Why hello! Thanks for stopping by! As I mentioned on my homepage, My name is Maarten. I'm a 21 y/o hacker, and I dabble in a lot of things that I enjoy doing. Some of these things I put on display here, my website, for the world to see!
On this page, I talk a bit about myself, my daily routine, what I do, ... It's not all-encompassing, and I've narrowed it down quite a bit to the most important things. I plan on sharing more through my upcoming blog, but until that's done, I hope this is enough to keep you satisfied.

What I do/am

Well, it's mostly hacking/coding. It's my jam, basically. I'm doing a lot of other things as well, but they're either not really well enough developed to talk about, or too minor to mention. Of course, I'm not stagnant, so I'll be updating this as soon as it's relevant.

I'm a happy person. True, life is not always joy and sunshine, but I always try to look at the bright side! It's just that life's a bit too short to not be happy, so we might as well make it a gaint party! I offer hugs and cuddles to whomever wants them, or needs them, just like a shoulder to cry on, or a simple peptalk. I hope that by doing that, I can make other people just as happy as myself!

I'm blessed with a set of the best friends one can imagine. They make life just so amazing, and I hope I can also do that for them. I try to open myself up to others as much as possible (or at least, as much as I feel comfortable with), hoping that I can share my happiness with them as well. All in pursuit of making our world a better place for everyone!

Weekly scheduling

I'm a student of Informatics at Hasselt University (coloquially named UHasselt). From Monday to Friday, you can find me here, most probably studying, or attending classes.

When not at university, I'm often home, most probably extremely busy with hugging my 3 dogs. Apart from that (and homework), my evenings are a mix of several things, like socializing, coding, writing, hacking my laptop, you get the idea. Also, when I feel like dabbling in something, I'll make some time for it.

Weekends are often trying to keep up with what university threw at me the last week, but I'm at home, so I save an hour or two not commuting 😄
This website is my spot on the internet, so this is basically where I hang out. Sometimes you might run into me while I'm redecorating the living room, or doing spring cleaning in my code repository. Anyway, if you want to sit down, you can always do so, I love having people around! 😃

A small apology

I admit that my website is far from complete. Most of the things (of which the blog system is most notably absent) are not ready, or need a lot more love to become fully fledged web applications. I try to extract time where I can, but maintaining a website (and doing it well), is not always the most easy job. Different screen sizes, JS compatibility, enforcing encryption, translating my website (which I do myself), ... Nevertheless, if I find a free spot somewhere, I might very well be updating my website. It's satisfying work to see my own place grow under my fingertips, albeit slower than I want it to.
Sometimes, it might seem I've not been doing anything on my website for a while. This might indicate real-life obligations, but might also be invisible changes to the source code, which are just as important as anything else I do around here. I hope all this doesn't cause you any inconvenience, and if it does, please accept my apologies.

How I do my computing

It's what I do most, so for those interested, I figured I'd talk about how I do the things with computers =3

I have a reliable computer that I built myself, and a companion laptop through university. Both run Arch, the best GNU/Linux distro out there. I mostly do my stuff in a terminal with NeoVim. >80% of my work is text related, and terminals are just better at that than a fully fledged desktop environment.
Languages I prefer (and praise for certain reasons 😁) are Rust, Go, Python, C, and (my current favorite) Clojure. I'm trying to pick up Haskell, which goes as well as you'd expect from a language like that.
I run Lineage OS 14.1 on my phone (In laymen terms: It's basically a cool and slim Android/Linux 7 with less Google interference).
Code repositories are always Git repos, no exceptions. Depending on the project size, I use a simple dependency listing, or a recognized project manager like Leiningen or Cargo.

Wrapping it up // Contacting me

I hope you liked what I wrote! The pleasure was all mine, dear reader =D
If you want to talk with me about anything, suggest stuff, have a laugh, say something nice, exchange virtual hugs, or anything else, I've got a couple of ways you can connect to me:

  • Mail: This is the most direct and reliable way to reach me (of all public ways). If you want to get to me through good ol' email, you can always contact_me@maartenv.be.
  • Tox offers its users decentralized and encrypted live chat, on a multitude of platforms, and is so simple, you don't even need a phone number or an email address or that jazz to "identify" yourself, which makes it awesome if you want to stay anonymous. Despite its young age, it's already pretty stable and fast on p2p connections. If you want a quick chat with me, add me using my Tox ID:
    955F4DA92BD174FEB985D57F5283DEA0DCEE757B32E1EBFFF4F13A932D60B07884E12009E019
    You can also simply scan the QR code, maybe that's easier =P
  • Other ways to connect to me are limited/reserved to a specific public. You'll probably know it when it's not listed here =P