About me

Personally

Child of the seventies, born as Jean-Jacques Halans in the region of Antwerp, BE. Oldest of one brother and two sisters. A happy youth, blabla. Skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, blabla. Playing guitar, blabla. Got into photography. <<fastforward>> Met this pretty girl in the summer of ‘93, fell in love. Got on the Internet in ‘95. Started making some money on it in ‘97. Blabla. Went to the US on holiday with the whole family in ‘98. Moved to Brugge in the beginning of ‘99. Survived Y2K. Got married in ‘02 in Sydney. Went to New Zealand on holiday in ‘03. Tumbled down under in ‘06.

Spend too much money on computer stuff (books, hardware, software, magazines,…), gadgets (iphones, DSLR, etc), 4K BR/home theater (Dolby Atmos) stuff, CDs iTunes/Beatport…

I like cooking, and eating (not so much yo-yo diets), watching movies (cinema, or at home), surfing the net, graphic and web design, photography, traveling, snorkeling. I hope to get started with surfing and diving (nah, that never happened).

Was involved with organising Barcamp Sydney (well yeah, it’s been a while), try to get some free Wifi going with Free Sydney Wireless, hack around with Microformats and Google Maps on Mapanui, love Sydney (https://gottalovesydney.com/), play with social reputation using ChatGPT, love taking the Sydney ferry, love Australian startups, love playing with AI generated images and LLM and prompt engineering, love our puppy.

Check me out

Music (90’s) I like (in no particular order):

  • Trentemöller
  • Underworld
  • Norah Jones
  • Buffalo Tom
  • Sonic Youth
  • Chris Whitley
  • Foo Fighters
  • Moloko
  • Bjork
  • Kyuss
  • Pixies
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • Nine Inch Nails
  • Afghan Whigs
  • Travis
  • Coldplay
  • Aqualung
  • Goldfrapp
  • Fat Boy Slim
  • Chemical Brothers
  • Ken Ishii
  • Buscemi
  • Sven Van Hees
  • Thievery Corporation
  • Ian Pooley
  • Massive Attack
  • UNKLE
  • and others…

Movie people I like (in no particular order):

  • Tarantino
  • Harvey Keitel
  • Samuel L. Jackson
  • Pixar Studios
  • Robert DeNiro
  • Rachel Weisz
  • Harrison Ford
  • Sam Mendes
  • Natalie Portman
  • Jean Reno
  • Edward Norton
  • Guy Pearce
  • Sci-Fi
  • and others…

Been there, done that: