Why hello! Thanks for stopping by! As I mentioned on my
homepage, My name is Maarten. I'm a 26 years old student, 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.
Interests
Hacking
It's mostly hacking/coding. It's kind of my jam. I've been working and playing with computers since I was a toddler, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that that became a big hobby form me. 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.
music
I don't like rap and pop music. I get annoyed by
hearing most of it, so I try to avoid it. Especially recent popular songs can
irritate me to no end, almost without exception. Luckily I don't get that much
joy out of listening music anyway, so I don't feel like I miss out a lot.
I do like popular numbers from the eighties, some Eurodance style numbers,
and ambient music. I don't have favourite numbers or anything. I just like
them.
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!
Food
I'm an omnivore, and eat everything that I like to eat. I like
a variety of different things, but the things I like most are nicely prepared
beef, yummy vegetables, and fish. I heavily dislike pureed food, beans
and peas, and
desserts that are not simple. I'll seldom turn down things like
hamburgers, pizzas, ...
Spaghettis (and other pastas) are extremely satisfying for me to eat, because
practically
everyone knows how to make it, but almost every time I try someone's version,
it's a different taste. I love how many varieties of all the pastas exist!
This is quite the opposite with fries: Only Belgians seem to know how
fries are served properly. I've seen (and sadly, tasted) the ways fries
are prepared abroad, and it's often an insult against our national
pride, so much so that I avoid eating them outside of Belgium.
I enjoy Belgian fries a lot, but I am picky about them. I consider my portion
"great" if fresh potatoes are used, they're medium sized, and well baked,
topped off with a generous amount of (real) mayonnaise. Eating them with a
frikandel
makes me feel like a true Belgian.
However, since a couple of years I've stopped purchasing meat for
Jonathan and myself, and we've been purchasing vegetarian replacements for almost
all of them. As soon as such an option is available (and many times,
there is), I will choose it. Because of this, there are now only a few days
per month that I don't eat vegetarian.
Drugs
I have banned recreational use of all drugs out of my life for as long as I
can remember. This includes nicotine products and alcoholic beverages.
I do this for multiple reasons:
- I don't believe drugs are necessary to have fun. When I'm with friends they may be drinking alcohol, but I enjoy my time just as much with non-alcoholic drinks like sodas.
- Drugs are unhealthy. Most of them cause damage to organs, and can badly affect the body long-term. I have no desire for any of that.
- For social purposes, it's always easy that I am the person that's sober. This can be for multiple reasons; an emergency, being the driver of the evening, ...
- Drugs alter the user's perception of, and actions in reality. I don't have any need to go through that. I enjoy being sober.
Studies
I hold an undergraduate Informatics degree from Hasselt University.
(coloquially named UHasselt). However, nowadays I'm rarely there, since I'm
now a graduate
student of (Scientific Engineering) Informatics at Ghent University. I spent most of my
time in a rented space in Ghent with my friend Jonathan.
When I don't have any lessons to attend, I'm close to the Faculty of
Psychology & Pedagogy. For my
courses I often travel to the Ardoyen campus in Zwijnaarde.
Sports
Every week, I use my bicycle to commute between Ghent and the technology campus of Ghent University, so I cycle approximately 50km per week.
When I'm not in Ghent, 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. 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 place, 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! 😃
I regularly add new texts to my website, or do general
maitenance. 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 (in)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.
Politics
I keep myself informed about political subjects that interest me. A list of some subjects I follow with hightened attention:- Law enforcement
- Public transport
- Climate mayhem
- Freedom and privacy
- Human rights
- Digital agenda
- Copyright abuse & reform
- Belgian communautarian debate
- Governmental & corporate accountability
Despite my interest in politics, I try not to bring this up into daily communication when it's not necessary. The reason is threefold:
- In addition to my poor social skills, I am also a very bad speaker; without ample time to prepare, I have a very hard time voicing my opinion in a convincing manner, even on issues that I (think I) understand very well. I would like to inform people, but if I can't talk in a convincing way, I might do more harm than good, so I try to avoid "live debating".
- Politics can be a sensitive topic. While I'd love to talk about sensitive issues with my friends, I don't know if the reverse is true, and I do not want to look annoying to be friends with. Therefore I try to refrain from bringing up political discussions myself. However, if one of my friends were to bring it up, I will gladly partake, because I take that as a sign that there is some mutual interest.
- I have a website on which I can talk at length and in detail about these things. This also offers an easy "getaway" for friends, but also other people; they can decide for themselves whether they want to know about my opinions, without awkward social interactions. It also allows me to directly link to source material, correct mistakes, and it's an easy reference point for myself.
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 Hasselt University. Both run
Arch,
the best
GNU/Linux distro out there.
I do almost all my stuff in
GNU Emacs, like
programming, maintaining my diary, working, system maitenance, and sometimes
even browsing. I sometimes also use
NeoVim.
