About the author and this website

Introduction

Hi, my name is Maarten Tromp (also know as geekabit), and I'm the person behind the geekabit.nl website. I'm a tinkerer, tech professional and music enthusiast, who enjoys a cup of tea.

When I was a child, I wanted to become an inventor, just like Professor Barnabas from Suske en Wiske and Gyro Gearloose from Donald Duck. They were always inventing crazy new things. Now, years later, I realise I've become that inventor. Only, it's called hacker instead.

The term geekabit was coined by my friend Morten who needed a way to communicate to his then girlfriend that he needed some time on his own to geek out. The word not only conveyed that perfectly, but also sounded like the (then-emerging) 1 Gbps network standard. Later, with his permission, I adopted this brilliant word as my nickname.

An impending move made me realize that changing internet service providers would mean losing my email address. To establish some stability, I registered the geekabit.nl domain name and set up my own mail server. This would ensure a consistent email address for the foreseeable future.

Some years earlier I had set up a webserver as digital playground, but it held nothing worth viewing by anyone else. One of the first things actually aimed at visitors was a virtual tour of my student house. Over time the website evolved into a showcase for my projects and music. While so far this has made me rich nor famous, I still enjoy working on it.

Since then I've worked in electronics, pro audio, IT, and even ran my own company for a while. Then I burned out and discovered that I have ADHD and autism (ASD), which explained a lot. These days, being on disability support gives me the opportunity to volunteer and focus on my own projects, albeit at a lot slower pace.