Beyond code

MIT has a great project to show you your persona. After you enter your name into the search bar the application will analyze how the computer sees the results for your name and will create a persona for you.

Below is the persona for credmp.

MIT Persona for credmp

A persona, a defined by wikipedia:

In the study of communication, persona is a term given to describe the versions of self that all individuals possess. Behaviours are selected according to the desired impression an individual wishes to create when interacting with other people. Therefore, personae presented to other people vary according to the social environment the person is engaged in, in particular the persona presented before others will differ from the persona an individual will present when he/she happens to be alone.

There are a few interesting points in my persona according to MIT; military, fashion, illegal and religious… I need to take a look at what generates those as I have very little affinity to those subjects but apparently the computer sees them as a part of my persona.

Life credmp, Life, mit, persona, self

It has been a while since my last post, it has been very very busy in my life. First, yesterday was my birthday, so now I am 31 years old.

Since February 1st I am also no longer working for eBuddy, I moved on to a company called Infomedics in Almere where I have been spending a first hectic month as Business Architect. Besides getting to know systems and architecture I also spent a good deal of time talking to vendors. One nice thing during that month was that I went to Paris for a short business trip. After the first month I can truly say that I have absolutely no regrets in changing jobs.

This move also means that I have been doing absolutely no coding whatsoever. I attempted to do some in my spare time, but found that I have totally started lacking the will to program and fix bugs on several of my personal projects. I think it is time to leave it be for a while and just focus on other, and more importantly, new things.

One of these “new” things is my car. I purchased a second hand VW Golf from an acquaintance and have been taking weekend drives as well as daily commutes to work in it. Since getting it on valentine’s day I have driven it for 1704 kilometers (the odometer was at 31149 when I got it). During my birthday we just got in the car and drove for a couple of hours, eventually just making a circle around the IJsselmeer.

My Car

The other thing that still gives me great amounts of pleasure is photography. The last year I have hardly done anything serious with it, but now I am picking it up again. My old trusty Nikon D50 (a 5 megapixel camera) is very low-tech when put next to the specs of the current DSLRs.

While browsing foto konijnenberg to see current prices and listings I found that the new range of nikons is rather pricey, they always have been. My dad has a Canon 350D that has given him lots of joy over the years. Konijnenberg always has some interesting special offers and I eventually folded and ordered myself a new Canon 450D with an 18mm-200mm lens. The special offer saved me 533 euros so I am quite content.

Canon 450D

All in all it has been a very exciting month with a newfound love for photography and a somewhat bleak lining in that I totally lost the urge to write code.

Life canon, car, eBuddy, infomedics, Life, nikon, Photography, work

The year 2008 is well behind us and as many bloggers I guess a nice little review of the year is in place.

For me personally it was a year not to forget in a long time. After holding back 12 years I was convinced that a drivers license would be a “good thing” to have. I went through a 10 day program, driving each single day for hours at end, just to fail the examn on a small technicality. This was a not so nice experience, but I bought some more lessons and the 2nd time around I passed without any form of criticism! Since then I made a lot of trips with my girlfriends car and 2009 might even see a car of my own :).

In July my divorce was finalized! And to celebrate a great Iron Maiden concert!

At the end of the year I received an email from an old friend who pointed me to an interesting job opening at the company she works for. I went in for an exploratory meeting and after a couple of days of going by them and meeting different people I was convinced to switch jobs. This means that from February 2009 I will no longer be working for eBuddy, but for a local company called InfoMedics.

My girlfriend surprised me with a Playstation 3 during the December month and after a setup change and a lot of re-wiring I actually boxed up my Xbox 360 in favor of it. I completely love the PS3 system, it nicely fits into my home entertainment system, has great games, is not so noisy as the big white thing and has some great integration points.

The games for this year were Gears of War 2 (360), FarCry 2 (360), Little Big Planet (PS3) and Call of Duty: world at war (PS3).

As for books this year it has generally been light reading with a few computer related ones: iPhone SDK development, Programming Erlang, Mastering the Requirements Process, Requirements Analysis and Systems Design.

The most interesting light reading I found to be And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac and Mort a Terry Pratchett novel.

I didn’t do a lot of programming on the side, except for code swarm and color theme zenburn for GNU Emacs. Photography was also in a slum in 2008, hopefully to be revived in 2009.

As you might have noticed from the books this year was focused on learning new things; Erlang and iPhone development in particular, as well as extending my knowledge on the requirements process.

I hope to do some nice Erlang programming this year and perhaps learn some other new technologies as well.

All in all a great year with another one already started!

Life 2008, books, Code, Emacs, Gaming, Playstation, PS3, Review, xbox

The year 2008 is well behind us and as many bloggers I guess a nice little review of the year is in place.

For me personally it was a year not to forget in a long time. After holding back 12 years I was convinced that a drivers license would be a “good thing” to have. I went through a 10 day program, driving each single day for hours at end, just to fail the examn on a small technicality. This was a not so nice experience, but I bought some more lessons and the 2nd time around I passed without any form of criticism! Since then I made a lot of trips with my girlfriends car and 2009 might even see a car of my own :).

In July my divorce was finalized! And to celebrate a great Iron Maiden concert!

At the end of the year I received an email from an old friend who pointed me to an interesting job opening at the company she works for. I went in for an exploratory meeting and after a couple of days of going by them and meeting different people I was convinced to switch jobs. This means that from February 2009 I will no longer be working for eBuddy, but for a local company called InfoMedics.

My girlfriend surprised me with a Playstation 3 during the December month and after a setup change and a lot of re-wiring I actually boxed up my Xbox 360 in favor of it. I completely love the PS3 system, it nicely fits into my home entertainment system, has great games, is not so noisy as the big white thing and has some great integration points.

The games for this year were Gears of War 2 (360), FarCry 2 (360), Little Big Planet (PS3) and Call of Duty: world at war (PS3).

As for books this year it has generally been light reading with a few computer related ones: iPhone SDK development, Programming Erlang, Mastering the Requirements Process, Requirements Analysis and Systems Design.

The most interesting light reading I found to be And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac and Mort a Terry Pratchett novel.

I didn’t do a lot of programming on the side, except for code swarm and color theme zenburn for GNU Emacs. Photography was also in a slum in 2008, hopefully to be revived in 2009.

As you might have noticed from the books this year was focused on learning new things; Erlang and iPhone development in particular, as well as extending my knowledge on the requirements process.

I hope to do some nice Erlang programming this year and perhaps learn some other new technologies as well.

All in all a great year with another one already started!

Life 2008, books, Code, Emacs, Gaming, Playstation, PS3, Review, xbox