About
Introduction
Status Name Hyper.nl Age 29 Gender Male Location Middelburg, The Netherlands Study
I graduated intermediate vocational education in system administration and economics and got my bachelor's degree in computer science and business administration.Job
I'm working as sysadmin at a medium sized organisation, some tasks include: backup, hard/software installation, server management, troubleshooting and some end-user support.A few keywords and pet peeves:
Simplicity. We live in a world where we are surrounded by complex processes, technologies and relationships. In this world, I like to have simplicity. Simplicity is the power to go back to the basics of a principle. Or to split complex matter into simple basics. To not talk bullshit but understandable language. NOT: "If you can't convince them with arguments, dazzle them with bullshit." Unfortunately, this still happens a lot, especially in ICT.Usability / User-friendliness. Okay, this is a pet peeve of me. If you ever had a crash with Unreal you'll get an example how it should NOT be. What the hell were the folks at Epic thinking when designing this error handling? What does this error message say to the average end-user? Exactly. Nothing at all. What the error really should read, is that the game crashed, why it crashed and how to get support. Add a button called technical details which shows the crash log. Really, it is not that hard for a professional coder. Some companies (Microsoft) are slowly but surely learning it: to have the user in mind.
Technology. I love technology, especially computer technology. Technology is today's magic, and the performers are my heroes. It's fascinating to see how things like microprocessors, graphics accelerators, harddisks and soundcards are continuously getting better and better - at lower costs.
IT-projects. It is interesting to see how these develop. For some reason, these projects are so hard that almost each of them ends up with delays, cancellation or simply does not fit with the wishes of the customer / end user. This is usually true for hobby projects, professional game development and even corporate IT projects. This does not mean by any means that I disrespect the developers, they are really working hard. It's more something in the complex nature of these projects, which require both highly technical skills as social skills, and most people are only specialised in one of them.
Security/privacy. These are important issues, especially on the internet. While we're making some great advances in security, we are losing terrain massively on the matter of privacy. Our surfing is logged, our phones can be tapped and more and more our behavour ends up in large databases we don't even know about. For example, every piece of paper printed by a colour laser printer is marked with it's serial number. Nice against the copying of banknotes, but already being used in China to arrest people who oppose the government. In my country, both car traffic (rekeningrijden - pay-per-mile on the most freeways) as public transport (OV-chipkaart) are planned to be monitored. In a few years, every travel may end up in "the database". Internet and phone connection logs are being recorded and kept for several years. Everything is being done for the so-called security and convenience. At this moment, we can trust our government quite a bit, at least in my country. But these technologies aren't going away. With every step further we increase the risk that it once will be used for other purposes. Hitler would be delighted if he had access to the personal records and profiles we keep today. And still hardly anybody seems to care, most people are saying "I don't have anything to hide". Well, call me a bit paranoid, but I want to ask you: is this really what we want...? Something to think about.
Interests
Gaming
Apart from Unreal I've got a long interest in gaming. Everything started with Doom and Doom II which gave my first virtual world to roam in. Quickly followed by Raven's Hexen and Heretic. Especially the mystical environments of Hexen bound me to the game for a long time. After some time I moved one to Quake 1 and Hexen II. These provided nice engine improvements over the Doom generation, but the first generation 3D technology often lacked detail in comparison to the old sprite technology of Doom.Unreal was released. At the moment of the release I could not play it because my (my parents') computer was not able to run it, and I did not have money for my own system. But when I saw the Unreal flyby in a local computer shop (Demonstration of the Voodoo2 card) I was absolutely stunned. I really stood there for like 30 minutes, enchanted by the spell of the game. Fortunately, I soon got the opportunity to get a brand-new Pentium III rig. To conclude Unreal: It altered my reality...forever.
I also like to play Heroes of Might and Magic, a turn-based strategy game. I've been playing Heroes II a lot and now I'm at Heroes III. It really is a rich and balanced strategy game with a great gameplay. Heroes III is wonderful when playing multiplayer.
