About me

Patrick Jarzabek. Programmer, in Dortmund. I like systems small enough to hold in my head all at once, which explains both the job and the hobby.

Who

I write software for a living and I have been doing it long enough to have opinions about boring technology. Most of what I enjoy building is small, legible and long-lived: things that will still run in ten years because nothing in them needs to be re-installed every eighteen months. This website is an example. It has no build step, no framework and no dependencies, and deploying it is one rsync.

What I run myself

More than is strictly reasonable. A small server does the work, and I keep the moving parts down on purpose:

• Mail. The one behind mail.jrzbk.com, which is probably how you got here. SMTP, IMAP, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and the deliverability paperwork that comes with all of it. It is the single most instructive thing I have ever administered.
• This site. Static files on the same box. No CDN, no analytics, no third-party requests at all — which is why the privacy policy fits on one page.
• Backups. Boring, encrypted, restored on purpose twice a year, because a backup you have never restored is a rumour.

None of this is an argument that everyone should self-host. It is a good way to learn how the internet actually fits together, and a bad way to save time.

The console shelf

I collect NES hardware and cartridges. Not sealed boxes — things that still switch on. A few of the ones that stayed:

Dr. Mario

The one I keep coming back to. Two colours too many and one decision per second.

Super Mario Bros. 3

Still the best-taught game on the system: every mechanic is explained by putting you next to it.

Ghosts'n Goblins

Kept mostly out of spite. It is not fair and it never pretended to be. There is a gravestone at the end of the level on the home page for exactly this reason.

Metroid

A map you draw yourself, on paper, badly. Nothing since has felt as large.

Kirby's Adventure

What the hardware could do once everyone had stopped being polite about its limits.

Now playing

Dr. Mario, level 15. Still losing.

That line is edited by hand. When it goes stale, so has the site.

Elsewhere

Nowhere, really. Replies to anything here go to one email address, and that suits me.