About me

Hey I'm Dan! I like computers and all things computing! I'm a certified Computer electronics technician, and I am currently a second-year student taking computer engineering at NTNU in Trondheim.

Early life

I have been interested in computers for as long as I can honestly remember, and have been using linux based distributions as my personal choice for operating systems since the 7th grade.
I took an edx course in introduction to computer science (CS50) in secondary school, where I was introduced to C as my first "real" text based programming language (Until then I had worked mostly in LabView-like languages like robolab, and scratch, with small amounts of bash).

I was in a club programming LEGO mindstorms and competing in FIRST LEGO LEAGUE since I was 11 till I was too old to compete, where I then transitioned into an instructor role.
This experience proved useful when I taught children how to program during my local makerspace's summer school, and later as an outside instructor for an elementary school.

Videregående

Of course I was also active in this aforementioned makerspace Horten Folkeverksted where I had the role of infrastructure-responsible and sat on the board of directors.
I held presentations during our yearly event "Sommer:hack". Holding talks about Matrix, Nix, and also being responsible for hosting the CTF competition, and an introduction to "ethical hacking".

I took electrical engineering in high school and specialized into "computers and electronics" where I learned a lot about electronic components and also got to dabble with programming microcontrollers. I'm hoping to post about the big project we did that year at some point, but cutting it short, we made a big rubix-cube out of RGB LEDs, 3D-printing, and steel.
In my third year I was the leader for our youth company, which did electronics repair (but mostly helped pentioners with their computers). I was also on the board of the student council.

University

After I moved to Trondheim I joined Drift at Programvareverkstedet, where we maintain an extremely large amount of legacy infrastructure (Our DNS-server is a MicroVAX II from 1985) - But also have a lot of fun!
I've held a course in NixOS and managed to convert a fair few to using nix for their projects. I've become Drift's coordinator, and am responsible for our matrix-server.

I had a brief stint with hackerspace-ntnu, AbelLAN, and am a member of Omega Verksted

I live with a lot of people (>100!), and have a senior role as responsible for our email lists, networking, website and internal tools.

I see myself as someone who has fairly deep knowledge about a very broad set of topics in computing. Especially on the linux front and general programming.
What I lack in formal education I like to think I make up in experience! I've dipped my toe in so many things that it's hard to mention everything!

Hobbies

In my spare time I maintain my own infrastructure which has gone through many a variation but has settled on a NixOS based config. Through this homelab I maintain and host most of the services I use day to day.

I of course also program in my spare time, making software that scratches whatever itch I might have. In the most recent years I have worked mostly on infrastructure as code via NixOS (writing modules), and making and maintaing packages. But I've also done some small things like writing a distributed video encoding service for AV1, and a couple of matrix bots.

My favorite programming language is Rust, but I really want to learn Haskell as well.

Of course I play video games, though mostly Minecraft and Dota 2!
I enjoy listening to music, watching movies and Anime, and playing boardgames.

Bonus point if you know what my avatar refers to!

Featured Projects

I'm also an active contributor to nixpkgs where I've:

Contact Information

e-mail: daniel.olsen99@gmail.com
matrix: @dandellion:dodsorf.as, URI
IRC: Dandellion on libera.chat, OFTC, og IRCNet
XMPP: dandellion_dodsorf.as@matrix.org

Other platforms

You can find me on github, linkedin