About me
I'm Luca Cristiano, better known online — and to friends — as Zekromaster.
I like to understand, build and fix systems of all kinds — from complex software to sociolinguistics to building bikes.
I keep this capsule mostly as a way to scream my thoughts into the void and maintain an online presence that's under my control rather than hosted on someone else's silo.
Zekromaster, online
I think of myself as a hacker in the old meaning of the word.
I write code, either because someone's paying me for it, or because I have some time to kill.
I have some history with Minecraft b1.7.3 modding, and the game in general.
I'm always happy to review a patch before a friend sends it upstream, and in general appreciate chances to improve the software I use.
I'm the proud operator of a small network of machines located partly behind my bedroom's eastern wall and partly in datacenters on the other side of the European Union.
Zekromaster, offline
I play Tabletop RPGs and have since late middle school: I've spent a few years as a Forever DM, but that curse has been broken somewhen in my early 20s.
I'm also a general board game and card game player, equally enjoying a hand of Skat, a game of Magic: The Gathering or 50 minutes in front of whatever random game you just pulled out of a shelf.
I am an amateur bartender, and keep a well-stocked liquor shelf that allows me to prepare at least half of the IBA recipe book on a whim, plus some more. Combined with a general love of cooking, I dare call myself a great host of dinners, snacks and aperitifs.
I'm an adventure cyclist and also get around by bike on the daily. My longest tour has been 4 days in the inner Salerno province, but I'm looking forward to travelling more with my two-wheeled companion.
I'm an avid reader, anime watcher, and gamer, and like to think about the medium and how it's used just as much as I enjoy the content itself:
Check out my videogame accomplishments
A brief, bullet-point manifesto
- I share many positions with both Effective Altruism [1] and Stirnerian egoism [2], something I think is less contradictory than it sounds;
- Most software can sustain itself on a free-as-in-speech model [3]: I reject the premise that proprietary software is a necessity in the modern market;
- Technological progress should not mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater: old doesn't mean worse, nor does new mean better;
- Knowledge is meant to propagate. You can't know in advance which knowledge will be useful — the more you produce and spread, the better the odds it reaches the hands that need it;
- Language can tell you a lot: what one thinks, where they grew up, who they respect and who they learn from. Humanity is its languages;
- Things took a turn for the worse when we became always online and always available: the internet should go back to being a "place";
- Learning to hack something together yourself is twice as satisfying as just having someone do it well for you;