nikken

Hey everyone! I am nikken (he/him) and this is my home on the web. It has been since 2015!

A little backstory: I was born at ~350ppm in a small city in NRW, Germany. I dropped out of three different university degrees and became a trained joiner instead. My interests lie in politics, the arts (music and film, mostly) and the intersection of technology and society.

Contact me here:

Stay up to date with what's going on here via the log feed!

now

🏠

After 10 years elsewhere in the state I am a boy back in town (my hometown). I have been living back here since summer 2021 and it's been good. I live together with my partner and a couple of friends and I enjoy living closer to nature and my family.

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I am currently being trained as a sysadmin (basically) at the IT department of a public university nearby. If everything goes according to plan, I will finish my training in early 2024. The apprenticeship is closing a loop after dropping out of a computer science degree a couple of years ago.

🖥

As far as computer stuff goes, I keep close tabs on the OpenBSD and Guile/Guix communities. Late last year I contributed my first patch (pending) to the Guix package repository which combines the two interests.

In broad terms I would love for computing to be simpler (think Lisps & RISC), safer (think Rust), more sustainable (think permacomputing & MNT Reform), more accessible and more fun.

☭

My personal political niche has always been at the intersection of computing and society. Luckily for me that area has had a shot in the arm in the last years so now there's a name for it: Marxist luddism. I'll compile a bunch of links to expand on that.

Although computing and technology touch on all of political life, there are a lot of areas I would like to be more knowledgable about or active in: Union and community organizing, feminism, anti-racism, anti-imperialism/post-colonialism, the housing movement, the climate movement, ...

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I have started a weightlifting routine after a long while without sports and a job change to get healthy and strong.

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Lately I have been revisiting a lot of hardcore punk that I was into 10-15 years ago. I'm trying to catch up with the new wave of hardcore and stuff I haved missed in the interim. I have this calendar, The Art of Metal Covers Vol. 2, and I'm going through that day by day. A lot of classics, a lot of garbage.

tracking

I have been keeping track of the films I watch continuously since late 2016 and to various degrees of accuracy on letterboxd and imdb.

As far as books go, I think I have catalogued all of the ones I have ever read and dated the ones I have read since 2016.

One of the early social sites I used was audioscrobbler (Wayback Machine). I had an account there from 31st of July 2005 until some time in 2008 or 2009 when I felt that tracking scrobbles influenced my listening habits too much. I created a second account on last.fm in 2011 and have been scrobbling on and off ever since. I have a modest record collection that I haven't updated in a while on discogs and a small bandcamp collection. I do try to use spotify less.

I keep a list of things that I use, which for now mostly consist of my home computers.

Lists are what makes the internet interesting, so I list the podcasts I listen to. More lists to come!

log

I did a redesign of the site! I had been using hugo for years now and was in the progress of moving over to haunt (which I adore) when I realised that I just wanted to artisanally craft all the HTML by hand again. I have now found some time to do just that and futzed around a little bit while I was at it. I also switched back to writing in English (instead of my native German) because I felt like it.

projects

ongoing

  • Since 2018 I've cosplayed admin and webdesigner for the young and dynamic agency mechanik _ from Hamburg.

2022

  • My friend Fritz (mechanik _, rauchen) is finally online! I built a tiny website for him.

2020

2019

  • I was asked to build a website for Ilgen-Nur's record "Power Nap" and the associated 2019/2020 Tour. So I did. I like her music!

archive

english

german