(Jabuary 2003)

Me on 11th of December 2003, after about 2 hours of sleep.

I was born back in 1976, in the city of Rotterdam (2). After living there for a couple of years, my mother wanted to start a new business in a small town called Wateringen. So we moved to the village of Kwintsheul, a neighboring town to Wateringen. I went to the primary school in Wateringen. This is the place where I made contact with my first computer (when I was about 5), my dad did some computing work for my mom on a computer, and every time a new computer was needed I got the old one. A couple of years later I went to high school and started playing around with PC's (8088, etc.). For those of you who are interested in Family history, my dad has put together an entire family tree, which is also placed on this domain at: http://www.buiter.com/buiters/

On 12/31/2005 I got engaged with Ewa. She is wonderfull, and there is a great future ahead of us. As of February 16th 2006, we moved in together, in London. We first lived in Haringay in a 2x3 room, but as of March 12th we moved to Islington where we moved into a studio flat.

       Right now I'm a 29 year old Dutch student, in the fields of Economics. I only have to finish my thesis at this moment. My thesis is about "Information warfare in the port of Rotterdam", a very interesting field of research, which gives me great new insights in lots of fields, ranging from crime, terrorism, port economics, information warfare, etc.
       In my spare time I read books on Information security, and try to keep up with the latest events in the information security field, when I can make some time available. Besides reading those books I also read for my own pleasure, books on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and also regular literature. I started trying to write a SF book in May 2001, thought this would be fun to do, we shall see what comes of it. In August 2001 I tried a second time, a new book, but without succes as yet. Not really set it through, let's see if we can change that in the future, and actually finish a book. Whilst writing my thesis i noticed how much i like writing. :-) Besides these activities I'm also trying to enrich my life, by reading books on alternate subjects, such as different languages, Physics, History, etc.
     Besides that I also enjoy cycling, since the Tour de France 2001 I restarted cycling quite intensely. Since august 21 2001 I had to discontinue this for a period, due to a knee injury. But at this very moment I'm trying to get up to speed again. On the 17th of may 2002 I had a bike accident in which my bike got broken, so I had to wait 6 weeksuntil my new bike was available. since the summer of 2004 i have not had much oppertunity to go much cycling, but hope to change that soon.

I've been working with computers since the early 1980's, I started of on the TRS-80. The Tandy Model III, TRS-80, had newdos/80 as OS, at least that is what I had. The Tandys were sold by 'Radio Shack', a electronics store. My next computer was a Tulip 8088 with a 20 MB Hard Disk and 640 Kb RAM, quite an improvement over the previous computer. Within a year of that I bought myself a Sound Blaster Pro, which back then cost about $220. Within some time from that I got a new PC a Tulip 8086 running at 8 Mhz, not much better than the previous one, except for the bigger harddisk, about 40 MB. Some time later we went from that to an AST 386/20 with 4 MB RAM, and if I recall correctly it had a harddisk of about 120 MB. A couple of years later I went to a Tulip 486/66 with a 320 MB harddisk and a Sound Blaster 16. I worked with a DELL Pentium 200 MMX, 64 MB RAM 10.4 GB, from 1997 till april 1999. I  have a webcam, so more pictures will be made available. Have bought a new motherboard and processor in may, am up to 400 Mhz now, with 128 MB of RAM. In May 2000 I upgraded the RAM to 192 MB. Later in 2002, I once againupgrade my memory to 320 MB. In Februari 2004 I bought a KVM switch, so that I could use multiple of my computers, with only one set of controls. Quite Handy. In March 2004 I bought a network switch, so that I can link al my computers together, quite handy. I intend to use one of my PC's as a router between my internet connection and my homenetwork. In May 2004 I bought a newer computer a 2.8 Ghz Pentium4, with 120 GB HD, and 512 MB RAM.  in November i bought some extra RAM, so that I now have 1 GB or RAM.

During most of my earlier computer time I used MS-DOS, I still like to work with it, I switched to Windows 95 in July 1997. In August 1998 I switched to Windows 98, an improvement but still full of bugs. I installed LINUX as a Secondary OS on 10/15/1998. Try to keep up to date on the latest version with linux, I have now been using Red Hat 5.1- 9.0 . I replaced all the installations of Red-Hat with Fedora Core's, and on my main PC i now run Windows XP.
     My computer work consisted of gaming and surfing the web, but in the beginning I did some small basic programming on the TRS-80, after which there were a couple of years of silence, and right now I'm trying to learn C++, Perl, and Visual Basic 5.0-6.0. Visual Basic has advanced to the level where i can make my own simple programs, complex procedures will come.

