#+title: About Niels
#+summary: A short description of metanohi's creator
#+license: bysa
#&toc

* About Niels

Niels G. W. Serup is the creator of metanohi and [[/projects/mege/][mege]], metanohi's engine. He
was born in 1992 and lives in Denmark.

He studies datalogy (computer science) at [[http://diku.dk/][DIKU]].

He goes by the nicknames "ngws" and "nqpz" (and a few others).


** Contact

Niels can be contacted at [[mailto:ngws@metanohi.name][ngws@metanohi.name]].

** Software which Niels uses

*** Emacs

Emacs is a nice text editor. [[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][Get it]].

Links: [[https://gitorious.org/nqpz-config/nqpz-config/blobs/raw/master/home/.emacs][my .emacs]] and [[https://gitorious.org/nqpz-config/nqpz-config/trees/master/home/.emacs.d][my .emacs.d]].

*** Conkeror

Conkeror is a nice webbrowser, somewhat similar in design to
Emacs. [[http://conkeror.org/][Get it]].

Links: [[https://gitorious.org/nqpz-config/nqpz-config/trees/master/home/.conkerorrc][My .conkerorrc]].

*** StumpWM

StumpWM is a nice tiling, Emacs-like window mananger. It has much fewer
features than e.g. XMonad (another tiling wm), but it's simple and
efficient. [[http://stumpwm.antidesktop.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl][Get it]].

Links: <@eval macros.titlelink('/writings/stumpwm')@>, [[https://gitorious.org/nqpz-config/nqpz-config/blobs/raw/master/home/.stumpwmrc][my .stumpwmrc]].

*** Trisquel

I run Trisquel, a fully free as in freedom operating system. [[http://trisquel.info][Get it]].

*** Unison

I use [[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/index.html][Unison]] to synchronize files.

More and more people are beginning to rely on fancy stuff such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)][internet]]
to synchronize their [[http://nxg.me.uk/note/2005/singular-data/][data]]. I don't. I can not be sure there is always fast
internet, and I cannot be sure that my data is secure, except if I spend time
encrypting it heavily.

When I am done using my desktop computer at the end of a day, I transfer files
from my desktop computer to an encrypted partition on my USB flash drive with
Unison. Then I place my USB flash drive in one of my left pockets and forget
about it. The next day, when I need to synchronize my files with my laptop, I
remember putting my flash drive in my lower left pocket. I pick it up and put it
in my laptop, and then I run Unison again.

It's fairly fast, secure and durable (I sometimes have poor or even none
connection when working on my laptop).

(Actually, my desktop computer died, so currently I use only my laptop.)


** Things which Niels uses but doesn't like

*** Facebook
I used to not be on Facebook, but now I am. It annoys me, but I felt I had to.
I still believe that the solution to Facebook and other centralized services is
to use decentralized services. So in the case of "social networking", I ought to
use Diaspora, friendica, or something else instead of Facebook. In any case, I
don't seem to use social networking sites very much for some reason. Just look
at the number of posts I have on the StatusNet Identi.ca site. I try to use
Facebook as little as possible.

*** GitHub
When I want to make a git repository available online, I like to do it on the
server which also hosts metanohi, or a free software online host, such as one
running Gitorious. I don't quite like the very popular GitHub service, because
it is not free software. The negative effects of GitHub's proprietarity is that
its users cannot learn from studying GitHub's code, and that they cannot run
their own GitHubs. Users mostly use GitHub for public data, and since git
repositories are distributed, it is easy to move a git repository from GitHub to
another git repo hosting service --- just change the push address of your local
repository. All of this means that GitHub cannot cause serious problems when it
comes to control over the data you give to it (and I don't think it's as hungry
for data in general compared to Facebook).

As such, GitHub is far from being as great a problem as e.g. Facebook. But I
still don't like GitHub's attitude. I use GitHub because someone created a
repository to which I contribute code on GitHub, not because of its "social
coding". GitHub's focus on making branching, merging, etc. easy is probably the
right one, but I don't see why that can't be done in a decentralized way. After
all, git is decentralized.


** Virtual existences

In order of randomness:

  + [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:NqpZ][Wikipedia]]
  + [[http://identi.ca/nqpz][StatusNet]]
  + [[http://hongabar.org/profile/nqpz][My public friendica profile]] (currently down, didn't use it much anyway)
  + [[https://gitorious.org/~nqpz][Gitorious]]
  + [[https://launchpad.net/~ngws][Launchpad]]
  + [[http://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:NqpZ][Libreplanet]]
  + [[http://en.literateprograms.org/User:NqpZ][LiteratePrograms]]
  + [[http://nqpz.filmaster.com/][Filmaster]]
  + [[http://openlibrary.org/people/nqpz][Open Library]]
  + [[https://savannah.gnu.org/users/nqpz][GNU Savannah]]
  + [[http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/User:Schabeindividuum][Uncyclopedia]] (don't take this one seriously)

I might have forgot some.


** Keys

*** SSH

#&pre
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEA0JbXv5uILGhIWrY9695Djfx9ooQ/vBlhUxMe2yCqI645sWim8QvYNllc94jkKkOkNUGCurHlselXI+wribIKbbv2ZHr7exioZrlxwjVw9V9XeL+Rvewrbb1kBQFsuzsJVZzjfx3mggn+DOW0PN+qFfrjlh0jXGC0sYYQmYSBMCjemDhWv4WkbuH7fpqjY+wpoJpmtj1Ch+5rbxoTDdhNfk+WOtLQ9mAYYrAdBvajSzDuveoTQtTeJ66alT6ii+yyODuzsm46mlbLSfNKxy7a+1Do3ZYePiB6bhLf7+huC7OGjRZ3i+1zMHP5y3ypzQGKzcCU+5f+TpMfA+8A3Ep2qw== niels@gustace
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAwEmn04iNjoD8wCFTQdadsAmlRRsQHJKgggPo9ZVKlCuZIkKiPuspkio2JUnAx4ppyOTS63MdbGF88V5cI+//vj983oHN29we8CHvhb31Y/LfMmjFtEdnv3q2lPu/102zbCr/fZ/Pz3nxEOMRZa46qWdut8Jvu48wJ4IBKPTMteDPblPl9m8WeN2ueUbxrcR3Pb/NBndTbGEBd+I4IezVwmWuDTsEWpgEw8p/A5wCw03yX6v9wiK2Zl1/LPLAJaJfLd2+9qDBOKnpu/pkYsCQUJdDqPcYB13ys3Fo4kS84MYZE2HMwpXCb0aC7ywUW3ktlb6jTXFCvh2dK8FggfQRiw== niels@westshiba
#&

*** PGP

#&pre
pub   2048R/B492E125 2012-08-29
      Key fingerprint = 805A F9F1 554E 06E6 B90C  A211 33CF 9BCE B492 E125
uid                  Niels Gustav Westphal Serup (ngws) <ngws@metanohi.name>
sub   2048R/C9BB5929 2012-08-29
#&

#&pre
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235mE/xO
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#&


** Photo

#&img;url=img/niels-eyes.png, width=600, center, caption=Niels


** Misc.

#&img;url=img/fsfmember.png, medlink=http://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referrer=8085