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Time-stamp: <2023-04-27 22:09:53 MEST>
(CW: Eye contact! A pale, white male with shaved head, black glasses and a white goatee in a black hoodie with a stylized red star with a keyboard on top.)
An old (1997) photo of me as text.
My name is Michael Cardell Widerkrantz, "MC" to most people. He/him.
Slightly neurodivergent. Anarchist/libertarian socialist. Vegan. Zen buddhist. Hacker. Chaotic good.
Applied researcher and programmer at Tillitis, a small company that produces security hardware.
Lives in Malmö in the south of Sweden with my wife Petra and our kid. My two grown kids Ludvig and Gabriel have moved out.
Ludvig's band Dimhall's Bandcamp.
Some important things: human and animal liberation, music, books, writing, programming, Emacs, access to source code, hackerdom, retrocomputing, mechanical keyboards, swords.
I was born and grew up in the vicinity of Hudiksvall in the north of Sweden. I discovered computers and programming in 1981 but couldn't afford a computer of my own until 1985 when I bought a horrible Commodore Plus 4 for a bargain.
The Plus 4's only saving grace was that it had sound and graphics commands in the BASIC, which the C64 didn't, and that it had a machine code monitor built in. I got rid of it after six months and got a PC with MS-DOS, then a Luxor ABC 1600 with a *nix, later a Sun 3/60 with another *nix, a Sun SPARCstation ELC, and on it goes.
I was bullied through compulsory school but somehow managed to survive. Computers, books and music helped. In upper secondary school (USAian highschool) I completed some courses ahead of time to get more time with computers. Like it says in the Kraftwerk song: "It's more fun to compute!"
More or less by chance I moved to Linköping in 1991, ostensibly to study at Linköping University (BA 1994), then discovered the Lysator computer club where I learned much more than during lectures. I also met my first wife Helena, had some kids, got my first real job and ended up spending a surprisingly long time there.
Helena, the kids, and myself lived for a few years in a large collective house complex (4 houses!). We experimented with polyamory, then separated. I moved to a shared flat, The T1 Collective, then back to Helena, and we had a poly on-and-off thing going for a while. We later formed The Area 41 Collective shared flat together with some friends. We called it Area 41, after Area 51, and our address, number 41 on the street. We were all aliens, in a way, not quite fitting in. Four adults, two kids, and 18 computers!
During 2001--2002 I lived for a chaotic year in Gothenburg, then back to Area 41. In 2004 I moved with my new wife Petra and the kids to Malmö in the south of Sweden, again more or less by chance.
For work background you can look at my CV on the web:
Like Andrew Eldritch says, "Books are the best technology there is". We have at least eleven bookcases full of SF&F and arcana of everything from politics, medicine, history, linguistics, computer science to conspiracy theories and scientific scepticism, and all things in-between.
I listen to a lot of music. I'm fond of saying I'm an old punk that somehow discovered electronic music. I mostly listen to a lot of industrial, dark/cold wave, neofolk and other vaguely gothy stuff, but also a lot of classical music and, yes, some punk.
Doing an Andrew Eldritch impersonation, or, well just an ordinary Thursday.
(A very pale, white male with shaved head, white thin goatee, sunglasses, a black t-shirt with the text "OpenBSD.amsterdam".)
As you can probably guess, computers are one of my main interests. I'm especially interested in operating systems, networking and systems software especially with a focus on computer security and trusted computing but also minimalist user interface design and typesetting.
I have re-occuring episodes of retro-computing, where I typically read about or try out some more or less forgotten CPU architecture, operating system or programming language.
I probably spend too much time with my computers. I try to limit the tube time by not having a TV set and working part time (32 hour week), so I can spend time with my family, my books, my bikes, and my sword. It's usually hopeless, though, and I end up in front of a screen more often than not.
I practise in the German school of historical longsword fighting (HEMA) at Malmö Historiska Fäktskola (MHFS) since a few years. Slowly getting better. I also train at a gym and bike everywhere on minimalist bicycles.
Here's one of my swords:
Photo of a HEMA training sword, a Federschwert.
This is The Goth Bike, a 46:16 singlespeed I use in the city:
Photo of a matte black minimalist singlespeed bicycle with drop handles.
A long time ago I practised aikidō. And even further back in time I practised judo.
I'm very fond of downhill skiing both in and off piste. Not much of that here in southern Sweden, though, but I usually get about 20 days of skiing per season.
I have been practising zazen since 1988. This probably makes me a (rather secular) zen buddhist.
Until 1991 I was a member of the Northern Lights sangha in Hudiksvall, at the time loosely affiliated with the Diamond Sangha network of Robert Aitken roshi.
In 1991 I started and maintained the mailing list Universal Zendo until I left it in better hands in the mid-90s.
While being religious in a way, I also enjoy a healthy scientific scepticism. As a friend once said: “New age rhymes with sewage”.
After many years as an ovo-lacto vegetarian I started to follow a vegan lifestyle in 2004.
To quote the british Vegan Society:
Veganism is a way of living that seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to,animals for food, clothing and any other purpose.
This means I don't eat meat (including fish), dairy, eggs or anything that comes from animals or is harvested from animals. It also means I try to avoid the use of leather and other byproducts of slaughter or the keeping of animals.
My political leanings are toward libertarian socialism or, if you like, classical European anarchism.
I have a history as a non-violent libertarian socialist activist beginning in a punk environment in the 1980s. One of the most notable achievements is co-founding the Spunk Library text archive in 1992.
As a pacifist and antimilitarist I was a conscientious objector when drafted into the Swedish armed forces. Looking back a few years later, I wrote an amusing text about it. In Swedish, I'm afraid.
