Here a few bullet points about some events in my life. This list is not exhaustive and I am mostly mentioning things that somewhat relevant in a professional sense. You can also ask DM on twitter if something particularly interests you.
Study & Work
- Studied Informatics and Media applications at Hochschule Osnabrück - University for Applied Sciences.
- Extended a jQuery web application for half a year (see Projects for more details).
- Worked for 3 years as a Software Developer (see Projects for more details).
- I am currently finishing a Master's Degree in Cognitive Science at Osnabrück University. My motivation to study again was twofold: on one hand, I felt like I wasn't learning enough at the job I had. On the other hand, I was interested in psychology and wanted to get into artificial intelligence and especially machine learning. Cognitive Science offers this mix of disciplines.
- On the Now page, I mention my current interests.
Childhood
- As a kid I wanted to become a cartoonist because I liked watching animated films and drawing.
- In 2003 or 2004 at around age 9 I started playing table tennis.
- I was really bad at writing (and probablymaybe also reading in 3rd and fourth grade). I read the Harry Potter series (in German) which improved that a lot.
- In 2005 or 2006 I got in contact with HTML in an extracurricular school working group and built my first website. It was about hamsters and also included a lemur from the Madagascar movie for some reason. 🤷♂️
- Had an ethically flexible version of Photoshop (probably CS2) and learned some basic photo editing skills. Cutting out people from a background, making text look fancy with drop shadows, 3D effects and the like...
- Besides table tennis, I was into video games. Gothic II and TES IV Oblivion were my favorites. Around 2007/08 I played around with the Oblivion Construction Set (a 3D level editor for building mods). Unfortunately, I didn't got into programming at the time. I built dungeons with the tile-based wall and corner pieces and also a simple fetch quest. Years later it turned out that using this editor had some similarities to Cinema4D, Blender and Unity.
- I was mediocre at school. Good in math, sciences and sport but bad at languages, not interested in history. I developed decent drawing skills by scribbling in the margins of notebooks. This skill is still useful at times.
- I almost didn't pass the 10th grade (2009/10), because I was so bad in English, struggled with Latin and wasn't really inclined to participate in the Religion class. I managed to save myself by using a loop hole. I switched to Ethics (Values and Norms) for the second semester, which made the failing grade in Religion irrelevant.
- Around that time I started watching YouTube videos which improved my English a lot over the years. First, mostly German videos, then Ray William Johnson's "Equals Three" show and others. Fast forward to 2019 where I passed an IELTS exam with score 7 (1-9) which is equivalent to a high B2 or low C1 in CEFR (A1=Beginner - C2=Proficient). This allowed me to study Cognitive Science (a Master's program in English).
- For some years I thought I would start an apprenticeship as a digital media designer after finishing school.
- In 10th grade (2009/10) I took an Informatics class and learned some basic Java by drawing geometric objects with a library. I continued with it in 11th and 12th grade and got my A-levels.
- Did a gap year in sports coaching kids table tennis in a sports club and in elementary schools as well as doing home work supervision.