Who I am
Hi there. I'm Petter Häggholm, and I'm responsible for this collection of…whatever this is a collection of that you are currently reading. If you want the very brief version, I'm a Swedish expatriate living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, having progressed from extracurricular geekery through two computer science degrees to the coveted position of software developer; I also draw, write, and opinionate freely, and the fruits of these various labours are represented on the other pages on this site.
If you want the long version, read on!
It is said that if you truly want to know a man, you should probably take the time to talk to him. (For some reason these aren't winged words
, but really, it's a reasonable way to proceed.) If you want a rough idea of what to expect, however, you may as well start with his background. My own life began, whether you like it or not, when I was born in the summer of 1982, sometime between the International Whaling Commission's decision to end commercial whaling and the publication of the first emoticon. I was born in Norrköping, a city in Sweden. That's not terribly significant: I never lived there, it just happened to have a convenient hospital with a maternity ward. I grew up in the town of Finspång, which would be renowned for its history of cannon manufacture in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and its current industries of turbines and copper—if it were renowned. It isn't, unfortunately—it's not that sort of town. Nevertheless, I spent eighteen years there, many of which were formative, say what else you will of them.
In 2001, on a glorious quest for adventure and to get out of Sweden, I moved to the small town of Lennoxville, Québec, where I attended a tiny school called Bishop's University, obtained a B.Sc. with honours in computer science, made some friends, and learned what being an actual person is all about. I graduated in 2005 and moved across Canada to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I attended graduate school in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, which is a rather nice university—if you're a graduate student. I finished my master's thesis in the summer of 2007 and got a job as a software developer at one45 Software/eRezLife, wrestling PHP, AJAX, the DOM, and various database bits to create software to automatically assign students to residences (or vice versa, depending on your point of view).
To briefly describe the places where I've lived, Finspång is (I'm afraid) not a terribly exciting town, characterised by industry and…well, I don't know; I never thought it had much character, but then my most recent years of living there were teenage years, and you can't really expect anyone to be reasonable, balanced, happy, or particularly sane when he's a teenager. Lennoxville is a peculiar community, because it's a small town dominated by a small university and because it is a wart riding on the back of its neighbouring city, Sherbrooke. The winters are nice, if you like it cold, which I do. The summers aren't very nice at all, unless you like it hot, which I don't. I prefer -35°C to +36°C, and in Lennoxville you've a good chance of experiencing both—the latter with a high degree of humidity. On the bright side, there's poutine. Vancouver, finally, is really nice in the summers. The winters wouldn't be bad if it didn't rain, which isn't much help because winter
is Vancouverese for constant precipitation
. It rarely hits even freezing, but in my first winter here I froze more than ever I did in Québec. Since then, I have invested in some seriously water-proof clothing.
When I'm not busy working, I practice Brazilian jiu-jutsu (under Tim Shears) and kickboxing at Cocoon Athletics, play computer games, or hang out with my lovely and culinarily peerless girlfriend, Mikeila. In the past I've been known to dabble a bit in the visual arts as well as writing, though writing requires a lot of time that I typically don't have, and drawing benefits from boring lectures during which one may doodle, and aged twenty-five I actually finished school.
I also read a bit, and by a bit
I mean what others seem to consider voraciously, obsessively, prodigously, and more or less constantly
(I don't see why you have to bring a magazine to the loo when you can read a few pages of a novel). Reading twice as fast as most people (but not my girlfriend) and being immune to car-sickness helps. I'd like to recommend my favourite author here, but it's hard because they are getting more and more numerous. C.S. Friedman deserves an honourable mention due not only to the Coldfire trilogy, but perhaps even more for In Conquest Born, a fantastic science fiction novel that seems to grow with every re-reading. Stephen R. Donaldson is another science fiction writer whom I first encountered through his fantasy—The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever are great books (if depressing), but the Gap series, starting with The Real Story, is even better (if even grimmer). George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, starting with A Game of Thrones, may well be the best fantasy writer of our time. J.R.R. Tolkien, a fantasy writer on the top lists of all time, also holds a place of honour and glory on my shelves. I'm not even going to tell you how many times I've re-read The Lord of the Rings.
More recently, I've been reading a bit of Richard Dawkins (I've read The God Delusion, but while I largely agree with it, The Selfish Gene and The Ancestor's Tale are a lot more interesting) and other non-fiction, like John Gribbin's very interesting In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. This is all part of a quest to make myself a Renaissance man, or at least amble vaguely in that general direction; it also involves reading some of the classics (a bit of Dickens, a bit of Chaucer, a touch of Greek epics, and a dash of 19th century fiction—see this rather large and slow-loading page if you're really curious), trying to keep myself vaguely aware of major world events, and doing some actual cooking even when it's only for myself. This last enterprise is proving surprisingly difficult.