Indeed, what's with the name?

First off, I happily agreed to take part on the blog. I'll be assisting with some posts, equally about the two areas we both love, and whichever we really feel like throwing out.

As a kick-off, mirroring my partner, I'll introduce myself - by my name. Cloud actually has a multitude of meanings - Some of you might recognise some of them. First, it was almost an alter-ego of my own self back in mid school - since me and a few pals were writing a fastasy story. The project never really took form, but damn, were those some fun times. My own character, Cloud, had a Lightning-element affinity (the story revolves around 9 (!!!) main characters, one per "element", all with one "negative" element), and was in many ways matching my own personallity. Even today, we haven't entirelly given up on the dream of turning this into something real. I probably still have some chapters lying around... :P

From there on, the two other interests on the name are about music and games. Cloud Nine being a song from one of my favorite bands - Evanescence. As it matched my alter-ego's name, it was further considered a basis for all my internet nicknames. And, of course - and perhaps the thing you'd recognise this name from - Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife, the protagonist of one of the most famous RPG series of all time - Squareenix's Final Fantasy (At the time, they were Squaresoft), and the first big step into 3D - and arguably one of the games that "sold" the Playstation One system. The story compelled me in a way few books have ever been able to - as an RPG fan, the game did feel too easy with relativelly few grinding, but all I could see was the amazing storytelling. I cleared the game way beyond 5 times (Fully ginding extras and level 99s).



And, oddly enough, in my later life, Cloud Computing becoming a standard in programming paradigms only served to tell me that that name was a perfect match to my own self. I still use constant permutations of Cloud to match my characters in video games, or wherever a nickname is requested, really. I do have other names, but they're mostly randomly created to avoid having an enormous list of CloudA, CloudBs lying around :P