D-Man's WEB
About this page
D-Man's WEB is my home on the internet and my creative outlet. I started this site in january, not really having a concrete plan of what it would become. D-Man's WEB quickly became my free space. My online workshop where I can do whatever sparks my interest. I really like writing, so most of the stuff you find on this page are writings in one form or another. I enjoy researching and diving deep into dusty corners of the internet. This is how the Free Materials Exhibition and Old Net Stories projects came to be. Watching movies is my favorite past-time and I have some strong opinions about the film industry that my wife and real life friends are tired of hearing, so on the rotations page you will find the occasional review. Finally, D-Man's WEB is where I teach myself programming. My HTML and CSS skills are basic right now, but I hope to improve along the way. Getting the hang of Javascript is on my to-do list as well.
What else is there to know about me? Well, I don't want to get too specific, but I'm a thirty something, European and not a native English speaker. My interests are east asian cultures (mainly Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China), reading and writing about politics, sociology, tech and economy. My political leanings are progressive and socialist. My hobbies include swimming, trying out new restaurants and brewing a good cup of tea.
My online history
Here's an incomplete overview of online spaces I have occupied.
- Geocities When I was a teenager we finally got broadband internet at home and the first thing I wanted to to was make my own website. I made a Geocities account and built a Harry Potter fansite and I was super proud of, but probably didn't get a lot of views. Thinking back it was probably the most fun time to be on the internet. It was still the pre-social media age and he internet seemed like a magical place back then. I think it was because surfing the internet was a journey of discovery. You would find a Dragonball fansite and through the affiliates list stumble upon other cool friended sites.
- Active Worlds I also loved spending time in virtual worlds. Does anyone remember Active Worlds? I used to have an avatar there. I actually used to go online in the early morning before I had to go to school, but I enjoyed having the world to myself. I also loved participating in the worlds where you could build you own spaces. It had a very anarchic feeling to it.
- Tibia In my high school years I was more of a gamer and I enjoyed to play online games too. I played a lot of Tibia back then, an RPG that was already considered retro style back then, but is still around to this day. I loved travelling around that world. Had some crazy adventures with my IRL friends when we all played together and got killed by a dragon we thought we could handle. I spent a lot of time in the jungle of Port Hope, Tibia's main selling point to me was the vast world that seemed to be full of mysteries. Man, talking about it gets me exited to revisit it...
- Soldier of Fortune I also played a LOT of Soldier of Fortune. The first part that is. I have never been particularly good, or even interested in shooters. Played some Call of Duty and Counter Strike back in the day. But I really rocked at Soldier of Fortune. I just loved the fast pace of this game. The shotgun is way overpowered so playing SoF was largely about being able to run, jump and aim the shotgun simultaneously as good as you could. There was also this game style called Arsenal where each round you started playing with the strongest weapon and with each kill you'd get a weaker weapon. The final weapon was usually the knife and if you were the first to make a kill with the knife you would get a bunch of bonus points, after which a new round would start. I loved that game so much and I dominated it for a few years. Probably my only claim to video game fame.
- Reddit When I was a student I got on Reddit. Started for the rage comics, stayed for all the interesting communities. I became a moderator for a dead subreddit called /r/geopolitics because I wanted to learn more about this topic myself and I thought it was an underreported domain in the news. Under my moderation the sub grew from 800 to 30k subscribers. After a few years I left Reddit for personal reasons and gave up my mod position on the sub. Nowadays /r/geopolitics has grown to 650k subsribers and is a place where intelligent discussion about world events and the global power balance takes place. Now I don't want to overvalue my contribution, but I think I did lay the foundation necessary to turn it into a place where civilised discourse takes place. Where memes and trolls are not welcome. What I learned here is, that if you want constructive social media, you need good moderation.