Toph Tucker

Christopher Blair Tucker
(a.k.a. Toph) | Tucker Home |

Date of Birth: October 19, 1989
First Word: "Dada"
First Sentence: "Daddy, buy more doughnut balls!" June 28, 1992
Favorite Color: Blue

Language Guide!
Spanish (Español):: Hola, amigos! Como estas? Yo soy un estudiante.
French (Français):: Bonjour. Comment ca va?
German (Deutsch):: Hallo! Wie machen Sie heute?
Portuguese (Português):: Aqui em tophtucker.com, nós falamos muitas linguagens!
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My name is Christopher Blair Tucker, but I like to be called Toph. I attend Beaver Country Day School (grades 6-12). My birthday is October 19, and I was born in 1989. I like drawing and computers. I also love to read.

Family & Friends

My dad's name is Richard Tucker, and my mom's name is Elizabeth Tucker. I have an older brother named John, an even older sister named Annie (or Dar), and a younger (by 23 months 1 week and twelve hours) brother named Willy. I also have a brand-new puppy named Rosie! I love her very much. I use the word I too much. I have to work on that.

My grandparents live in Concord, Mass. Their names are Austin Lyne and Annie Lyne. My other grandparents (my Dad's parents) passed away before I was born. Their names are Frank Tucker and Dorothy Tucker, but we call them Mo (Dorothy), and Po (Frank). I also have about a trillion cousins, aunts, uncles, etc., but who wants to type all those up?

Some of my friends (reverse alphabetized by last name) include Peter Wilmot, Sammy Thomas, Josh Sugarman, Vivek Pai, Evan Leventhal, John Kline, Maddy Kiefer, Sam Kelly, Yoni Golijov, and Sabrina Fiori. If you're not listed there and should, it's probably just an oversight by me... I do that a lot! Yoni and Sabrina both work with me in TuckLyne and Athena, and Josh and Sam are sort of advisors (they helped out with a some TuckLyne product development). Sabrina and Maddy are both part of TuckLyne Studios - they're the scriptwriters and co-stars for the bestselling "...Or Not" series. Vivek is a friendly business competitor... I don't have any idea why he would want X-Tech to remain separate and not be gobbled up by TuckLyne. :-) We could call it X-Lyne, or TechLyne, or TuckTech, or X-Tuck, or... anyway, Sammy is my stock broker, and Evan is (along with Sammy) one of the most enthusiastic saluters among my friends. Peter is a very friendly curly-haired kid. John has never gone to school with me, but he lives in the neighborhood. He is an alien mastermind coming to inspect our measly race - so be nice to him.

As for family friends, there's the Sullivan/Pecks, the Halbys, the Fioris, and the Dahmens. Now I must apologize to all my friends whose names aren't up there. So: sorry, all you friends who do not have their name up there. If you feel the need, you can email me and request that your name be added at once! Maybe threatening me would help, too...

Corporate

It was the summer of 1999 at Taconnet, which is the place in Maine my family goes over summer vacation. My grandparents were visiting, and one day Willy and I found ourselves at our cabin with them with nothing to do. (My parents were at some tennis thing, I think.) We started playing around with what we could make out of newspaper from our fireplace supply. By the end of the day our deck was littered with "Hat Balls", "Javelin Throws" and "Ring Tosses." That night at dinner we assigned roles to everyone present and declared ourselves the Executives Committee of TuckLyne Inc.

TuckLyne's most successful product was not one that had been invented out of newspaper the summer of 1999. Instead, homemade business cards were. A couple of years after TuckLyne was founded (and again at Taconnet), I took that idea to a new company: Athena. Just recently I decided TuckLyne would buy Athena, so now Humpty Dumpty has been put back together again by all the king's horses and all the king's men.

Finally, there's TuckLyne Studios. TuckLyne Studios was formed when a couple of my friends and I were making a movie and need some name to put in the credits. Check out the web site for more information.

The World Wide Web is great!

What I Like

One of the many things that I like are Legos. Who doesn't like Legos, after all? My brother used to have a whole Lego city in his bedroom, but then it was overtaken by a "Rokenbok" thing. Now it has become a giant K'Nex roller coaster (which the Dell Support guy who came to our house was obsessed with). Speaking of which, a K'Nex pinball machine is under construction there now!

I also love Star Wars - a lot. I've seen Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode II: Attack of the Clones six times each in theaters, Episode IV: A New Hope [Special Edition] two times, and the others, sadly, never. Of course, we own them all. ;-) However, we don't yet own IV, V and VI on DVD -- they're not out yet! However, they're coming out September 21st -- I can't wait! (I really can't wait until May 2005, when Episode III comes out!)

