About FragFrog

Real name:	Matthijs Dorst
Current location:	Groningen, The Netherlands
Occupation:	part-time web developer, full-time student of Artificial Intelligence.
Contact:	matthijs [at] fragfrog [dot] nl

Origin

It is my belief that, to understand something (or someone) you have to know its origin. I hail from a small village in the north-eastern area of the Netherlands, born around the time the cold war started to end. Later, at the end of the millenium came the rise of FPS games and a couple of friends and I started a clan called Frogger, each of us adapting a similar themed nickname - hence FragFrog (fragging being the term for scoring a hit in those days). After graduating a few years later I moved to the city of Groningen to study astronomy. It took me several more years to realise this was entirely not what I wanted to do with my life so I stopped and took on a job as web developer for a small local company.

Studies

Grown up somewhat and having had time to think, I decided to study artificial intelligence around 2008. This proved to be rather more interesting, yielding consequently better results. After two years my interests are crystalizing around neurofysics, neural networks and autonomous robots. Popular media include such gems as 'dog' and data, foretelling just how much further the field can and hopefully will still advance.

Work

I started programming at the age of ten using that most classic of hells, qbasic. Not much later the internet was starting to become more readily available and I learned a bit of HTML and JavaScript. However, for my first paid job as a developer I used mostly flash to work on a truely hideous menu for a small webshop. After obtaining at least a basic grasp of color schemes my next job took me to design the central navigation for my high schools website, again using flash, around 2001.

A bit later came the rise of private MMO servers. For my MuOnline server I wrote an extremely simple and easy to use website package (called FrogMuWeb) which very quickly become the defacto standard for just about all private MuOnline servers. A small banner on the main page resulted in 50.000 pageviews a day during its peak, though since advertisers were still largely unaware of the internets potential this yielded me little more than my parttime job at a supermarket. It proves a valueable lesson though: if you want to design a site for people with no experience in webdevelopement, make the lead designer a novice himself. And mind the gaps - a security hole ended up erasing several thousand user accounts on my server before I figured out just how dangerous register_globals is.

Subsequential years saw several successes (a south-african travel site succesfully rewriten for usability and SEO, the site of my fraternity becoming wildly more popular after we introduced comments, articles and the ability to upload pictures) and some valueable learning experiences (interning at a webdevelopment company despite very little real professional experience, creating an e-learning project with a partner bailing out halfway through). In 2007 I took up my first full-time job as web developer with YourMediaFactory. With a good team of designers and other developers we worked for almost a year on an international travel site, which utterly failed to become a succes due to ever shifting demands and managers completely out of touch with what the audience really wanted. After this the team was reduced in size and work started on a site to make appointments with hair- and beautysaloons. Less ambitious in nature but more tailored to actual demand, work continues on it to this day.

Hobbies

When not otherwise occupied I prefer to spend my time in several ways. When the possibility presents itself I love to travel, the further the better. The picture to the right shows me at a temple complex in Thailand, where Yiri and I traveled for a few weeks when my brother got married there. Later that year I finally saw the great pyramids of Giza for the first time, and of course I have done the obligatory roadtrip through California and tours through Europe (where, admittedly, we took the plane to attend a metal festival in Slovenia rather than spending a day in a train). Metal festivals and concerts are another occasion you can generally interest me for and I have been known to attend Castlefest (best place to get mead this side of the atlantic!).

Apart from mead I also appreciate the occasional single islay malt scotch and my recipe for a Californian Mojito has won me a contest already once. My gaming skills sadly have not, but I enjoy playing FPS and RPG's such as Unreal Tournament and Lord of the Rings Online. Yiri also dragged me in a D&D campaign where my druids first reaction to trouble is to cast treeform while yelling 'f*ck you, I'm a tree!'. He's chaotic neutral by the way, now that you ask.

While listening to music is great, as with sports, to truely appreciate it you need to perform yourself. Thus I play the saxophone, know my way around a piano and flute and am learning how to play the guitar, much to the delight of my neighbours I wager.