A wild hacker-journalist and (former) engineer appears!

You are unable to flee.

Now that you're stuck here, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Jan, a technology journalist from South Africa.

Before I started getting paid for writing about tech, I qualified as an engineer and worked in the technology industry for three years. Mainly I wrote software, but I did other stuff as well.

Here is the verification pic. That's yesterday's newspaper with today's date written on it, because who gets the paper every day anymore?

Should I use a photo of myself for my avatar? I was in two minds about my profile pic. In the end I opted for a picture of Aang as he appears in Legend of Korra.

That makes my avatar the Avatar in his avatar state.

I thought it was funny.

Plus Aang has a sweet beard that kinda looks like mine.

Aside from being a full-time journalist, I am an avid video and board gamer, and an enthusiast of all manner of geeky pursuits, from 3D printing to (surprise, surprise) cryptocurrencies.

To write this post I had to tear myself away from Diablo 3. The Rise of the Necromancer pack has just been released and the new Necromancer class has been quite a bit of fun to play.

For awhile, I co-hosted a video podcast called Let's Talk Geek, episodes of which you'll still find on YouTube and Archive.org.

I used to write stories — mainly fantasy and science-fiction. I've never really published anything, and recently I've been inspired to start writing again. Maybe Steemit would be good platform to publish a few chapters or short stories to see what people think.

Recently, I also started practising Nakamura-ryū, a style of practical Japanese swordsmanship developed by Nakamura Taizaburo Sensei.

There's your brief introduction, Steemit. As they say in Starship Troopers: Would you like to know more?