Dan Mazzei - About Me

Who I am

I have been referred to, at various points in my life and by various people, as the following: funny, weird, clever, knowledgeable, technical, and just about anything else you can think of. I'm just another person. I'm a generalist; I'm a decent amateur at pretty much everything and a complete master of nothing. I'm always looking to learn new things and I like to think that while I'm no where near perfect I'm improving all the time. I always think about what I'm doing and try to find better ways to accomplish my goals.

My education and experience is mostly focused on doing things with computers, and software in particular (B.S. Computer Science). Computers are interesting to me because we can use them to build anything; they are general machines. The interesting thing about computers isn't the computers themselves, it's what we can do with them. And it turns out we can do some pretty amazing things with them.

I have lived in Canada since 2016, though I am originally from the United States.

I deeply value free speech, privacy, and the concept that users should have complete control of the devices they buy. I think technology should work for everyone, and we should all be able to benefit from it. I also want to live in a society where we have a basic level of trust for one another. I try my best to embody that, so I am intentionally not running trackers on this website or otherwise abusing the trust of my users.

Hobbies, Interests, and Useless Skills

While computers are amazing, there is more to life than circuitry. I like a wide variety of music, from Pachelbel and Vivaldi to Rush, Bad Religion, Gorillaz, and Caravan Palace. At a beginner/novice level, I can: play guitar, ride a unicycle, solve a rubik's cube, speak French, and probably several other things I'm forgetting. I seem to collect more skills (some useful and some not) on a regular basis; I'm not entirely sure why.

I own a vintage street motorcycle and enjoy going on rides when the weather is nice.

I enjoy parties but I prefer a relaxed atmosphere with things like beer pong and pool over a crowded dance floor. I'm not a "work hard, play hard" person. I'm very much a "work easy, play easy" person.

The purpose of this website

This website is a fast and simple place to put information that I deem worthy of publication. This may include but is not limited to items of interest in my personal life, technical articles, DIY projects, and source code.

This is my personal website. As I do not use facebook, twitter, youtube, or other social media this is the best way for me to present information publicly online.

Organizations which I support

I am a vocal proponent of the public interest internet. I also support all human rights, both analog and digital. To this end there are a number of nonprofit organizations which I support and I encourage others to support. This list is intentionally in no particular order whatsoever. The order of this list is randomized every time the site gets compiled.

Why am I not on facebook/twitter/youtube/gmail/tiktok/whatever?

Traditional centralized social media uses a business model which I believe is exploitative. As such I've chosen to avoid it; it is not worth the cost to me. In short these companies make money by tracking user actions and then selling that data (usually to advertisers in aggregated form). I consider this a severe breach of privacy and as a result I cannot use these services. Sorry for the inconvenience; I hope you'll contact me through another means.