John Lamansky is a Catholic homeschooled teenager who blogs from Iowa. John’s interests are many and varied and include writing, science fiction, media, government, and, of course, technology.

John’s first experience with computers came at around age 5 when he began playing with his family’s Windows 95 computer. He enjoyed using Paint and WordPad in particular.

At 8 years old, John was making simple websites with Microsoft® Word 2000 running on Windows 98 SE. By the time he was 9 years old, he had started an email newsletter that he sent out to family and friends.

At age 10, he began producing animated “movies” made using Microsoft PowerPoint®. He also developed an interest in making his own computer programs; so he borrowed his mom’s college programming textbook, found an online compiler, and was soon developing in BASIC.

He continued accumulating programming know-how, and at age 12 he learned his tenth programming language: Visual Basic .NET. Also at age 12 he placed first in the world in a science fiction writing contest for 4th- through 6th-graders.

At age 14, John entered the world of online blogging, starting his personal blog at JohnLamansky.com. When he was 15, he started a podcast at CatholicGeek.com, and learned XAML, his twentieth programming language. By age 16, John had produced his first full-length movie.

John currently traverses cyberspace with a Dell Dimension 8400 computer running Windows XP Professional and Mozilla Firefox. Between school and other responsibilities, he continues learning more of what there is to know about technology, media, his Catholic faith, and his other interests.