Hi, I'm Bruce Kroeze, introducing myself on my birthday.

Hi, I'm Bruce Kroeze, and I wear a lot of hats, I also like to talk.

I'm new to the Steem community, but already I'm excited. Thanks for making such an obviously vibrant place.

It is my birthday today, so it seems like a good time for an introduction.

I've got a lot of interests, and I think a lot about them. Some of them, I've been studying over thirty years. I had various blogs for quite a while, and I think I'm usually a clear and thoughtful writer, but I got bored and frustrated by the lack of interaction. I think this place might be much more engaging.

Portlandia, Downtown Portland. (c) 2016 Bruce Kroeze

I live in Portland with my wife and two kids. I've lived all over the place in the U.S., but of them all, I like Portland the best. OK OK, sometimes I do get a little tired of the rain in the winter, but that passes into beauty quickly.

I've had a lot of passions in my life, but some have stuck with me. Here's what I mostly think about, study, and practice:

Food

I'm the cook in my family, I've always really valued family dinners and so I make them. Recently, I did a month on a Keto diet with my wife, which was fun, tasty, and successful.

Not a Keto dish

I also make my cat's food, which some people think is strange, but every vet he's ever seen remarked on his incredible, glowing health. I'm thinking I might make an instructional post on how I do that, next time I make a load of it.

Xerces the cat

Gardening

Inspired by an author/hero of mine, Gordon White, I've started learning and using Permaculture techniques and principles.

Raised bed in the front yard, not particularly Permaculture influenced, but productive

Oh yeah, we also have chickens!

New henhouse I built this spring

Burning Man / Event Camping

I grew up camping, I was even a Boy Scout. But I hadn't really gone as an adult until I met my wife. She's into "Event Camping", and so I got back into it. If you don't know the term, that's where a bunch of adults and often children go camping in costume. It can be various themes, but the ones we enjoy the most are medieval and pirate camping. We even have a "ship".

Jessica (my wife) getting dolled up at Seadog Nights, a Pirate Camping event.

Another (very different) kind of event camping, is Burning Man. I worked for "The Org" for a few years, programming and maintaining their on-site event schedule system. I'm starting to get the itch to go back, possibly next year.

Enjoying the view at Burning Man

Programming

I program for a living. Currently, I am a developer using cloud based ML/AI techniques to mitigate high speed "bot" attacks on order systems for my employer. In the past, I've focused on privacy, cryptography and security aspects of IT. I had a consultancy for about 10 years, focusing on e-commerce, which was successful, but I got tired of always having to hustle for
customers.

This all naturally leads to my interest in cryptocurrency. I'm particularly fascinated by, and getting neck-deep into Ethereum and Smart Contracts.

In my (largely imaginary) spare time, I sometimes like to pretend I am an Electrical Engineer. I'm not, but I can pretend to be one, very very slowly and with lots of looking things up. I've successfully built various robots and LED contraptions for fun and for art projects.

If I had more time, I'd do a lot more in this world, I find it fascinating.

A 6-legged walker I built

Meditation

I've meditated regularly for 30 years, much much more regularly in the last 5. It is truly the cornerstone of my daily happiness. I've taken a lot of classes, but in the end the kind of meditation I do most is simple breath-work and awareness.

I also enjoy working with sigils, mantras, prayers, and mystical art from various traditions.

"In Praise of Helios", (c) 2016 Bruce Kroeze

Conlangs, languages in general

I enjoy learning languages as a hobby. Off and on, I've taken classes in Chinese, German, Norwegian, and Spanish. I also enjoy constructed languages, my favorite being Toki Pona, which has the distinction of being the language with the fewest words, 120. That really makes a language a lot easier to learn!

I keep wanting to learn Latin, but oh my does that sound like a lot to take on.

---

Whew, that was a lot of things to be passionate about learning and exploring. I look forward
to talking with y'all in the future.