Welcome to my website!

Hello and welcome to my personal website! Here you will find some information about myself and my other websites. My name is Marvin Johanning. I currently reside in Bielefeld, Germany.

Below you will find a rather lengthy about section detailing some of the things that I like doing. You should (at some point, at any rate) also be able to find some more in-depth information on various topics on this website. For example, you can download my books, get more information about my computer and more. Please do note, however, that this website is still in development as of March 2025.

General information

I am and always have been very interested in computers and technology in general. I spend a lot of my free time doing various things on my computer. In addition to this, I also like photography. I mainly take photos of birds, but I also, at times, take photos of other things. I like interesting wines, teas and beer and will also, though only very occasionally, drink some whiskey, too.

Computers and Technology

I am most proficient in Linux and macOS as those are the two operating systems I use at home. I am not an actual programmer, but I know my way around HTML, CSS and PHP and also Ruby and a bit of other languages; I am, however, far from an expert in any of these and considering I do not often write in them, I’d have to practice a bit before actually starting to write anything again.

I am the owner and administrator of various websites and online services, namely birds.town (a Mastodon instance), ancient-greek.net (a website with information on Ancient Greek) and beakandlens.com (a website showcasing my photography). Formerly, I also ran birdtu.be, a bird-related PeerTube instance.

I recently built my own computer for the very first time so that I could finally play some games. I tend to play (A)RPGs, (usually older) shooter games such as Quake or Half-Life or more exploration-based games like No Man’s Sky. I am currently running EndeavourOS on that machine. As a laptop, however, I have yet to find any machine that comes even close to the performance and power efficiency of the newer Apple Silicon chips. Therefore, I also use macOS, though only on my laptop (currently an M4 MacBook Pro) and out of necessity, especially since I require either a Windows or macOS system for various photography-related tasks.

I also self-host a whole bunch of things. I have a NAS at home (OpenMediaVault) running on Proxmox alongside a large number of other services such as Immich for my photos (of which I have a lot) or Nextcloud for accessing my data on the go. I remotely connect to my server through Tailscale. The server I also built myself!

Languages

Back when I was still in school, I frequently had plenty of time to study languages – either in school or at home. However, ever since I have started working full-time, I have had less and less time to focus on everything that I want to do (obviously). Therefore, I have not really had the time to focus on studying languages as of late.

Nevertheless, I have studied a large number of languages over the years and have even written books about languages. One is a book about the Ancient Egyptian language, namely The Intricacies of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. It used to be available in print form but I have since taken it down. You will be able to find a PDF on this website, however. Additionally, I have translated the Apocalypse of John from the original Ancient Greek into English. As I have not had the time to continue my study of Ancient Greek, my other translation projects have not yet been finished. I really need to start practicing more again!

The languages I am most proficient in are English, German and Swedish. I know a fair bit of various other languages such as (but not limited to) Spanish, French, Hindi, Ancient Greek, Russian and Tagalog. This is mainly because I have studied these languages in the past but have given up on them. I can still read Cyrillic, Devanagari and the Greek alphabet pretty confidently, however, despite my not necessarily being able to understand the words.

Photography

I also like and have always liked photography. Even back in school, I was very well known for always being the person to take photos of everything – for better or for worse. I still take a lot of photos, though way fewer than I used to. I mainly focus on photographing birds at the moment and occasionally take portraits or landscape photos (especially when going on trips). I use various different cameras and lots of software and lenses.

My Work and Career

I started an apprenticeship in IT in the summer of 2019 and successfully finished it in the summer of 2022. The German term for the apprenticeship that I did is IT-Systemelektroniker, which roughly translates to IT systems technician. At the end of the apprenticeship, one has to carry out an IT project. My project was the creation of a LoRaWAN using Chirpstack, for which I received a very good grade. This network has since been expanded and I have since been in charge of rolling out, configuring and managing the LoRaWAN at the company.

I am currently working at a small ISP near Bielefeld, the same company at which I did my apprenticeship. I do a lot of different tasks within that company, but my main focus is managing a lot of the IT and infrastructure required for running an ISP, including (but not limited to): configuring and planning networks; working with and setting up pfSense firewalls; working with and configuring TP-Link and FS.COM network switches; working with security cameras and managing them via ZoneMinder; 2nd and 3rd level support; working with FreePBX and VoIP telephony in general; being in charge of our LoRaWAN network; and a lot more, depending on what is currently important.

My main experience lies with Linux systems and I am currently (as of June 2024) in the process of getting LPIC-1 certified. I might add a CV to this site at some point as well.