Brain?
I didn’t get my nickname Brain because of my IQ or coding skills. And no — it didn’t come from a certain lab mouse with a sidekick named Pinky (although we do have a few things in common… but taking over the world isn’t one of them).
I got the name because I was the only one in our friend group who didn’t smoke weed — and because I somehow knew every single takeout phone number in the city by heart.
When the munchies hit, they turned to me. One day, someone just said:
“You remember everything. From now on, we’re calling you Brain.”
That was three decades ago. Thanks, Elemental, for the nickname. It stuck — and here we are. 🙂
I’m still the same curious, tech-obsessed mind, just with a few decades of life experience and a blog to dump my thoughts. Still coding. Still making music (yes, some might call it noise). Still into gadgets, energy savings, and working on self-improvement in every possible way.
You’ll find random ramblings here. Code. Commitment. The occasional mindfart. And lots of reflection.
My autism
In 2013 I was officially diagnosed with Asperger’s, though I had recognized myself in the description long before that. I process the world a bit differently — especially when it comes to sensory input, non-verbal cues and social rules. Sounds reach my brain instantly, while visual or emotional context often lags behind. That mismatch can cause funny, awkward or just plain wrong responses, especially when subtle social cues are involved.
Over the years, I’ve built a complex internal “script” to navigate everyday life — complete with if/then/else logic, exceptions, and fallback routines. Most of the time it works so well that people don’t even notice. But when it breaks, it breaks hard. Think: too many options at once, rapid topic switches, or unclear social norms. My brain might just freeze up like a system hitting deadlock. Rebooting can take a while.
“Kernel panic! The Nothing box is overloaded!”
Still, I wouldn’t call it a disability. It’s a different operating system. One that comes with its own strengths — and quirks. I’ve learned to work with it instead of against it. And this blog? It’s part of that. Writing helps me reflect, explain, and share — for anyone who wants to understand what life can look like when you’re running version 0.x by design.
If you want to read more about the subject I would highly recommend the article: Autism, Pattern Matching & Kernel Panics — My Side of the Story
Hardware and software
Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved hardware so much. It’s predictable, logical, and brutally honest. Circuits don’t lie, voltage doesn’t gossip, and packets never pretend to be something they’re not. If something fails, you trace the wire, swap the part, or debug until it hums again. Machines have rules — humans have exceptions.
My servers never judge me for missing a social cue; they just beep, blink, and wait for the next command. Building, fixing, and optimizing systems feels like home — a physical reflection of how my brain tries to make sense of chaos.
I often see the same patterns in both worlds. Hardware is the tangible layer: the metal, the circuits, the power that keeps everything alive. Software is the logic, the structure, the “why” that tells it all what to do. My brain is somewhere in between — part silicon discipline, part human improvisation — running endless updates in search of stability.
I’m the author of jSunnyReports, have written various loggers for different PV inverters, and apparently I’m one of the founders of flitspaal.nl — the website that listed all speed cameras in the Benelux. I also built my own home automation system with over a hundred sensors. Why? Simply because… ehm… I can. 😄
I’m fairly new to the world of full-blown virtualization, even though I’ve used VMs and containers for years. Running Proxmox with more than 15 VMs and containers is a whole different ballgame.
And yes — when a cat presses the power button and your DNS servers go down, that’s when you realize: it’s time to do something about high availability. 😛