geekabit

Hi, my name is Maarten Tromp (a.k.a. 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 little, I always wanted to become an inventor. I loved 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 word geekabit was coined by my friend Morten who needed to communicate to his girlfriend that he needed some time on his own to geek out. The word covered that beautifully and also sounded like the (then state-of-the-art) 1Gbps network standard. Later, with his permission, I adopted this brilliant word as my nickname.

When I was about to move house I realized that this would mean changing internet providers and losing the email address I using. This would happen again every time I had to switch ISP. To provide a bit of stability I registered the geekabit.nl domain name and started hosting my own mail server. Now I had a fixed email address for the foreseeable future.

Some years earlier I had already setup a webserver which I used as playground more than something worth viewing for anyone else. One of the first things aimed at visitors was a virtual tour of my student house. Over time the website evolved into a showcase for my projects and music. So far this has made me rich nor famous, but I do enjoy doing it.