The adventures, mistakes and achievements thus far
From Australia to beyond
Starting out in Melbourne, Australia, Leon started his journeys abroad from the age of 15.
His passion for karate took is what led him first to Japan for a school exchange trip. Again, on the eve of his 20th birthday, he was on a plane to Tokyo, where he’d spend the majority of the next 8 years.
Falling back on tech skills developed by hiding away in his bedroom with a PC through teenage years, he started consulting for clients throughout Asia, working for several years in China, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Looking to provide the benefits of his own childhood to his 3 children, he decided to try living in New Zealand, giving up the hustle of consulting for secure work with some big software companies.
The allure of “settling down” not being the right fit and falling behind financially, he reignited his open source project and took the chance to make a living from it. With his kids back with their mother in Japan, he packed his laptop and a few clothes into a laptop and once more worked in various locations, from his fiancee’s home in the Philippines, to Thailand, Malaysia and currently Indonesia.
Passions and professions
Likely influenced by a great-grandfather with a legacy in religion, politics and peace activism, he always felt an attraction to doing something for the society around him. This rarely worked out well, with the lack of focus on making money often stopping short attempts at volunteering or social projects.
The right balance finally came about by working on his open source software project, WP2Static, which he realised needed to generate revenues in order to be a sustainable pursuit. Enabling users to overcome problems and reduce dependencies on commercial solutions is a big motivation.
Not ever having focused on any particular software engineering discipline, he continues to self-study programming, networking and systems administration. Automating things not supposed to be automated and solving technical challenges are the most enjoyable pursuits.
Views on life
Being impacted most by Albert Camus’ existential philosophies and enjoying the Taoist talks of Alan Watts, Leon doesn’t yet know what the meaning to it all is, but happily chose a path to pursue.
Following the definition of evil as “unnecessary suffering”, he would like to minimize the amount of suffering he causes and contribute some improvements to the people’s quality of life.
Inspired by Jeremy Rifkin’s “The Third Industrial Revolution”, he sees increased efficiency as a hopeful way to better our daily lives.
Seeing the Eastern approaches of perfecting crafts, as seen in Japanese traditional arts and the meticulous wood carvings of Thailand and Indonesia, he loves to see people striving for perfection in whatever it is they enjoy.
Site made with love of these open source tools
The beautifully-crafted OS that forces you to learn how to do things properly.
For better or worse, WordPress powers 30% of the web. ClassicPress reduces some of the bloat.
Text is my material. Learn one text editor well.
Version controlling all the things.
Retaining workspaces on local and remote servers.
Supporting the OpenBSD community with opinionated VMs. €10/yr donated to the OpenBSD Foundation.
To Roman Zolotarev, for helping us Master the Web. My family and friends for enduring my voluntary financial hardship while pursuing my passions.