Helvensteijn.com

I am a 26 years old guy named Colin Helvensteijn, also known under the nickname raptor. I live in Oosterhout, Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands (map) with my parents.

Computers

I like computers. I’m particularly into scripting and web design. I write (X)HTML and CSS pretty much blindfolded, but my graphics skills are less than stellar, to put it mildly. Some people say that I’m quite proficient with PHP and JavaScript, but personally I’d qualify myself as moderately skilled at best.

I do also use my computer for other (less nerdy) things, like simply browsing the Web, communicating with others in various manners, doing all the paperwork that can be done digitally, or just listening to music or watching video.

My operating system of choice depends on its task. For day-to-day use, I prefer Mac OS X, but for servers, I linke Linux best, particularly Debian. Both the server that hosts this web site and my home server run on it.

History

I first started using computers when my dad purchased an Apple Macintosh somewhere in the latter 1980’s. I did little more on it than playing with Paintbrush, since there wasn’t much else interesting for five or six-year-olds. A few years later, we got an IBM-compatible 386 running MS-DOS, opening my world to games like Commander Keen and Prince of Persia.

Windows 3.1 sparked my interest a bit. I started poking around all over the place, learning the basics of computing as I went along. Windows 95 came, along with more graphically sophisticated games. The old 386 wasn’t up to that task, so a Pentium at 166 Mhz came to replace it. I could spend hours building and destroying cities in SimCity 2000.

Then came the Internet. We got a dial-up connection pretty early, somewhere in 1995. The World Wide Web wasn’t a very busy place then, and sites were mainly text with some images. Internet forums first started to appear. Despite the WWW being relatively boring compared to today, it caused me to really get into computers. I started trying out all kinds of stuff I encountered on the Web.

In 1999, my dad once again got himself a new PC, a Pentium III at 500 MHz running Windows 98. The old Pentium, also upgraded to Windows 98, became my first very own computer. I installed all kinds of programs and poked around in them. I tried Linux, tried BeOS, both of which were not very usable as a desktop OS at the time. I also started playing with HTML. A game I played a lot was Midtown Madness.

Soon thereafter, I purchased a new PC because the old Pentium really didn’t cut it anymore. It was a Celeron at 633 MHz. I tried Windows Me for a while, but it was so buggy that I went on to Windows 2000, and later Windows XP. I got more proficient with HTML and CSS, and during this time, somewhere around 2002, I registered this domain. Also around then we got our first broadband connection.

In 2004, I purchased a new machine to be able to play the newer games. This was a Pentium 4 running at 2.8 GHz. I was particularly into GTA III, and played GTA Vice City for a while. But I gradually lost interest in games and started doing more nerdy stuff. I teached myself the basics of networking, started scripting in PHP and in 2005 I took the dive into the fascinating world of Linux. I wiped clean my OS partition and started compiling a Gentoo installation. Inside a week, I had a fairly usable system, but there were still some bugs and quirks that led me back to Windows XP for a while.

About a year later, in the summer of 2006, I decided to give Linux another try. This time I opted for Ubuntu. It made me stay, and never look back. It did everything I wanted and did it well. It eventually even had a 3D desktop cube and wobbly windows along with translucent borders and unlike Vista, it actually looked pretty cool.

Then, in early 2007, I got myself an Apple MacBook, mainly because I wanted to try Mac OS X. It made me realize that I should have done that a lot sooner. And since my Pentium 4 fried its main board, it made me switch to OS X permanently. The MacBook served not only as a laptop but as my desktop computer as well until October 2008, when I purchased an 24" iMac to relieve it.

More information and specifications of both my workstation and my server, plus some additional devices, can be found in the My computers section.

Other hobbies

Besides computers, I also like to watch movies and Star Trek episodes, listen to music, take a hike and/or just read a good book. I rarely go out anymore. Too noisy, too busy and especially too expensive. Music can be heard anywhere. Fun can be had with friends at home. Beer can be found in the supermarket for decent prices.

Job

I currently work in a warehouse for Eglo, an Austria, Europe based manufacturer of indoor and garden lighting. It’s the usual warehouse work: loading and unloading containers, driving around on forklifts with pallets and things like that, nothing too fancy. We do have a super cool AS/RS. It consists of 23m high, 150m long racks with cranes driving through the 7 corridors in between them, storing pallets (5 corridors) and trays (2 corridors) in the racks and fetching them again, also supplying the order picking locations.

More

Well, what more to tell? I don’t know. I guess this will have to do.

Contact

Send your e-mails to colin-NOSPAM-@-NOSPAM-helvensteijn.com. More info on the Contact page.