A little bit about me
I live, together with my wife and our cat, for quite some time now in Hoorn, a small city in the north of the Netherlands. My wife and I both completed the study of Business Economics at the VU University of Amsterdam, where I specialized in Administrative Information Science (BIK), the IT side of business administration. At the moment I work as a senior IT solution engineer for a large financial institution where I am involved in translating requirements into working IT solutions. I am also involved in monitoring the larger picture from an IT point of view and the coordination across the boundaries of departments and systems. And lately, I am more and more moving back to the actual development process again, which is how I started my career.
In addition to my interest in everything related to information technology, I am also passionate about landscape photography, writing, teaching, blogging, drawing, digital productivity, learning, building websites, editing movies, and everything related to Linux and open-source software. All these interests require that I use a large variety of applications daily, such as applications for photo editing, video editing, web design, writing, and digital productivity. I use these applications both from a professional as well as from a personal point of view. This means that after all these years of intensively using many software solutions, I have developed a broad insight and first-hand user experience. Based on that I share my knowledge, skills, and expertise in an accessible and knowledgeable way with others via my websites, my book, and my course.
Knowledge, skills, and expertise
The start of my passions
When I was about 6 years young, my passion for writing began to form. Unlike my classmates, who were running around on the football field or climbing trees, I started to write my first pieces on subjects like ancient Egypt, space travel, prehistoric times, and much more. At a very early age, I loved to read books and pick out parts that I could use for my own “publications”. My parents and grandparents were my audiences and because of their enthusiasm, I continued doing that for a long time. The fun of writing for me is in the complete process. Thinking of topics, finding and researching material, the game of writing and editing until the story is exactly matching what I had in mind, and ultimately the publishing itself. I fully enjoy all aspects of that process. That is why I also write with pleasure about Linux and related issues on my website www.reallinuxuser.com and recently published my first course. And partly based on these articles I wrote and the course I created, I now have written my first book.