My current love is with a MMORPG (Online multiplayer role playing game),
Guild Wars. I like to explore the huge continents, build a character and achieve titles of honour for extraordinary in-game targets. Guild Wars has a virtual economy which at itself is worth a study. Because I always played FPS games, this kind of environment gives many new degrees to my gaming experience. But a big disadvantage is that everything is closed. You can't host servers, make maps or mods. There is not such a community as I know from Unreal where almost everyone contributes in some way. Therefore, Unreal will always keep me interested.
A few screens:
My main character is an Elementalist (Mage) and has 15 titles at the maximum level. ("I'm Very Important") My secondary character is a ranger. See my
Television
I mostly watch news, documentaries and infotainment. From time to time I also enjoy some comedy or a good movie. Channels include: Dutch public broadcasters, RTL (Dutch RTL), National Geographic channel, Discovery Europe and sometimes BBC World. However, I don't spend too much time watching TV.Music
Mostly game and movie soundtracks is what I listen, but also a wide range of pop, rock, metal, rap sometimes dance/trance/euro and a small amount of classical etc. As you see I'm not limited to any style. Anything with a good melody and flow goes, no matter if it is loud, soft, happy, moody, aggressive etc. Music I do not like is Jazz and RMB. (Annoys me)
Stuff of legends: Within Temptation, Nirvana, Enya, some of Metallica's work, Dune and Snap's "Rythm is a Dancer". The Unreal soundtrack, Gladiator movie soundtrack, Guild Wars (Factions) soundtrack, Heroes II and III soundtracks. Tyrian's music. (Yep, sounds best on the oldskool OPL3 synth.) and of course Nobuo Uematsu's legendary work. (Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger etc.)Internet
Apart from all the gaming sites and Unreal forums where you can find me, here I have some interesting links:
SeeMy 'idols'
Unreal Profile
I started playing Unreal in 1999. I started with the nick HyperSniper, but because everyone called me Hyper, I renamed to Hyper.nl. (.nl is the country code of the Netherlands).
For years, I only played Deathmatch online, until I started to play some coop too. Now, I play almost any Unreal game type, like DM, Coop, Crystal Castles, Monstermash, King of the Hill, Serpentine, Inf DM and U4E. I still like to start playing some RealCTF, but there are no servers and/or players usually.
Some of my favourite maps are: DM: DMRadikus, DMAriza, DMZeitkind Pro (and many variations), DMRushCity, DMObserveatory COOP/SP: Chizra/Ceremony, SpireVillage, The Sunspire, Skytown, the 'Extreme-' level, ShamuQuest, Strange World and Tentacle Hunter's map pack.
Update: Too many good maps to mention them all here :)In January 2003 I started my coop server, with some help of Joss Liu and others. Later Winged Unicorn allowed me to be beta tester of his new MonsterCoop game type. This allowed me to run one of the first MCoop servers, and allowed Winged to have some more development time. Around that time, Boodaflow showed me his impressive Aura mod, which was added to the server a few weeks later. In 2004, an experiment with custom maps was not a success, because many players were not willing to download them. The server was also upgraded to MCoop2 with AKMCoop2, together with Aura and some server tools. In January 2005 an internet upgrade allowed me to run two additional servers: HyperDM (Deathmatch in Hyper's style) and Crystal Castles. The additional bandwidth also allowed me to set up a server with custom maps again, this time in parallel with the normal coop server. Now there are two HyperCoop servers, both running Zombie's JCoopZ and the other mods like Aura.
My goal with this website is to:
- Provide a great gaming experience at my servers.
- Be a helpful factor for the Unreal community.
- Collect information and software which are useful.
- Help interested community members to find it's way in the Unreal community, order information from many sources.
- Provide relevant news from the development community.
- Be a stable factor.
Here are a few player stats of me. (I hope the links work, CSports can be quite slow or buggy from time to time, and they do a lot of maintenance) I can also be that one or more of the game types give no details, because I haven't been tracked for some time.
