... in which we complete our journey, because our hero has to go and watch the latest episode of Breaking Bad.
Heinz Ekker
Institute for Theoretical Chemistry Vienna
Waehringer Strasse 17
1090
Austria
Can also be used to come and visit me sometimes.
email:hekker@tbi.univie.ac.at
google+:https://plus.google.com/117246353924064261925/about
facebook:http://www.facebook.com/h3kker
flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/58546156@N05/
skype:h3kker
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Things I have worked with and feel comfortable around, mostly in descending order.
Perl, bash, SQL, Processing, R, PHP, Java, Javascript/HTML/CSS, python, C, C++
Web, application, framework, database and algorithm development
Linux, MacOS X, FreeBSD, Solaris
PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL
Apache, bind, exim, sendmail, routing, firewalls
Things I really, really don't feel comfortable around to the point of running away screaming at the mere mention: Windows.
I can stay mostly upright on a variety of bicycles and I love my single speeds, modern race bike, vintage race bike, touring bike, mountain bike. Have a masochistic tendency to ride up every mountain that does not move out of the way fast enough. Notable: Rode the Pyrenees from the Mediterrenean to the Atlantic in 2005, and the Alps from Nice to Vienna in 2009.
Might still just sit on a bike and don't stop until I reach the far end of Asia.
Write in short, intense bursts from time to time. Published a satirical cycling blog for Kurier Online (Austrian newspaper) from 2008 to 2009. Wrote some Tour de France coverage for the same in 2010.
Other sanctioned publications eluded me, although my travelogues and blogs related to cycling can still be found on the interwebs. Have a short novel in the drawer about a unnamed young person trying to find himself and his way in the world. In the end, he has found none of the two. Neither have I.
Pointing and shooting with Olympus E-P1, Olympus E-300 dSLR, Polaroid Image II, Iphone4. Can click randomly in Aperture until the pics look like every other digital pic out there. Dedicated amateur, basically.
Love cinema, books, music, televison series. Like everybody else out there. But as a nerd, this love looks a little like obsession. Which it is.
Make a mean coffee. Can snowboard.
Also don't spit at walking up mountains or around arty museums, sitting next to watery surfaces like rivers, lakes and oceans, packing a huge backpack and going to foreign countries where the people talk strange and the food smells funky and doing the three things mentioned in the first part of this long sentence there instead of in Vienna.
Born 29th July 1977 in Scheibbs, Lower Austria
Grew up there. Well, as much as you can. It's a small place. Visited primary and secondary school.
1991: Short stint in St. Poelten, HTL for Informatics. Puberty got in the way.
From 1992 to 1997 HAK (which translates to "commercial academy", which sounds quite grand). Learned to type with 10 fingers there. Highlights: District champion typist in 1996, I think. Also student counsel president and vice president for another year.
Moved to Vienna, tried to study comparative literature, english and international economics. Nobody seemed to like me there, so I quit.
Started working in 1998 at Netway (Internet Service Provider) during the dot.com-bubble, back when "Know how to switch on a computer" was qualification enough for technical customer service. Learned Linux, programming, database & network administration and all that other stuff pretty fast there and was declared Unix admin junior guru after a year. Well, I knew my way around computers since I was about 8 thanks to my brother, but who doesn't like a from-rag-to-riches-story?
System administration (actually: Systems Engineering) at Netway (ISP) for another couple of years. Highlights: Search engine for Austrian websites, mail system for several thousand customers of various online platforms of Netway, pretty disappointed about the whole anticlimactic Y2K thing, though.
Netway bought by UTA in 2001. Continued to do the same work for new corporate overlords. Highlights: UTA customer mail system with approx. 300.000 users, built entirely, as I usually do, with open source components. Later on: Java programmer, development of the customer care web interface.
Social service: Compulsory for a year back then. Unless you went to the army, which was not even an option for so many reasons. So I spent 2003 at the Protestant Refugee Counselling Center in Traiskirchen and Vienna.
2004: Fed up with corporate overlords in general, changed to the University of Vienna, as a Perl programmer. Programmed Perl until Oct 2010. Highlights: I programmed Perl.
From 2006 to 2010 I studied Bioengineering (focus on Bioinformatics) at the FH Campus Wien. They seemed to like me better there, so I graduated.
2010: Diploma thesis at the TBI (Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, University of Vienna): Automated Extraction of Graph Rewrite Rules from Biochemical Reactions, dealing with Metabolic Networks, Atom Mapping, Graph Grammars, Artificial Chemistries.
Oct. 2010: Started as a junior (ahem) PhD student at the TBI.