I have a random fact generator on my website.
These fun facts are stored in jjv.sh/facts.txt Shh, don't tell anybody, then they could view all the facts! ;)
I enjoy playing piano! I was classically trained and now I just play and compose for fun. I can't read sheet music in real time so I play mostly by ear. I have released an album with my piano music, complete with a drawing for each song.
One time I was playing piano in a hotel lobby when someone asked me to play for him and his girlfriend, and then he proposed to her!
My favorite movie is The Incredibles.
My favorite color is blue. No, orange! No, purple! I'm indecisive...
Within the span of May-June 2019, my phone, laptop, and tablet all broke. I switched to a flip phone and a crappy laptop for about a year until I was able to get a better laptop and a PinePhone.
I used the PinePhone for about a year. It's open hardware and runs Linux (or almost any OS including Android or Windows, but why would you do that).
I've never been outside the United States. I came close when my family visited Maine and almost stepped over to Canada, but it would have been an extra 2 hour drive, so we decided against it.
My social security number is 015-68-3185. Just kidding! Or am I? Quick -- reload the page so no-one sees!
My favorite operating systems are Manjaro (installed on my laptop), GrapheneOS (on my phone), QubesOS (on my desktop), Ubuntu (on my servers), Kali (on a virtual machine), and Raspbian (on my Raspberry Pi boards). You give me freedom of choice, and I choose multiple!
Arch Linux was my valentine in 2016 (I installed it on Valentine's Day). I remember burning a CD and reading the Arch wiki to muddle my way through the install process. These days I am much lazier so I just install whatever works easiest.
One of my favorite tabletop games is Dominion, a deck-building strategy game. I own the base set and 10 expansion boxes.
When I was a baby, I turned orange because I ate too many carrots and sweet potatoes. It was... a UGE moment for me.
I love to create electronic games and projects with Arduino boards! My first big project was a Whack-A-Mole game inspired by the Make Magazine volume 24's "Zap-A-Mole."
I did FTC robotics in highschool on team 7393; I was the co-programmer. Go electron Volts!
My middle name is NOT Sebastian or Bach. My parents weren't that corny.
I have technically been living in a basement for the past 2 years. Whether that basement is fully furnished or is in fact 2 separate basements over that time period is up for speculation.
I have run a few D&D one-shot games and I wish I had time for more.
I still play Minecraft sometimes. These kids with their newfangled comparators and observer blocks put my old redstone contraptions to shame!
I almost played Fortnite once.
My favorite computer game as a kid was The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions. I can still play it, now using Wine on Linux -- glad we kept the CD!
My favorite computer game is Nethack, a roguelike from 1987 that is still being developed today. I have a 5 game win streak with a different class each game, despite death being permanent (no restoring to save points).
One of my favorite games is Teeworlds, a side-scrolling capture-the-flag first-person-shooter and-other-dashed-words game. I am currently the person on Odysee with the most views on Teeworlds videos.
I dabble in digital art with a Huion Kamvas 13 Pro. Sometimes I play Drawception to practice and have fun.
I try to use mostly free and open source software, for example Krita instead of Photoshop, Libreoffice instead of Microsoft Office, Nextcloud instead of Google Drive. It saves a lot of money and it's a joy to be free of the tech giants!
I use Xournal++ for note-taking -- you should try it if you have a drawing tablet or touchscreen laptop!
My siblings and I have been making and filming little skits and stories since we were young. We used to edit them on Windows Movie Maker (yikes!), but now I use Kdenlive and Shotcut and my brother uses DaVinci Resolve.
I don't drink coffee or tea (except sometimes iced tea). But recently I tried some Ethiopian coffee and it was good.
For my whole life, I have lived in Maryland. The longest period of time I've spent outside MD was 7 weeks in summer 2019, when I went on an immersive justice program in DC with the IV Christian Fellowship.
I have never invested in a pair of earbuds good enough that at least one of the two buds doesn't die within a few months. Right now I have a pair of old apple wired earbuds that someone gave me. Ironic that they can't even plug into an iPhone.
I have stopped buying water bottles because I just keep losing them. Instead I just buy a juice bottle and reuse it.
I carry around a USB with 15 different boot options, including some Linux distros, utilities, and backup software.
I always wish I had more time for things, but when I sometimes do, I waste it on things I hadn't wished I had time for, like writing these fun facts. (Although sometimes the unintended tasks are fun, like writing these fun facts.)
My Linux distro hop journey has been: Cygwin (on Vista family computer) → Ubuntu (my own desktop!) → Arch (after Ubuntu upgrade killed the OS) → Ubuntu (new laptop for college!) → Mint → Qubes → Manjaro → Pop!_OS → Mint → Ubuntu Studio → Manjaro → Arch (on new frame.work laptop) → Garuda → Manjaro → Ubuntu → Ubuntu Studio.
I am 1/4 Lebanese and 3/4 white as Swiss cheese.
My friend and I set up a Nextcloud server in my basement to replace Google Drive, Calendar, etc.
I was homeschooled until college. Every year, my family would start the first week of school at a remote cabin in the woods. As part of the trip, we always made the "cabin video," documenting the trip and including a skit that we came up with at the cabin and improvised props and costumes based on whatever we happened to have. Gems such as "Goldilocks and the 3 Campers," "Cabin Olympics," "Senior Survivors," "Stories from Summer Camp."
I was in Boy Scouts as a kid and one of the trips we went on was Philmont, a week of hiking, tomahawk throwing, climbing, and other activities.
My Mom tells me that when I was 18 months old, I put a 20-piece puzzle together really fast. Guess you could say I'm a prodigy, no big deal.
I recently graduated from UMD College Park with a Computer Engineering degree.
I changed the CAPS Lock key on my keyboard to be a Ctrl key to improve keyboard posture.
I use tiling window management (currently pop shell, but bismuth and i3 before that) for better productivity with keyboard shortcuts and efficient use of screen real estate.
I buy computer monitors from the thrift store for $10-$30 each and use them for desktop computers for me and my family/friends.
I am lucky enough to never have had a Facebook. Right when I was thinking I might cave and get one, the privacy revelations came out, and I decided to never sign up. I'm super glad, since they can be a pain to delete.
The first programming language I learned was Bash, from a book my Dad gave me called UNIX Shell Programming Revised Edition. The book was released in 1989 and I read it around 2009. I remember being fascinated by the fact that you could create a phonebook program to store all your contacts using files, and display them with cool ASCII art formatting. I still have the old programs I wrote.
My favorite programming languages in order are Python, Bash, Java, and C. One of my least favorites is PHP, although I did use it to make this site... (update: the site has been migrated away from PHP :)
I just started playing chess more seriously (on lichess) and I'm still terrible at it.
I learned the basics of how to salsa dance.
I created a streaming service called asciiradio for text and audio only, so I could stream from mobile data.
My Mom uses Linux Mint.
One of my favorite shows is Callisto 6, a tabletop RPG livestream show about superheroes in a cyberpunk setting.
I've been learning Golang and Elixir recently since I want to take advantage of concurrent programming.
I use Sonic-Pi to make music with code.
In 2021 there was a gap in my github commits, which suspiciously correlated to the months where I was the most unhappy and isolated during the pandemic. :[
I'm tired right now.
I can control my lights from my phone... with a janky servo attached to the light switch powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero.
I joined Mastodon in 2017 before it was cool. (It still isn't cool.)
I have played in a nethack relay race with the creator of Doki Doki Literature Club. The saga began when he transformed into a dragon and laid an egg. Then the save file was passed along to other streamers, including me eventually.