Check out my Star Wars section if you want to see a bad site (which I must admit has become much better in the past couple of months), then cleanse your eyes with the Official Site. Or, you can see my semi-completed and then abandoned Star Wars story over in the Library.

I also love pretty much everything about computers, the web, and cars. For fun Macromedia Shockwave games, check out shockwave.com or candystand.com.

I am very interested in many companies. One of those companies is Microsoft (MSFT). We have a Windows XP Pro computer and a Windows 98SE computer, and I can't wait for Longhorn! What's that you say? What's Longhorn? Why don't I explain it a bit! Longhorn is the next major version of Windows, and it's supposed to come out late 2005 or early 2006. It'll feature a whole bunch of new stuff, from a new look to a vastly improved file system. One of the coolest features is the Sidebar, which is a vertical bar occupying the right-most sliver of your screen. It's totally customizable and can display a clock, a search box, your new emails, your online contacts, weather, news and more.

Other interesting Microsoft technologies include Windows Powered Smart Displays and Windows XP Media Center Edition from the Microsoft eHome division. WPSDs are basically LCD displays that you can yank off their stand and walk around with, accessing all your documents on your PC and using the touch screen to get around. The Media Center is sort of a home entertainment system merged with your PC - you can watch TV, watch DVDs, record TV (a la TiVo), and make your own DVDs.

Then there's the Athens prototype PC, a collaboration with HP. It integrates all sorts of neat office-oriented stuff. For example, let's say you receive a phone call. The Caller ID flashes on the screen, and you choose to pick up the call on the integrated speakerphone. When you do that, the computer automatically mutes the speakers and sets your MSN Messenger online status to "On The Phone." At any time during the speakerphone call, you can pick up the (included) monitor-mounted handset and continue your call that way. Pretty cool, huh?

I also like Intel (INTC). Our computer has an Intel Pentium 4 processor. We also have an Intel webcam, which allows us to videoconference with people over the internet or make home movies without a camcorder, as long as we don't need to move the wired camera more than a couple feet.

Finally, DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX) is my last major "favorite company." In September 2002 (or was it 2001? Maybe it was...) I completed a report on DaimlerChrysler for school. Check out the the Library to view it.

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Finally, a little commentary from the peanut gallery to top it all off... I think that stereos as we know them today are on their way out. Here's why:

Stereo Systems: Computers already play music CDs - just pop them into your CD-ROM drive - and some computer speakers are really good. Once you have a CD in your computer, you can "rip" them to your hard drive for later listening without the CD. Nifty new gadgets can even send music from your computer to your TV -- or, to many TVs! However, those devices don't stop there...

Portable CD Players: Regular old CD players can't last much longer. Instead, there are now portable MP3 players that synchronize with your computer. So, after you ripped your aforementioned CD to your hard drive and sent it off to a few TVs, you could take a little portable device, plug it in, and have your whole library ready to travel with you. The most popular example is the Apple iPod, which gives you capacity for up to 10,000 songs in a case that fits easily into your pocket.

Radios: Radios in their current incarnation might also leave us. XM Radio receives satellite signals for optimum reception, along with other handy features. Check out their web site for more information. There are also sites that let you listen to music in a radio-esque format, such as my favorite, MSN Music. If you use Internet Explorer, it can even play in a small sidebar, which you can minimize for a larger viewing window.

Whatever happens in the world of music, integration throughout the house will play a major role. Microsoft has a whole new division, "eHome", dedicated to household integration, and they've made a nifty little "smart home" at their headquarters.

What I Do

When I grow up.... I'm going to have a lot of trouble deciding what to do! Some of my career ideas include software programmer, inventor, physicist, movie-maker, book-writer, architect, graphic designer, and web designer.

On September 23, 1999, I went to the last practice round of the Ryder Cup. I saw Tiger Woods many times! I also got an autograph of a European player, Padraig Harrington (the Americans weren't giving any)! He was very nice. It was extremely fun! We also took lots of pictures (I mean LOTS)! You can see some of them in the Photo Album.

In March 2000 (4^th Grade), I did a report on Albert Einstein in the form of a speech. The speech was written as if I was Einstein himself. I decided I would make an oral report, and a full report, which would be much longer. See the Library to read either version.

During the summer of 2002, I went to the computer camp Cybercamps for two weeks. While there I took a programming course in C++. While there, a made a little program with no name (hence I simply call it "My First Program"). Later, I began programming in C#, which is a lot like C++ yet slightly newer. If you want to, you can head on over to the Library to download a couple programs that I have since created. Unfortunately, they only work on Windows computers. :-(

Photos

Take a look at these photos. My older brother John took them one summer several years ago with his digital camera. What do you think? For more photos check out the Photo Album.

Watch me progress from being perfectly happy to thinking about all the horrible things done to me in my life to GOING CRAZY AND BECOMING A SCARY MONSTER!