Maarten van Gompel

I'm a Dutch guy with a wide variety of interests. Most prominently are languages & techology. I really love languages and I try to learn and speak as many as I can. My focus is mostly on latin languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French. I also speak Esperanto, and have been trying to learn Russian, Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, although with limited success. I'm also interested in linguistics, the deeper research of how language works and how languages relate.

I am currently a PhD student and programmer in Natural Language Processing, working with technologies such as Machine Translation and Spelling checking. I also co-founded UniLang, an online community for language enthusiasts.

My favourite operating system is Linux and I'm a big supporter of open-source software and open-standards. My tools of the trade are mostly Python and C++. Web-development using Django, xhtml, css, AJAX, jquery also interests me.

Some of my further interests are philosophy and psychology, with a special interest in Buddhism, zen, and Buddhist meditation practise, which I try to do as well. I'm also an amateur piano player.

My political views are socially progressive, liberal, strongly pacifistic, pro-green, non-authoritarian. I support a free market economy, but oppose the current unbridled consumerism/materialism and our unsustainable debt-based economies and fiat currencies.

I live in the city of Eindhoventogether with my boyfriend and cat.

If this page hasn't given you enough information about me yet, you can visit my homepage athttp://anaproy.nl/proycon

--proycon