About me
I'm a 17-year old hobbyist programmer / website designer / stop motion animator living in Denmark. My name's Niels Serup, and I often use the nickname "nqpz". Having picked that nickname back in 2007, I still don't really know how I got the idea to it. But I think it looks pretty cool, with the "n" slightly resembling a rotated form of the "z", and the "q" being the mirror image of the "p". I also like the fact that it's (as far as I know) unpronounceable.
I like to use web standards when creating websites. In my ideal world everybody should follow the same standards. It's sad they don't.
When I'm not creating websites, I play around with Python and other programming languages. I think it's fun. Below is a list of the programming languages I know and how well I know them.
| JavaScript: | Quite well, I'm able to do pretty much anything (probably) |
| PHP: | Quite well, though I have no experience with MySQL |
| Python: | Quite well, though there are a lot of modules I'm not familiar with |
| C, C++: | Getting better, slowly |
| Bash: | OK, I guess |
JavaScript isn't a language I'm particularly fond of, considering the difference in the processing of the code on different browsers (read: MSIE), but I had to learn it because I wanted to make interactive websites. It's actually surprising how often I find myself creating JavaScript stuff. When working with the layout of websites, CSS and HTML is of course a must, but those aren't really programming languages.
PHP is a nice and fast language, though constantly typing the "$" signs can be a bit of a pain sometimes.
Python is my primary choice when writing small programs that don't do much. It's both fast and easy to create both console, SDL and GTK programs.
C and C++ are generally quite difficult programming languages in my opinion, but I do like the idea of having full control over various aspects of my code. I'm also trying to learn C+-, though it's turning out to be more difficult than I orignally thought. I'm also trying to learn LISP.
I tend to not comment my code a lot, but I'm working on doing better in that specific area.
Besides programming and stop motion videos, I like watching slow movies. Action movies are too fast and generally too meaningless. Slow films are easy to follow (even if they are somewhat complex) and offer time to think about what's going on. Action movies can be summarized in one word: "". Well, zero.
I like the concept of free software (as in freedom, not free sweets). I use gNewSense, an operating system that is completely free. It's based on Ubuntu, though it seems that future version will be based on Debian. See more about free software on GNU and FSF.
I hope that free culture will evolve into something that everybody participates in. I'm happy to release my stop motion videos under a free license, which enables people to edit and redistribute them. You can read more about free culture on the Students for Free Cuture website. Or look it up on Wikipedia (which actually also releases its content under a free license).
I'm a person who can't stand spelling errors. If you notice a spelling mistake somewhere on metanohi (even a small spelling mistake), do not hesitate to send me an e-mail explaining my wrongdoing. Grammatical screw ups do not matter as much as spelling screw ups, but if you encounter a serious grammatical error, please inform me of that too.
How to get in touch
If there's something on your mind that you think I need to know, you can send me an e-mail. My address is ns@metanohi.org.
Where to find me on the web
I don't participate in a lot of online communites, and both Facebook and MySpace are probably sites that I'll never be part of. I don't need them. Plus I dislike the fact that my rights and freedoms somewhat disappears the moment I enter the realm of Facebook/MySpace (not that Facebook and MySpace are the only evil ones out there).
Below is a list of the places where I have a profile:
These are probably not my only profiles.