About me

An old avatar of myself which has been upscaled by AI

Hey there, I’m Tobias Hellgren, but you may call me Thanius.

I’m an 80s kid who’s been crazy for computers and technology since my mom brought home an IBM PS/2 Model 70 for work. In those early days, I dabbled in everything from QBasic and BAT programming to a bit of assembly language, between bouts of gaming with classics such as Prince of Persia, Commander Keen, Kosmonaut and Stugan (the latter two being bonuses with some SPCS business suite). I spent hours crafting utilities and even built my own menu system called MENY1, since this was about a year or two before Windows 3.1 became ubiquitous.

My moniker, Thanius, originated in the 90s during my frequent sessions on an online multi-user dungeon game called DUMII (which you can play here using telnet). I might write more about MUDs in the future, but in the meanwhile, here’s a neat article on Medium about the topic.
While creating my first character at the local library, I was in dire need of a cool name. Looking around, I spotted a book (it might have been this one) about the World Wide Web by a certain Thavenius. With a quick edit, simply dropping the “ve”, Thanius was born and the nickname has stuck ever since.

I’m an unapologetic fan of all things 80s and 90s retro — whether it’s the tech, the design (definitely not the fashion), or the culture (NEON SKYLINES! SKATEBOARDING PUNKS! NINJA AMPHIBIANS!).
I prefer the crackle of vinyl or the slight inconvenience of mini-discs over being fed with streaming music from Spotify. My DVD collection spans classic 80s, 90s and even 00s movies, neatly cataloged on my NAS and delivered through Plex. Call it nostalgia, I call it a life style [insert GIF of pixelated sunglasses with caption “deal with it” here].

Gaming has held a special place in my heart ever since my dad brought home the Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1987. Alongside the original Game Boy, these consoles are what I consider to be the best video game consoles ever made. Their simple yet challenging gameplay holds my interest more than today’s hottest titles. This passion has led me to start collecting video games (I might showcase them here someday), but unlike many other collectors, I don’t buy games for the sake of hoarding; I collect to actually play the games. You won’t see me bidding on an acrylic sealed Super Mario Bros. anytime soon.

Chuggybumba - A Dell PowerEdge R610 mounted on a LACK rack

I’m an avid user of Linux and open source, and I love to fiddle with servers. This network is actually hosted in my garage on a Dell PowerEdge R610 mounted on a Lack rack running Proxmox. On the sidebar you can find links to different services I’m running on this platform.
Since my first encounter in 1998, I’ve been hooked. Back then I was part of the board of the local Linux User Group here in Umeå which I also co-founded. Since then, I’ve been distro-hopping until I found that standard Ubuntu perfectly suits as my daily driver. I’m always eager to introduce newcomers to the penguin kingdom, so don’t hesitate to ask if you’re feeling a bit curious.

These days, I’m happily married with two kids in a cozy village just outside Umeå (although it’s so close, you can’t really call it outside.) By day, I’m a developer specializing in system integrations with .NET (and by night, I’m Batman.)

TLDR

I’m Tobias, a retro tech nerd who fell in love with computers and video games in the 80's. My nick Thanius was stolen from a library book and has been used as my persona since late 90's. I love 80s/90s pop culture, Linux and tinkering.

Let's connect

Interested in getting to know me better? Feel free to reach out via any of the contact methods below.

Email - thanius[æt]chuggybumba[dɒt]com
Mastodon - @thanius@mastodon.chuggybumba.com
Matrix - @thanius:matrix.chuggybumba.com