marvinjohanning.de/about.md

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This page will provide you with some further insights into who I am and what exactly I do and why. To find out more about one of my interests or hobbies, please click the appropriate link in the menu.

General

Hello there! My name is Marvin, I am {{ 'now' | date: "%Y" | minus: 1999 }} years old and live in Germany. My particular interests revolve around technology and language. I am the maintainer of a website dedicated to freely distributing information on the Ancient Greek language called Ancient-Greek.net; I also run a YouTube channel and Twitter account with the same name and for the same purpose. I have always found the somewhat dated things more interesting; they have more of a personality than newer things to do me, for some reason. The latter is also why I like studying ancient languages such as Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek.

I don't have any scholarly background, though, and am currently working as an IT-Systemelektroniker (IT systems technician) at a company in Bielefeld, Germany. There, I work in customer support, coordinating the deployment of technicians to solve Internet and TV problems, solving customers' technical issues using remote maintenance of servers and other technical equipment, and I also coordinate the deployment and setup of our new LoRaWAN network.

Additionally, I am a hobbyist author and have already published various books. I am also somewhat of a minimalist and I prefer things that are more minimalist and simply functional, rather than something overly bloated when it has no right to be.

Languages

Personally, one of the main things I spend my time on in my free-time is learning more about languages and, at present, I am focussing primarily on Attic / Koine Greek. I know a variety of scripts and have learnt a large number of languages over the course of my life; I have not, however, learnt enough of these languages to have an actual conversation and thus, the only languages I can actually speak are German, English and Swedish.

Birding

I also very much enjoy birding and frequently go outside to take photographs of birds, record their songs and calls and create spectrograms of them and I also write down my sightings in my birding log (usually using an app to record the sightings directly "in the field"). Additionally, I write birding reports from time to time and am a member of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Ornithologengesellschaft e. V. (North Rhine-Westphalian Ornithological Society) where I try to participate in voluntary bird counting programs (currently, I am part of the AG Wasservögel) and various other activites. I am also a member of the Naturschutzbund Bielefeld.

Writing

I also thoroughly like writing things, be it birding reports or books. I have written a variety of books and a handful of them have already been published as well. I mostly write translations of Ancient Greek texts (most notably the Greek New Testament) into either English or German. I have also written and published a book on the Ancient Egyptian language and how to learn it as a beginner who has no linguistic background whatsoever. You can find more information about these two books by clicking the “Books” tab in the menu. I also run a website on Ancient Greek (Ancient-Greek.net) where I publish a lot of translations and other information on the language as well.

Other

I also enjoy travelling very much, even though I have not visited that many countries or places yet because of lack of money. Besides the language and travelling stuff, I also enjoy trying out new types of coffee, tea, wine, whisk(e)y and beer which is often accompanied by my reading a book or just listening to music (Klaus Schulze, Neuronium, Tangerine Dream, Эдуард Артемьев, 冨田 勲 — you get the picture, a lot of perhaps more ambient electronic music — and just a lot of 70s and 80s in general (I especially enjoy Japanese 70s). I also highly enjoy a lot of classical music — Beethoven and Vivaldi being one of my favourites — and I also think a lot of Vapourwave is rather nice.

I also do a bit of programming every now and then. The majority of my programming projects can be found on my GitHub page.