Global ranking CSports Best rank: 1 CSports Best rank: 44 CSports Best rank: 65 CSports Best rank: 23 CSports Best rank: 6 CSports Best rank: 5 CSports Best rank: 201 CSports Best rank: 835 CSports Best rank:
My computers
Server:
HyperServer 2008+
- AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ dual core (S939, 2.4GHz, 2x 1MB L2 cache)
- ASUS A8N-SLI (nForce 4 SLI)
- 4096 MB DDR400
- ATI Radeon x1550
- 2x 250 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD's (RAID 1)
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 edition
- Gigabit ethernet
- Remote management, anti virus, firewall and intrusion detection system.
Workstation:
Click
My town
The medieval town of Middelburg is the capital of the Dutch province of Zeeland (Sealand).
In Middelburg the world's first multinational (V.O.C.) had several offices and warehouses. The ships for the V.O.C. (United Dutch East Indies Company were made in Middelburg (and Amsterdam). The V.O.C. was mighty for almost 200 years. When the V.O.C. stopped functioning, time stopped in Middelburg.
Middelburg has been destroyed in 1940 by German bombs, because the Dutch refused to surrender in Zeeland after the capitulation. English, French and Dutch soldiers fought for three long weeks and than Middelburg was destroyed. After the war the Dutch were able to rebuild it.
More info about Middelburg can be found
Remote linking policy
The purpose of this policy is to keep the used bandwidth for this site within limits, and prevent the 'leeching' of bandwidth by other sites with no visitors in return.
Allowed is:
Remote linking to one of the domains.
Remote linking to individual sub-pages within this site.
Not allowed is:
Remote linking to files other than html. Especially remote linking to downloads and images is not allowed because this can eat a lot of bandwidth without giving any visitors to the site. Instead, copy the downloads to your own webspace or link to my files page instead.
Linking to my html pages inside of a frameset of your own website. This looks extremely messy.
When you want to redirect your visitors to a sub-page hosted at Hyper.nl Unreal Services webspace or one of it's mirrors, you may use one of the helper index files. These load the target page within the right frameset.
Link to this page when you want to link to the files page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the lab page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the showcase page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the InfoBase page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the help page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the tips page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the about page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the links page.
Link to this page when you want to link to the gemdagger page.
Privacy policy
The purpose of this policy is to inform users about how Hyper.nl Unreal Services uses their information, and to give information about how to protect your privacy.
Hyper.nl Unreal Services uses identification information for several purposes. By using these services this policy is being applied.
The forum
When you register a user account at the forum, this information will be stored in a database. At the moment of writing (August 2006) this database is hosted and maintained by UnrealDestination.com. Please take care of the information you provide in your profile. It is not needed to provide any personal information here, but an e-mail address is needed to complete the registration. You can later choose to hide the e-mail address to normal users. Administrators will still be able to see your e-mail address. The forum also uses a cookie to be able to stay logged in.
All information you post in the forums can be read by others and indexed by search engines like Google and AltaVista.
The website
The website collects statistical information about the number of visitors and some of the computer specifications of the visitor. (Like the browser, the operating system and the screen resolution) This is done via external webstat services:
I also run a small webserver for the server status scripts and a full website mirror. This server logs page requests to a text (log) file.
The Unreal servers
The Hyper.nl Unreal servers do like all Unreal servers log your join requests and game actions to a server log file. Most of the time this information remains unread, but it also may be examined for troubleshooting purposes. If there is a problem with the server, (parts of) the log file can be given to others within the Unreal community or posted at one of the Unreal forums for help.
Here are some tips:
Passwords in Unreal (User.ini) an be read by any Unreal server. Therefore, make sure that you never put your admin password in there, and you also should use a password that you do not use for other purposes like for example your e-mail password or banking password.
Chat can be logged. Don't chat about private or classified subjects in any Unreal server. You may want to use pgp/gpg encrypted e-mail for that.Hyper.nl Unreal Services will never sell any of your data to third parties, or use this information for 'evil' purposes like spamming or popups.
Alter your reality...forever.