The Story so far...

He volunteered as a RA in the Biomathematics Research Group from 1987 to 1989, at the former Max-Planck-Institute for Nutrition Physiology, in Dortmund (since March 1, 1993 renamed to MPI for Molecular Physiology), and spent 3 years at the Systems Analysis Research Group, at the Department of Computer Science of UniDO, where he wrote a particularly unsuccesful thesis on Learning Classifier Systems. In 1995 he finally gave up trying to break Chris Langton's semester record, and dropped out of the academic circus. He nonetheless became the first EUnet research fellow, and currently heads EUnet Deutschland GmbH's Fun & Games division (in more traditional terms: the Research & Development center). His current work includes adaptive agents that intelligently search and compile content over the 'net, and many more things, that spin around Java.

His electronic publications range from a voluntary job as senior editor of the FAQ in Usenet's comp.ai.genetic newsgroup, entitled The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation, over many other projects he helped bootstrapping, for example Howard Gutowitz' FAQ on Cellular Automata, available on Usenet via comp.theory.cell-automata, to about a dozen of so-called ``multimediagrams'' written in HTML, the language that builds the World-Wide Web. The most useful ones being ENCORE, the Evolutionary Computation Repository Network that today, after 2 years of weekend hacking, is accessible world-wide. And the latest additions ZOOland, the definite collection of pointers to Artificial Life resources on the 'net. And Webland a KISS model of the Internet at large, including ``guided tours'' across the myriads of info-bits out there.

With Adam Gaffin, a former senior newspaper reporter from Middlesex News, Boston, MA, who is now with Networks World, he edited the most read book on Internet, that was launched by a joined venture of Mitch Kapor's Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Apple Computer Library, initially called Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet it was later renamed to EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet: A round trip through Global Networks, Life in Cyberspace, and Everything... If you want to find it, just fire up Netscape and select About the Internet from the Directory menu...voila!

Since a very special event, he has severe problems to take life seriously, and consequently started signing everything with -joke, while developing a liquid fixation on all flavours of whiskey. Apart from writing short stories, he continues to work on a diary-like lyrics collection of questionable content, entitled A Pocketful of Eloquence, with the parts Tears of Ink (1986), Epitaph to a Broken Dream (1990). ...with the Eyes of a Child (1991), Telltale Songs from a Rumblefish (1993), The Last Bohemian's Rhapsody... (1994), Script from a Jester's Travels... (1994), Monolith (1995) already finished and Balance (1996) currently being written. He still lacks a publisher for the book, though.

He's also working on his first novel, unfortunately written in the the German language. The title translates to Mr Weirdo - Joke's rather strange melancholically-chaotic travels to the end of mind and matter.

He likes Mickey Rourke's movies (especially Rumblefish and Barfly), Edmund Spenser's medieval poetry, McDonalds hamburgers, diving into the analysis of complex systems of any kind (but prefers the long-legged ones), and the writings by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Robert Sheckley, Alexei Panshin, and, you name it, Douglas Adams.

Due to circumstances he leads a life on the edge, is usually single, has no time to get married, would love to have children, but has none (he'd know of), and has rejected several job offers that came bundled with a Porsche. He still doesn't live in Surrey, and still doens't own a BMW Z3 roadster.