Let's start off with a definition of kalunite:
Kalunite
n. the mineral form of potassium aluminum sulfate dodecahydrate, or potash alum, KAl(SO4)2·12H2O, as it is found in nature. It is a colorless-to-white, crystalline compound, used in water purification, leather tanning, mordant dyeing, as an astringent, and in baking powder.
Reference: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2005, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
Enough with the definition. After all, this website is not about the mineral, no matter how cool it seems to be; this website is about me, my friends, and my projects.
Who I am
Due to the difficulty that my friends have in pronouncing my name (which is of Cantonese origin), they have resorted to just calling me "Kal" or even "K". You are welcome to call me by either name. By now, you have probably guessed about half of the origin of this website's name.
Things I did
I was part of the organising committee of the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference 2004 and was responsible for the software competition. We had the honor of having Justin Frankel, Amir Szekely, and Christophe Thibault as judges. In case you didn't know, they are the people behind Nullsoft and Winamp - really cool guys.
In winter 2005, my friends and I formed the team Donkey Fog and developed GTask for our first software development project course, a task management system written in Java servlet/JSP, through which my team try to learn and emulate the kind of usability traits provided by GMail. We got an A+ for it, aside from some really funny moments.
During the final year of my bachelor studies, Donkey Fog has joined forces with another team from the previous year, to become TSG (short for "Team Super Good") and we have developed a software project management system framework, extensible through plugins. We codenamed it Impresario.
Philosophy
As an aspiring software engineer, there came a moment where I had to make a choice about my ideals. Throughout the years, the greatest lesson I have learned is to care about the users, rather than about the code. Hence, the other half of the origin of this website's name is that I want to become like kalunite in the world of software engineering: purifying software with something natural, such that it is suitable for everyday use.
Net Presence
You can find me elsewhere on the Internet: Twitter, GitHub, StackExchange