>80% of my work is text
related, and terminals are just better at that than a fully fledged desktop
environment.
Languages I prefer are
C,
Python,
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.
My website
My web server runs on Nginx, and the website itself is built using Django, a Python web framework that's extremely well written.
I use Esperanto for hyperlinks, because I want my web pages to be navigated in a language-agnostic way, and in those cases, a politically neutral, international language is best.
Social media
I do not have a social media account on any big platform, except for Reddit.
That's because Reddit is one of the few platforms that respects its users' privacies enough,
and doesn't require me to identify myself.
The other platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, ...) all vehemently
violate their useds'
privacies in order to get more profits. I will not create an account on those.
I also hope others will follow me in this decision, as being on platforms like
Facebook compels others to do the same. An easy way to break their power is to
refuse being used, and additionally, this makes it easier for others to act
similarly.
Browsing
I fully condemn the practice of tracking people's (browser) habits for financial gain without proper consent (and no, clicking "I agree" does not imply giving proper consent), and I refuse to tolerate it. That's why I often browse using Tor to conceal my identity. You can do so likewise, even for practical purposes; the network is steadily gaining more speed because of the growing amount of people concerned with their privacy. Some offer Tor nodes that speed the network up and increase the security. If you really want to, you can also help by becoming a non-exit node (because exit nodes may get blocked by some websites, I don't recommend doing that unless you know what you're doing).
I normally would not use an adblocker to browse the web. As much as I
resent the use of advertisements, I understand that keeping a website up
costs money, and advertising is an easy way to fund that, a practice of which traces
can be found back until the Roman empire. Because their existence is not
harmful to society either, I see no valid ethical objection to an
advertisement on a website, and I don't want to block them. (I also don't oppose the
use of adblockers by others: I think people have a right to decide whether they
want to see ads or not.)
However, I do use
NoScript,
which is a script blocker. It helps me stay anonymous on the
internet by blocking (mostly client side) scripts that may reveal my identity.
Unfortunately, a lot of websites have started using tracking scripts to
trace what I see, what I do, what I surf to on the internet, and use that
for advertising, profiling, and identifying me, which is ethically wrong.
Because I oppose this practice, I block these scripts,
and that often means that I don't see advertisements
either.
There's a small annoyance to this (but I don't mind that): Some websites require some scripts to
operate at all; therefore I have to manually pick for these websites what
scripts to allow and which to block. The fact that these websites are
erroneously built (i.e. they can't work without client code scripts)
is annoying, but I don't really care that much: For some websites, that's worth it.
For others, I don't bother and I don't read what's on them.
However, as a practical advantage, blocking so many scripts means my browsing
is much better (which partly offsets the speed deficit caused by using Tor):
A lot of websites load within a second for me, whereas with
unblocked tracking, it takes easily 5-10 seconds before some webpages are
fully loaded in. Additionally, the page gets sprinkled with ugly bars,
elements pop in randomly and shift the page layout in grotesque ways,
(a)social media buttons left and right, and often a popup regarding their
use of cookies, which blocks what I want to do in the first place. What a
terrible state of affairs!
If you think the increase in speed, security, and safety while browsing is
totally worth clicking "Allow this script" every once in a while, then I
urge you to install NoScript as well, and activate "Block scripts globally".
It will make your browsing a lot better in almost every way.
Free software
I am a very strong supporter of the free/libre software
movement and organizations that battle to preserve our computing freedom,
which I regard as a human right. I go out of my
way to find replacements for any proprietary software, and have a high
tolerance for practical ease of use I'm willing to sacrifice.
Very seldom, I use Windows (often in an emulated environment) for some
programs that I need to
run for my university courses, as annoying and terrible I might find that.
I also voluntarily help people move from using proprietary software to free
software. I feel responsible for doing so, because I'm an informatician, and
not many people understand these subjects well.
If you want to try it (on your own), you can find a lot of GNU/Linux distros on the
internet that are pretty easy for novice free/libre software users. You can
also install them alongside an existing operating system, giving you the
chance to make an easy transition to computing freedom (which I admit, is
difficult when you're not used to it). For your freedom's sake, I implore
you to give it a shot too.
Cultural works
Although I avoid proprietary software, I take a mild
approach to proprietary video games. This is because games
serve a cultural/entertainment purpose, not a general/functional
purpose. They're a form of art, so to speak. That's a fundamental
difference from other types of software, and that reflects in how I
experience the (lack of) freedom in games.
I do draw the line with
games that
are distributed with malware, most often taking the form of
DRM.
However, I still think that games also ought to be free software, because
that would also make them free cultural works.
Proprietary games can get
lost because of technical changes (ranging from instruction set architecture
to a specific high-level library), making them unplayable as time goes on.