digipeter

Where on earth does a nickname like digipeter come from? Why does this site exist and what is the meaning of life? And, probably the biggest question of all: who’s this bloke that keeps asking these silly questions?
This, ofcourse, is only a selection of the larger question in life, and I will attempt to answer them in a calm, gentle and grown-up way. Please bare withe me.

Who?

The name is Peter Baars, and I’m pleased to meet you. I’m an IT professional with experience in multiple lines of work, of which I find System Management and User-support to be the most interesting and fulfilling ones. Lucky for me, I found a job that combines these two functions at a local high school.

I’ve always been available for free-lance web design work, since creativity runs in the family and it needs as many ways out as possible. I’ve built my share of personal websites, fora and simple online games. I’m not a professional, but pretty fluent in PHP and MySQL, simply because of the years of experience. Over the years I’ve also become quite knowledgeable in a collection of CMS and other web-ready systems like WordPress, PHPBB, Joomla and Mediawiki.

As a hobby I build bicycles from scraps of metal and search for geocaches around the globe.

digipeter

So, where does digipeter come from. It’s a word that my colleague made up.

He’s so proud.

Well, I’m a proud Dutchman and we have quite a strange language. In this language, quite like in other languages actually, it’s possible to link up two words to make a whole new word with a whole new meaning! Apparently some people enjoy this fact so much, that they start naming their products in these combinations of words. There’s just no hope for some people.

Either way, at the school were I work (high-school ftw!) we had a student that suffered from a terrible affliction; Cancer. With, as you noticed, a Capital C. It doesn’t need explaining that, any way our school could help her, we did. Fortunately, this student was a terribly brave little girl, who wanted to follow classes and learn, even though her body protested against this, every step of the way.

We learned that a special system had been developed, especially made for ill children who wanted to keep up with their schoolwork. PCs, web cams and the Internet were all mixed together to make a live connection from any classroom to and from this student’s home. This system is called DigiBeter. (a Dutch word that roughly translates to DigiBetter, digitally better). My colleague, who I helped in supporting this system, put this name and my first name together and here we are.

The simplicity of the name cracked me up and that evening I reserved the domain name. Now it’s mine. Mine!

The Digibeter story ended tragically, with the poor brave girl’s departure. In the wake of this horrible fact, I hope that one day, the name digipeter will help someone just as much as the Digibeter did for this little girl.

digipeter.nl

This is my playground. On this world wide whoopee cushion of a web I needed my own place to play. Somewhere I could safely build PHP & MySQL sandcastles and bake my photoshop sandcookies, and be in no-one else’s way.

This little domain has had some different purposes, but mainly functions as my blog now. Some friends are kindly leeching off of my bandwith and have their own little subdomains. Glad to have them aboard, it’s so boring playing alone.

The meaning of life

Having fun.