Away from work

"An active technology & net enthusiast" has been my tagline on my homepage for a long time. These days it mostly means the things below — and a continuing attempt to find a better balance between work, family life and a few technical hobbies.

The house runs on KNX

Our home is wired with KNX, with Home Assistant layered on top for the things KNX alone doesn't do well — dashboards, integrations with everything that speaks a different protocol, and some automations for comfort.

What I like about KNX is that it is stubbornly boring in the best sense: the logic lives in the devices, the bus keeps working when the IP network doesn't, and nothing depends on a vendor's cloud still existing in ten years. Home Assistant then supplies the flexibility on top. It is roughly the same argument I would make about standard software versus custom development in an enterprise-context.

RC cars with the kids

My kids got into RC cars, which means I did too. Or the other way around... ;-)

Where this started

During my studies in Bocholt I was part of the Linux workgroup, where we built our own Linux From Scratch systems, and I helped organise the annual ComputerCamp — a week in which computing enthusiasts camped at the university and worked on projects together. I think the tagline started back then.

Two stints abroad shaped the rest: six months in Sydney working on embedded Linux and Mozilla for internet devices, supported by a scholarship from Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, and my diploma thesis on IPsec in large dynamic networks, written in Vancouver. Before I moved into consulting I also spent four years building an international e-commerce platform for the egg trade... but you can find more about my professional side in my CV.