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What about me? I'm Martin Birkmand. I have a masters degree (MSc) in computer science from DIKU. My thesis was on using a semantic parser to parse from process descriptions into graph representations. My bachelor thesis was about constructing a compiler that compiles from the reversible language Janus to the reversible ISA Bob - try it here (JNSC).
I'm currently a full stack developer at FOA - one of the biggest unions in Denmark.
I have a somewhat broad spectrum of interests. Most of them has come online and are described below.
Regarding Computer Science my projects can be found here. I of course have a Github. For some reason I have build an online terminal, it can be found at brkmnd.com. I'm primarily interested in languages and the linguistic side of computer science - this interest extends beyond computers. Language have some kind of overlap with abstract math and structures used herein. Hence I'm also interested in math.
I have a growing interest in online privacy (of course pronounced like Laurence Olivier in Sleuth, that is prɪv.ə.si (english version)). This interest extends to what is called information economy and even beyond.
I find this topic very interesting. From facebook groups to troll farms to rigged elections. The topic of online manipulation is becoming more and more present. I can highly recommend the book This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev. Alternatively there's this free pdf: Media Manipulation ... by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis. 10 or 15 years ago this subject was a fringe one, trolls harassing people online in order to make them look hysterical. Plain bullying. Now it has become a tool of modern warfare.
In general I'm quite fascinated by language. Language intersects with psychology into what is called cognitive science. The book 1984 by Orwell explores how language (among other systems) can be used to control a society. The story is about some dictatorial regime which tries to control the population by reducing the expressiveness and soundness of the language. In for example arithmetic we can express and reason about something like "2 + 2 = 4". Say I'm a cruel dictator, and I state to you that "2 + 2 = 5", because everything I say is right. Then this arithmetic system is broken. You can't even count fingers for the sake of reasoning. If I remove the number 2, "2 + 2 = 4" can't be expressed at all. I have tried a quite formal approach to the statement "2 + 2 = 5" in what I call The Orwell Group. In general the real world is not that simple. Nationalities apparently have been found that do not have tense in their grammar, though people of that nationality understands tense. But it is interesting, don't you think?
I have for some years been taking photos. A selection of those can be found here.
I have collected most of my music on brkmnd.com/music.
I have on and off been playing some instrument since I was 10 years old or so. I have been playing guitar for a decade or so after which I switched to drums. I also play bass - that is if I can't find anyone else to do it for me - and I'm getting a hold of it. I'm currently in between bands, but I create music on my computer. I have a collection of songs that can be found here. Besides that I have a youtube channel where I post music videos for some of my songs.
I like to explore when creating music - maybe exotic chord progressions or odd time signatures. The exploration part is kind of what drives me.
I have for some years been writing poetry. Sometimes I write short stories - though rarely. Up till now I have only written fictionally in my mother tongue = danish. My writings can be found here.
Again what drives my writing is the odd or weird parts of language. I think of it as being conscious enough about language to abuse it.
There are some aspects of creativity I'm quite interested in. Creativity is by wiki said to be creating something new and valuable. Within for example poetry creating something new can be done by a computer: just set it to output random words. For it to be valuable there should (at least) be some kind of structure in this output. Such structure can be learned by a language model. This creates some kind of battle in the arts between humans and computers. We can gradually impose some requirements of what defines real art, and at some point computers probably will learn these requirements. I'm pretty sure that humans have no chance battling being random against computers. So if a computer learns what is required for output to be valuable, it ought to be more creative since it is much better at creating something new than we are. In order for us to value art we must have a constantly evolving understanding of quality of art. I have tried to formulate this problem as the Machine Poet Paradox. I have for a couple of years now been constructing different language models in order to automate the process of poetry writing. Some of these have quite interesting results.
I have a blog written in english. And I have blogaden - a blog written in danish. These two differ quite in content.
Besides my outputs I have several inputs. I listen to a lot of music. Genres varies, lately mainly jazz. I watch a lot of movies, again genres varies. And I like to read when I have the time - both fictional and non.
I am quite active. I'm an avid cyclist. And I'm quite tall, so I do work out in order for my back to look like a back. Figure.
I have the server brkmnd.com on discord. And I'm brkmnd on reddit. I do have a fb, but I'm not very fond of that platform. Instead I have created my own fb: brkmnd.com/fb. However it is mostly written in Danish.
Or you can find info on how to contact me on the contact page here. I also have contact info on my Danish about page.
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