Interested in what all the fus was about, i'm playing around with this diary but not really expecting to update it a lot, so dont worry if i dont update this every week :o)
If you want more info about me, or you want to download the rubbish i have coded, want to bug me about my rubbish, want to have a flamewar about emacs/wmaker/debian, or just want to annoy me feel free to stop by at my own little place on the net. It's down at this moment (fried a hdd, havn't bothered to get it from a backup even though it has been more than 2 months ago. i dont really give a crap about webdesign ;o)

Who am I?
Ow gawd, the question we all ask ourselfs. Here's a summary, but can someone really know himself, let alone communicate it to other people?
I'm a AI & CS student at the VU in Amsterdam, NL. Busy with computers all my life, i've grown up with a mac and still regret not having continued using them. As a member of the nintendo/gameboy generation, i've played more games than that would be considered anywhere near 'healthy' as a kid. In those day's, my coding was limited to plain zBasic and Pascal, and occasionally getting out my hexeditor to crack irritating games. I was fascinated with Hypercard, it's fun to know you've used the web before it existed, even though it was local only (think about what would have happened if they had made it server-based? :o)
After that i had my dark period of Doom, DOG, and BSoD's. Didn't do nearly as much coding as i could/ought to have, but coding java and (visual) C++ was as far as i went. Somewhere around 97/98 i got my first internet access, and around about 98/99 i started playing around with linux. After i had had about every linux/bsd distro known, i settled with Debian.

School/Uni
As said, i study at the VU, but already have had a different school, the Hogeschool, also here in Amsterdam. I quit there, as i was arguing like 98% of the time about silly things like what to use as a team-logo and coding yuckie C++ for the other 2%. Arguing is great, and i do that more than enough at the VU, but there it's 50% arguing about righteous topics like vim vs. emacs, Windows vs. Linux, Debian vs. the rotten commerical distro's, C vs. Java. and the other 50% is coding really interesting stuff in Java. *uche*Not*uche*.

Work, cash, the quest to accumulate the stuff that makes the world go round...
Well, i work at the Hogeschool, it's simple lowly sysop stuff. Lots of nice grrls, lots of ignorant teachers and nice relaxed co-workers and bosses :o)
Most of the time i'm just on irc, euh, coding useful opensource stuff. The last few weeks i've set up a lill' private network with a netware server, trying to reverse engineer the protocol for TCP/IP, as ncpfs is old, mostley IPX based and actually because i was bored stiff. It may work out, waiting for netware 6, it's good to have netadmins as friends. It might be one of those one-day projects, or it may grow. have started building a library, dunno if it could ever match up against ncpfs. it's a whole lot of code. maybe i should use python instead. nah, script lang's are for wussies...

Debian baby, Debian!
Well, i've been using Debian somewhere since slinky/potato, and actually, i dont use anything else anymore! For the most an active user, advocating it until people get sick of me (they do). The last 1/1,5 years i've been a tad more active, making small packages for personal use, sometimes putting them online for others. Yesterday i've finally taken the first horde for becoming an 'official' developer (gpgkey signing, w00t!), putting it off for about half a year now, not really interested in the whole process, dont care much for any 'official' status, but it would be handy to actually get other people to use some of my work. A few days ago someone mailed me to ask about some package i made during the summer and put online, he's now using it in his company (it was Chora btw, nice CVS browser for horde [/ignorant plug]). That, and the fact that i've gotten myself to become a co-maintainer (of Galeon-snapshot[/more ignorant plug]). Besides, having other people upload for you is sort of annoying. Okay, i'm a wannabe, sue me... :o)

Code baby, Code! Besides my childhood coding, i've gotten a lot more active since i'm using linux. Perl, PHP, Java, C/C++, Prolog, Lisp, (tad of) asm, Python, just grasping the power of ocaml, the list is getting quite long. Bad thing about all these lang's is that you dont get to troll other people who have used one, but not the other. Ahh, i troll too much anyway...
The good part is using the right language for the right job. Using Perl for a fullblown app is plain sick, using LISP for day-to-day admin tasks is plain stupid, using PHP is always plain sick (but i'm a lowsey webdesigner, i love the easy database API though. wait a minute, that's what it was made for. Never mind :o)
What have i coded? well, besides a heap of unfinished projects, i'm actively (sortof) coding on aapje, a stupid GTK+ MSN client. Sue me. Besides that, i've coded heaps of small PHP-apps, like for Ai4ALL [flashwarning], our class/course website. I've built a few bots and scripts, not much i'm really proud of. Oh, and lets not forget all those school projects (i remember a fullblown music-edutainment java app, took about 30 secs to load, but it worked really great. Gotta find the source someday...). And gotta get back on that netware project. hmm, so little time, so much to do...

Oh well, i've been ranting more than enough. consider this information to be terribly outdated, as i dont care much about posting every day. I wonder if there actually are people who still post here a lot. Anyway, best wishes to anyone who has read this all, you deserve it (or more interesting stuff to do). I'm back to irc^H^H^Hcoding useful l stuff for the rest of humanity. Need more coffee... caffeine... hmmmm....

Best wishes,
alex aka wal aka alextreme aka The One and Holy Wannabe!