I'm someone who likes computers, simple and deterministic systems, rich and complex systems (not bloated systems), war games and semiotics.
Computers are cool because they are effectively a well-defined deterministic system. This makes them easy to manipulate, easy(-ish) to understand and fun to work with because they always do what you (the tyrannical dictator of mathematical operations) say to do. Unfortunately however, when an electronic version of a computer is incarnated in the real world, all these nice properties disappear back into the aether for two reasons. The first is that hardware doesn't always play nice, but this is understandable because being subjected to the laws of physics usually puts a damper on your fantasies. The second, and more important, reason is that there are some absolutely awful engineering practices employed when making software. Dependency Hells, frameworks and the translation-abstraction-translation pipeline are the main offenders here.
I like 'rich and complex systems' because I have a fascination with self-organising and 'intelligent' entities. Such systems can include: cellular automata, a biological cell, a biological creature, an ecosystem and the entire planet that we live on (no, so called 'AI' are not in this definition). It is also interesting that the most beautiful of these systems are often of low-complexity, which is of itself a pleasing notion.
War games are fun because war is fun. Ok, not really, but I find the situations that arise from two opponents trying to defeat each other in a complex environment (that is one with more parameters than Go or Chess) intellectually stimulating (fun?), so I indulge in playing them. I would also think that I like them for the particular and peculiar enjoyment I get from moving about different parts of a machine with deliberation and achieving results. Perhaps my programs are also war machines, for a more civilised age.
My interest in semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) is a bit random and I'm not sure why I like it. I suspect that its related to my liking of of the previous three points but I'm not entirely sure.
I usually go by the name "MentatBashar" on the web because I really like Frank Herbert's Dune series. Here is a vast and expansive list of all the places that I am active on the web:
The site is called 'Long Hiraeth' because, simply put, making a website like this has been a longing of mine for a long while. The Welsh word 'hiraeth' was used to add a hint of nostalgia because, simply put again, I'll probably be writing about things that I have at least some sense of nostalgia for, even if I never experienced them when they were culturally 'relevant' (see: 'old' video games and computing).