Xavi Tutusaus

As happens with so many kids, one day my parents gave me a box full of minerals, some 20 to 30 I guess. I remember them in their orange box, divided into compartments with a plastic cover for each mineral. I am sure they were not worth much, but the attraction was inevitable - they were only rocks, but the color and/or form made them special.

At the same time fossils were also pulling me. In fact more than minerals. The thought that they were once alive made them special, in the end a mineral never moved on its own.

From when I was very small I guess my mother's passion infected me, as I was also attracted to archeology. The force was so strong that in school one of my teachers dared to predict that I would become an archeologist. Well life leads us down different roads and, for all my passion for ancient Egypt, my future turned out to be software, with its studies of software engineering, virtual reality and multimedia environments. So I have spent 20 years as a professional, since leaving school, with a love of programming video games.

But let's go back to the beginning: minerals. Once I saw Jordi's specimens, both those in his private collection as well as the ones on the web, the spectacular form of some of them gave them as much life as that of any fossil in its day, and the tombs and treasures of the pharaohs cannot match the beauty of many of those minerals.

So as the member of Jordi's team, responsible for software, I hope to be able to live first hand this new facet of my life, putting all my efforts into improving, if that is possible, the IT aspects of this magnificent web site. I also hope to be able to enjoy bringing new technology that still respects what has been done before.

Xavi Tutusaus