Kumba: Let’s start with a little background on you, because not that much is known about the New Element (NE) owner known as “geewhzz” and a good journalist never just assumes all the stuff on someone’s facebook page is fact. I recall that when you first joined your avatar had us thinking you were an Indian IT guy. I think we all know now that’s not the case, so let’s get the basic info out in the open. How old are you, where do you live, are you still in school and do you have a job?

geewhzz: Well, I used to spent a lot of my time playing an online game called Team Fortress Classic which was a spin-off of the Team Fortress mod for Quake 1. This is an online capture the flag game in which clans (teams) developed to compete in leagues against one another. I remember a clan that had a web-page with pictures of their members and I saw the Indian guy sitting at a computer, and it obviously wasn't the guy the picture was portraying, and I just found the picture to be funny in some way for using on the Internet to portray who you are in a joking way. Ever since then, i've used it on various websites because of the inside joke to myself, and hoping that others might find it as amusing as I did.

As for me personally, I'm 25 years old and live in St. Louis, Missouri. I graduated from University of Missouri St. Louis in December of 2009 with a undergraduate degree in Business Administration emphasizing in Management. I work in a local Italian restaurant that I've been working at for nearly 6 years now.

Kumba: You seem to have a good grip on real-life parks, coasters and rides. We have seen you build incredible realistic parks and for a short while when you showed up at NE people were dazzled by your progress on a re-creation of Cedar Point. How long have you had themeparks as a hobby or interest? Also when did you first get RCT and/or RCT2 and start building parks and rides?

geewhzz: When I was a child I was a lot more creative than I consider myself now, and anything on tracks fascinated me, starting I think with trains from trips to the St. Louis Zoo. I had a big interest with lego trains & monorails, and even really admired people who were into the real authentic working miniature toy train hobby sets, something like [url="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/1828833_f520.jpg"]this[/url]. I loved the realism of these trains, and how people built realistic towns and landscapes. I remember going to Union Station in [url="http://www.stlouisunionstation.com/"]St. Louis[/url] as a kid and going into a store with model trains going around the store and being fascinated by it. Although I never got into building any custom train model towns at home, I was more into the realistic town lego sets.

This eventually led to a roller coaster obsession from the first time I had ever visited Six Flags St. Louis as a kid. After I understood my love for theme parks in general, I lobbied my parents to visit any local theme park on family vacations we took, so I got a lot of different experiences even as a young child.

It was no surprise that with RCT I would be into realistic recreations, and that is all I really enjoyed out of RCT1 and eventually RCT2 until the fascination broke and I started building make-believe parks in Head-2-Head 4. I got RCT1 as soon as I heard about it and bought all the expansions as they were released and just played it for fun. I was a frequent Danimation visitor during the RCT1 days, not really for the parkmaking aspect, but for recreations, and I hung around the "Fantasy Photos" forum where people would Photoshop pictures and show what they "wish" was in the game, which was mostly more realism, which I loved.

Kumba: Let’s go back in time to January 11th 2006. At some point on that day you became a member of New Element. What brought you to NE, was it the parks and if so which ones were you impressed by at that time?

geewhzz: I was advertising my Cedar Point recreation on many sites around the web, and was directed to New Element by someone posting in my thread. I joined to advertise my park and wasn't really influenced by any park or player at New Element until sometime in the future.

Kumba: Now only a few months after you joined the site you were drafted in the 6th round of the H2H4 draft by Evil WME. What was the H2H experience like for you and what role do you think it played in your future involvement at NE?

geewhzz: I got caught up in the site-hype a bit, and not even really knowing what H2H was, signed up and was to my surprise, drafted. If I wasn't drafted I doubt I would even be where I am today writing this. I think I would have faded away not knowing anyone around the site. Head-2-Head 4 was really the fork in the road for where I am now.

Kumba: Not too long after your impressive NE debut in H2H4 you built three increasingly impressive NE Designs. First was Kindred, then Salga and finally the ground-breaking El Encierro (with disneylhand). I call it ground-breaking because until then we really had not seen a RCT2 design with that level of detail and hacking. I think at this point everyone knew you were a real force when it came to hacking because of what you were able to do on the rapids ride. What do you think clicked for you to be able to build and hack at this level?

geewhzz: Head-2-Head 4 is really where I started to breakout and expand as a parkmaker. What I mean, is that, I believe there is a life-cycle for a parkmaker where he continues to play, over-time he will go through a cycle where he will go from being horrible, and exponentially get better and better, where nearly every new thing he builds is better than before, and at the peak of the parabola, he peaks and really sets into his style of building. On the down-slope of the cycle, he won't really be developing his style, but might add new methods of doing things better here and there. I feel like this can easily explain why it's quite easier for newer players to abandon more projects than people who are past the peak on this curve. As they improve, their previous work isn't on the same level which makes the project not balanced. You can look at any major player through his work (provided it's all published) and see it in action, from people like robbie, or Liampie, who have probably peaked and really have fallen into their style, to players like JDP who I feel are about 2/3rds up to the peak.

