Original About
Please note: This about-page is horribly outdated. I’ll get around to changing it eventually. In the mean time, if you’re looking for a more professional profile, you could do worse than to check out leapfrog.nl or my LinkedIn profile.
So here’s the obligatory about page. This blog is my personal outlet of ideas and opinions. There is no theme to the posts, which I understand is a sin to some weblog gurus. Also, my post frequency is pretty irregular; real life gets in the way quite often. I have no intention of becoming an A-list blogger however, so that’s no problem as far as I’m concerned.
As it says on every page: I’m a Dutch experience designer, martial arts enthusiast, fortean and all-round nerd. I’ll delve into all those monikers separately below (assuming you’ve read this far).
Dutch
I’m a born and raised Dutchman, currently living in Utrecht and working in Amsterdam. I don’t consider myself a chauvinist. Neither do I see myself having many typical Dutch traits such as pragmatism, salesman’s instinct, a tendency to compromise or excessive use of drugs and alcohol (just kidding.)
It’s not unthinkable that you’ll be more likely to run into me on the streets of an Asian metropolis in the near future.
Interaction designer
I design web sites and applications by trade. I’ve studied interaction design at the Utrecht School of Arts and have been working in the internet industry for around 4 years now. My main professional interests are experience design (the multidisciplinary approach and thinking beyond usability), social software (enabling people to work and play together through humane technology) and open standards (I’m a durability-nut).
Currently I’m employed by the cool internet agency Info.nl, I’ve started teaching a course in game design at the Utrecht School of Arts and try to frequently visit Amsterdam IA Cocktail Hours as well as industry events such as Reboot and the Euro IA Summit.
Martial arts enthusiast
Maybe enthusiast is a bit of an understatement. I try to train three times a week, which amounts to almost 8 hours of tatami activity. My style of choice is Takeda Ryu, which briefly amounts to a traditional Japanese school that specializes in the comprehensive martial arts of the samurai. I’m also an active member of the Dutch Union for Takeda Budo, an organization that facilitates the training of Takeda Ryu in the Netherlands.
Fortean
The philosophy of Charles Fort (1874-1932) dovetails nicely with my view of reality. He was sceptical of scientific explanations, observing that scientists tended to let their judgement be coloured by personal beliefs and ignored, discredited or explained away new evidence. Just like the magazine Fortean Times, I tend towards benevolent scepticism (in the true sense of the word) towards both orthodox and unorthodox thinking.
Get yourself a subscription to FT if you’re intrigued.
All-round nerd
I’m sure it’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of geek culture and am proud to call myself a geek. I enjoy watching genre films such as horror, SF and cult (my favourite film is probably Blade Runner). I still prefer science fiction or historical fiction novels as a nice complement to the professional literature I try to keep up with. I’ve also always enjoyed comics and graphic novels and still buy them now and again. I even still sometimes sit down and play an RPG with some friends, although nowadays they tend to be of the indie variety instead of your typical D&D game. In typical fashion designer toys adorn my desk and I play video games (preferably obscure Japanese PS2 titles with innovative gameplay elements or portable Nintendo games)…
I could go on but I’ll stop here. You get the idea.
Contact
E-mail me at ‘kars’ at ‘leapfrog’ dot ‘nl’.