Back in 1994 I got so involved with a BBS that at some point in time the sysop asked me to become his co-sysop, but since I was still in high school and living at my parents' place I discussed this with them and decided against this, to my disappointment. Since this I've been out of the computer scene for some time but since about January 1998 I'm getting back into the computer scene, since August this has been backed by a change in field of study which I've been into. Right now I'm reading quite a number of books about, amongst others, Computer security..
    In september 1998 I joined the search for Mersenne prime numbers, but abandoned this after a few weeks. In May 1999 I joined the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence @ Home. Both these projects are examples of distributed networking, this makes it possible for large projects to be distributed over many users, thus reducing the cost for the organization that runs it. I quit running Setiathome back in may 2004, my computer kept overheating.

   In Februari 2004 I joined Orkut, a networking site. Quite intriguing.  A while later i joined Hyves, Hi5 and friendster to.

     I 'm still in to gaming, with games such as Arcanum, Quest for glory, Command and Conquer,  Age of Empires, Deus Ex, etc. The amount of time invested into gaming has decreased with time. I try to put more time into friend, literature, my studies and cycling. Since August 2005 I have been playing WOW.  

    I started this homepage back in December/November 1997, but didn't do much with it, but since about September 1998 I've been keeping it under constant development and try to update it as often as possible. As you can see I acquired my own domain, back in january 1999: www.buiter.com.

   My online gaming activities included games such as Planetarion, and Mankind. I used to be a citizen in ActiveWorlds, a set of VR worlds. In one of those worlds, AlphaWorld, I was building my own village. Nice place to be, maybe you should try it once. I was also into online games such as Mankind. Mankind was quite nice, I enjoyed it, but also enjoyed helping others get started in it. Mankind is a big world, where you build space and land bases, trade in ships and resources, and fight the occasional war. I've been doing a different online game as well: Utopia, which is quite cool. It is a game quite similar to Planetarion, but then again it is quite different. Back in january 2004 i started playing Lineage 2, which i enjoyed a lot. Since september 2004 I've joined the universe of Starwars Galaxies, which i enjoy very much, and I'm finaly about to become a jedi. these last 2 games are  MMORG games.

   At the moment I 'm studying at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Holland. Progress is being made, slowly, but I'll get there eventually. I started of studying Economics (back in 1996), but from 1998 I also do Computing & Economics , an entirely new line of study combining both fields of study. But despite doing two studies my main field of study stays Economics. In June 2001 I got my P, the first degree you get with your studies, and now the final degree is my next goal. My plan is to finish my studies in the third quarter of 2005. 
   Whilst studying I became a member at a students' society, GAUDIUM . During the college year 97-98 I was the head of the Bar Commission (Bar as in Beer, etc.) quite an experience, but time consuming. At Gaudium I'm also a member of the club called "Mort Subite". During the year 1999-2000 I'm was member of the board of Mort Subite (old link). As of 2000 or so, I'm no longer quite so active within Gaudium. In october 2004 i finally was able to become an old-member of Gaudium At the moment of this writing i've requested my change of status in Mort Subite to that of bijzonder-lid.
 

  In my spare time besides computing I read Sci-Fi books, mostly by:
 

David Brin Lisanne Norman Margaret Weis William Gibson Debra Doyle James D. Macdonald

Harry Turtledove Rick Shelley C.J. Cherryh Bernard Cornwell Etc.

       In my spare time I also like to go cycling,this is a real pastime over here in Rotterdam. Lance Armstrong has really inpired me, with his victory in 2001, to take my cycling to a slightly higher level.
 

         I also started my own company in february 1999, using the brand names 'Buiter CompuCom' and 'Buiter.Com', which develops web pages, gives computer consultancy, Information Security and IW consultancy, etc. At the end of 2000 I discontinued my business, so that I could put more time into my studies. Has been a nice experience, but still.
 

         As of september 2001, I'm a student assistent at my university. From September entil December 2001 I was an assistent for the course of ICT. From December 2001 til March an assistent for the course of "Databases A". since March I was an assistant for 2 courses, "ICT", and "Verdiepings ICT". But since June 2002 I'm only an assistant for ICT and am putting together the course material for the next course-year. Did that work for ICT until about the start of december, when I and a colleague had to put together exams for ICT. Now, since december 2003, I've worked on "Databases A" once again, this lasted until about march 2003. From March Till June I was Head Assistent for 'Verdiepings ICT', Whilst In the mean time I and a college were both Head Assistent for ICT, which we still are right now. My position had been extentde until December 2005. After that I'll need to get a part-time job somewhere else, whilst putting the final dots on my studies. ;-)