like a lion mane!” erupted out of his mouth.

I took that as a compliment and so I introduced myself as Lionel which fragmented his world into equal parts rocked and shattered. The latter was further fragmented to stay true to its name. Here ends part one of my alternate name.

Part two is Jitro. According to Wikipedia: “Jitro je stará plošná míra představující plochu, kterou oráč s koněm zorá za jitro čili jeden den od jitra (rána) do poledne, případně až do soumraku (večera). Obdobné jednotky byly používány v mnoha zemích“. Mmm, quite informative.

For those of you who don’t speak Czech I’ll provide a google translation: “Morning is the old flat rate representing the area you plowman plowing with a horse for morning or one day from dawn ( morning ) to noon , or until dusk ( evening )“. I believe a few subtleties are lost in translation, much like reading Tolstoy in English.

Luckily Jitro isn’t based on any word that I’ve come across but rather a name I thought I was called. In college we had to do compulsory kitchen duty every now and then. There was a lady in charge of this whole procedure. I had the task of setting tables one day.

“Jitro hurry and finish the tables!”, she said to me in a funny accent, pick one you like.
“My name is James”, I replied in a normal, matter of fact voice.
“JITRO! Where are the knives, Jitro!”

Okay that conversation never happened, but she did call me Jitro, or something that sounded like Jitro, even when I tried to correct her.

There we are, the two part story behind the name, the legend. There has been interest in an audio book, watch the blog.

Now where was I. Oh yes this is the end of the hidden text, I’ve actually written the rest of the text already which is pretty handy.

I’ve decided I want to make games. A game, much like a hermit crab, needs a place to call home. This site is probably the best shell my games could have. I have one of those blog things that I plan to document the progress of new games as I add them…to this shell. I regret the hermit crab simile.

The first full game I can remember making was made using Microworlds. It was an Olympic game that involved hurdles and javelin throwing. I wish I had a copy of it, although it probably is heaps better in my memory. Other than that I spent a lot of my childhood modding starcraft and teen years modding warcraft III. Since then I’ve made a few small games in java, javascript, python and c++. Nothing noteworthy.

With the current game dev scene I’ve decided to jump in and get my hands dirty.

So welcome to my shell, it might be a bit off-putting to be stuffed in with priorly homeless crustaceans but, well, welcome.