About the author

Dieter OrensIn short, I'm your quite average guy who's currently living in Ghent, Belgium, doing some web design and Silverstripe web development.

Although my grassroots were in Limburg, I went to the Jesuit-college in Turnhout, which eventually turned me into a convinced believer.

Interested in music, I've worked in a guitar shop in Hasselt for a while, selling guitars. After a year I decided to go to Ghent and study to become a translator in Spanish and English. In reality I ended up working in arts centre Vooruit as a stage technician.

With too much free time spent in front of a computer screen I teached myself html, css, php and javascript. Working only part-time, I became partly self-employed in 2007, putting into practice all I've learned and gaining professional experience.

Most of my holidays are spent outdoors, walking or doing some photography. I love winter and snow. Mountains. Norway. Feeling the elements. The early morning cold. Brings me peace of mind in these hectic times.

According to Jung based on the Myers-Briggs typology I'm an INTP.

About this site

This website is currently in its fourth edition.

Starting as a simple html site around 2005, it soon grew to version 2.0: a custom blog written in PHP, with a very limited interface. I never wanted to use a prefab system like Wordpress because, as a computer-noob, this would never teach me the language, so I got into coding my own.

That changed around 2007, when I discovered Silverstripe. Silverstripe allowed me extend and modify behaviour and layout without limitations, so I ported my existing site to Silverstripe, writing a custom blog module. At that time the existing Silverstripe blog module was very limited, so I added emailfield, categories, trackbacks, notifications, etc...

With everything on Silverstripe, version 3.0 was born around January 2008. Along the way I added automatic integration of Twitter posts and integration of Flickr photos using machine tags.

Enter december 2009. In the need of something more clean and simple, the design changed completely and content has been cleared of all the integrated tweets. While the previous version was using YUI, now everything related to javascript is using JQuery.

Let's hope this version lasts for a while.

version 2006version 2008

 

Wish List

Things that I'd like to see, do or achieve in my life, in no particular order:

  • see the fjords
  • climb Galdhopiggen
  • see wild reindeer
  • sleep in the snow
  • buy a VW Transporter
  • see wild arctic fox
  • see wild moose
  • Himalaya
  • Patagonia
  • Arizona
  • Canada
  • go back to Saastal where I spent holidays as a kid
  • become a better photographer
  • drive from Belgium to Siberia
  • be as intelligent as an animal
  • Scottish Highlands
  • more brains
  • finish this site
  • want less
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
  • A picture by Dieter Orens on Flickr
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