After Head-2-Head 4, I was heavily inspired by Phatage's work and his realistic hacks using 8cars, so I took what I loved, and expanded on it in the three designs I built trying to improve. Through this process of trial and error and learning the ins and outs of 8cars, I slowly tried to find ways to push the envelope, and was eventually led into more advanced hacking with help from Levis. I feel the drive to accomplish this was my love of realism and trying to find ways to make RCT2 feel more real than it already feels, which can be traced back to the Danimation forum which I frequently trolled.

Kumba: A few summers ago you went from talking with your fellow NE members online to meeting them in-person when you traveled to California. I believe you meet up with Corkscrewed, Xcoaster, robbie92, blitz and even met Ride6 at another time. What were those meetings like for you and what other NE members would you like to meet?

geewhzz: The first member I met was Panic, and that progressed into Corkscrewed, Blitz and Xcoaster. Then a year or two later, it was Ride6, robbie92, Roomie and Coaster Ed. Most recently it was eyeamthu1. The meetings were great. It was nice to know that even if you and the other person weren't at all anything alike in all other regards, at least we shared this common ground of New Element and RCT/Roller Coasters in general.

The answer to the next question is easily anyone, but if I have focus specifically on people, it would be a lot of the guys from overseas, especially posix. It's always a great experience to learn from others about their culture and way of life as opposed to the way I live, and the two times I've experienced that from meeting Roomie and eyeamthu1, it was fantastic.

Kumba: One topic we can’t avoid in this interview is your becoming the webmaster of NE. I was the webmaster until the summer of 2008 when I was re-thinking my ownership of NE and also fairly sick. What was happening behind the scenes to enable you to become the owner of NE?

geewhzz: Honestly, I liked New Element a lot, and you had posted asking if anyone else was interested in taking over, and I posted that I was, and because of that, got thrown into management. Most of everything that was done at that time was done in a group setting, but behind posix's leadership as I think the group of guys who were running it then respected his length and prominence in the community.

Kumba: You took the helm of NE with posix as the only other webmaster. Together you guys built what is currently the 4th version of NE and popularly known as “NE4”. The amount of new data and content you guys have put in is really remarkable. How long was the site in the works and what are some of your favorite features?

geewhzz: When posix and I and a few other people like Steve, CedarPoint6, and Carl were put into management, we had millions of ideas that we wanted to do, but were obviously limited on resources we had such as time and knowledge of how to do what we wanted on the web-platform. The site was in the works for a long, long time. I'm guessing about two to three years, which includes all the idea bouncing, planning, and production. The hardest part was the dynamic aspect of it and learning how to use the web-platform to create the dynamic content we wanted. I'd say out of the two "areas" of the site, public and private, the public side my favorite items are the database and member profiles. As for the private side, I like how the production of the product we offer comes together so simplistic and smooth which makes managing the site less of a chore.

Kumba: Since your success in H2H5 we have not really seen any new work from you. One would think this could be due to your role as NE Webmaster, but are you currently planning any new parks or designs?

geewhzz: I wish I could bring good news and say that I am working on something, but that would be a lie. I am not currently working on anything, nor do I have any real plans to really dive back into the game. This isn't due to being the webmaster at all, because as I pointed out, the production and site setup, frees up a lot of time that was spent during NE3 to do other things. The truth is, I've found other interests outside of the website that I like to occupy my time with. I wouldn't rule out the future though..

Kumba: Finally, what parkmakers have influenced your highly detailed and hacked style of parkmaking?

geewhzz: During the early days it was people like Phatage & RCTFAN. Phatage for his incredible grace with coaster design and realism, and RCTFAN for his mind-numbing details and realistic themes. As for the "new wave" of players, it's easily people like RRP, CedarPoint6, robbie92, 5dave and Liampie. There are far more than can be listed here, and I think this is due to the explosion that happened a few years ago where realism really took New Element by storm which better fit my view of the game. If you want proof of this, must I remind you of Kumba's design 'Kumba'?