About me

I’m Marc Ordinas i Llopis, marc o i l, a computer programmer from Felanitx. Here you’ll find some information on my life and my interests, but you may also want to take a look at my serious resume.

Biography

I was born on October 15th, 1976 in Mallorca. As a kid I went to a private Catholic school in Palma and hated it every day. When I was 16 my parents sent me a year to the United States to learn English.

When I returned I prepared to study Humanities, but finally changed my mind and started at Law School. After a year I came to my senses and studied three years of Computer Engineering but didn’t finish due to an excellent job offer in Barcelona.

I lived there for five years, first programming a 3D engine for videogames and then, during the Internet boom ’2000, leading a startup company that went bust a year later. I did some time as admin and tech support until I got tired of it all and went back to Palma in 2002.

There I tended and managed a bar for a year. At dawn when the bar closed, I kept on programming and developed a blogging and community engine for Catalan speakers, which was fairly successful until I had to close it down in 2006 because I didn’t have money or time to keep it going.

In 2003 a really interesting project made me go back to professional programming: A local company was starting to develop a new videogame engine. I was there for 3 years, but finally the company decided to buy technology instead of developing in-house, so I changed jobs again. The new company was cool, but, after only 4 months of working there, it closed down.

I decided to try being a freelance/subcontractor programming. In the summer of 2007 I moved to our old family house (curiously named Ca n’Aranya, the house of the spider) in Portocolom, a small harbor town near Felanitx. From there I work as a remote programmer on free and open source projects, mainly on browser engines.

Interests

I’ve been programming computers for most of my life. I started out with BASIC on Sinclair ZX-Spectrum and even my first summer job was developing Excel macros for my father’s business.

I am specially interested in the tools we use to program: Languages, editors, version control systems, etc. I am a programming language nut, I try to learn new ones as soon as I discover them. I am also interested in the why and how of programming, in the questions which we will be doing once programming is as established as science or mathematics.

Besides programming, I’ve always been very involved in civil society action, specially in defense of the Catalan culture. I started out in the youth NGO Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua, where I participated in the organization of large scale demonstrations and events. I’ve served on the board of Obra Cultural Balear, the largest cultural organization in Mallorca and now I am the coordinator for a local political party.

I also enjoy reading, mostly essays, on topics ranging from philosophy to politics. When I read a novel, it’s usually Sci-Fi. Lately I’ve been trying to learn photography, you can see some of my pictures in my Google+ page.