About me

The person running this site is Wouter Bolsterlee, nickname uws.

I call myself a postmodern geek, which means I’m interested in modern computer technology, especially the stuff invented today that will be common tomorrow. I think technology should be open and free to use for anyone anywhere in the world, therefore I only use free software like GNOME and Linux. The geek part of this site contains computer related stuff.

Besides postmodern geek activities, I enjoy listening to classical and alternative music and watching arthouse cinema. Please read my blog to get a wider overview, since I regularly share my thoughts on the subjects that bother me there.

Contact

• Drop me a mail at uws (at) xs4all (dot) nl. PGP encrypted or signed mail is appreciated, spam is not.

• You may also try to contact me using Jabber to have a chat (though I’m not using it that much). My id is uws@jabber.xs4all.nl. Note that this is not my e-mail address.

  About this site

  uwstopia is my personal website. Right now it hosts my blog, photo gallery and some geek-related stuff.

  The name

  As you might have thought of already, the name comes from combining my nickname and the word utopia. This is my site, showing my thoughts, my vision, my world. My world of ideal perfection… :)

  The design

  I’ve been receiving a few positive comments on the graphical design used on this site. Thank you, I really appreciate it. The design is not that fancy or special, but feel free to read on for a short rationale.

  Most two-column layouts I see on the web use a small secondary column containing navigation and the like. I used a much larger secondary column, so that it’s possible to embed text that’s well legible and does not wrap after each word. It also allows for a medium-sized photo display. I’ve used the golden section ratio for the main column/secondary column ratio.

  I don’t like colors and contrast when there’s no reason to use them, so I used a small palette. Most colors are not fully saturated, so that they are easy on the eyes.

  The main text font is sans-serif, because that’s easier to read on-screen in small sizes. I’ve used red (the secondary color in traditional typography) serifed titles to introduce some contrast to the otherwise single-colored main column. Historically sans-serif was only ever used for display text, not for the body, but hey, this is the web era!

  Implementation details

• All code is written in Vim using a really outdated version of my rocking and very flexible web toolkit Anewt, written in PHP.
• Most data is stored in a MySQL database.

• Multiline text is formatted using the relatively easy to use Textile format.

Random photo from Crete (August, 2007)

Copyright

Unless stated otherwise, all material on this site is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.