Personal

Q. Who are you?

A. I'm Tony Northrup. I live with my wife, cat, and dog in Phillipston, Massachusetts, which is about 60 miles West of Boston.

Q. What do you do for a living?

A. I'm a computer guy. I'm also an author, and I mostly write books and articles. I am also a part-time nature and travel photographer.

Q. Do you read the comments on your Web site?

A. Sometimes, but I don't read most comments. They're funny. I rarely respond to the comments, though, because I figure people don't check back. If you want a response, write me an e-mail.

Technical

Q. Are you available for consulting?

A. Perhaps. Please contact me.

Q. I read your article about firewalls. Which firewall or anti-virus software do you recommend?

A. Well, the firewall built into Windows XP is great, though it doesn't have all the features of non-Microsoft firewalls. I haven't assessed the non-Microsoft firewalls, nor have I used all the common anti-virus packages, so I can't make a specific recommendation. I recommend using one of the major vendors... the features do vary from vendor-to-vendor, but any of them should be 'good enough' for personal use.

Q. I have some other technical question.

A. Just ask . I don't always have time to respond, though.

Photography

Q. Why do your pictures suck?

A. There are a couple of reasons my pictures suck:

1. I'm not a full-time photographer. In fact, I'm entirely opportunistic. I take pictures of things I see, but I don't set out to take pictures like most photographers.
2. I've only been taking pictures since about 1998. It takes many, many years to become a really good photographer.
3. I have posted a whole lot of pictures (more than 8,000), whereas most photographers only post about a dozen. I think my dozen best pictures are pretty good, and would probably look okay against other photographers with only a few years of experience. If there's one thing I've learned from this site, it's that I'm no good at identifying which pictures are usable. So, I post all the pictures that aren't blurry or otherwise bad, and let you browse through them.
4. Some things are just real hard to take a picture of. Dolphins in the wild, for example, because they live underwater. Small birds and bees are also very hard, because you have to get very close to them, and they move very fast. Unfortunately, I breathe air, and I move very slow, so my pictures of these animals suck.