When I was younger I was a technology geek, a first adopter, I had to try everything new out immediately. Not just try, own. When I was in the US in the late 90s, Apple had just come out with the Newton Message Pad and of course I bought a Newton MP 110 for myself as take hope present. I then swapped that for a MP130, and then bought the MP2000 when it came out. I bought all sort of gadgets, like keyboards, interface cards, etc. I remember getting the fax function to work in Indonesia, where I was living at the time, and I just got this ecstatic feeling. I just loved the Newton, also its handwriting recognition, even though almost anybody else complained about it. Then Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and one of the first things he killed was the Newton product line. I remember reading something he supposedly had said: “Apple build computers, and computers have keyboards.” I then moved to the Palm platform, started programming for it, upgraded devices all the time, until HP bought Palm and ruined it.

I spent around 1-2 days every month fixing the four Windows computers of our family, or in computer shops to buy additional devices or gadgets so that they would do what I wanted. Until I got fed up with the rat race and switched the whole family to Apple. Since then, not a single day wasted on fixing messed up computers, except for two day recently, but that was because my former employer had accidentally deleted my Google Documents and I had to try to restore stuff, so user error, not crap technology was the cause.

Since a few years i am back to the basics. I started doing paper diaries again. Make sure I have printed records of some sort of important things. I ride various motorbikes, all without electronics, with technology that I can understand and fix myself. Same with boats, we build a Wharram, one of the most basic boat designs.

On this pages you will find some of those basic technologies, also iconic ones, and those that influenced my life. The big additional challenge is now to make technology use have less impact not he climate.