About Me

I was born on November 3rd, 1977 in Düren, a city in the German federal state of Northrhein-Westphalia between the cities of Cologne and Aachen. There, I also received my schooling and performed my civilian service. At the age of 21, I moved to Aachen to study computer science. Only recently, I graduated from university.

Computer Science
    Initially, my first home computer - a Commodore C64 - sparked my interest for this field. After several years of experimenting (and writing my first programs in Basic) with this machine, I switched to an Amiga 500. This machine was equipped with an entire megabyte of RAM thanks to a memory expansion - so 64K was not enough after all - and a second floppy drive. The Amiga was replaced by my first IBM-compatible PC (with a 80486 CPU) after another couple of years. Meanwhile, I also use Apple computers.

    In school, I was provided with the opportunity to attend a computer science course at the age of 16. I learned about the basic concepts of programming and procedural development in this course by means of the programming language Pascal. Unfortunately, the course had to be canceled two years later due to low participation. Computers also played an important role in my civilian service: In a hospital, I was involved in the IT-based management of medical records.

    Motivated by this development and my growing interest, I began my studies of computer science at the RWTH Aachen University in late 1998. Here, the entire spectrum of the subject became clear to me for the first time. My focus, however, quickly shifted to the field of software engineering that is concerned with all aspects of software development. Accordingly, I orientated my study towards that field.

    Towards the end of my studies, my other interest - using music software (see below) - guided me to the Media Computing Group. I developed a software system that enables musically inexperienced people to participated in a jazz session at this chair in the course of my diploma thesis. At the same time, I was also able to gain some experience in the field of HCI and designing user interfaces. In the future, I would like to furthermore participate in the development of MIDI and audio software, as well as other multimedia projects.

Music
Music has also been a big interest of mine since very early in my life. My first approach to making and performing music was a course on playing a wooden flute during my time in elementary school. Motivated by this course, I went to the "Musikschule Düren" - the music school of my hometown - to look for a suitable instrument to study. Eventually, I chose the organ, which I studied for several years. I still have some sleight of hand and a limited ability to read notes left from that time.

    After having consumed music only passively for a few years, I discovered computer-based music as a new form of expression for myself. I composed my first original songs using my first soundcard (a Gravis Ultrasound) and different trackers, which I still like to use once in a while. Over the following years, I switched soundcards a few times - first, I bought a Terratec EWS 64, which was replaced by an M-Audio Delta 66 some years later. This also allowed me to get to know different applications: sequencers such as Cubase and Logic, as well as sample editors like Soundforge.

    At the end of 2003, I joined the band Remove Before Flight, which had been created by a couple of university friends. In this band, I approached the microphone in public for the first time to sing and rap. Only recently, I started to play some simple parts on the keyboard in some songs.