---
title: "About"
description: A brief history of my passions and my presence online
date: 2021-10-03
draft: false
rss_ignore: true
---

I'm Gianmarco Gargiulo (pronounced `/dʒanmarko ɡardʒulo/`), a shy nerd that loves thinkering with **computers**, **old tech and games**, **graphic design**, **art** and **video making**. I've always been interested in computers since when my dad used his old desktop with Windows 98.

![Myself](/me.png)

I've registered my first Google account on **September 1st, 2012**, pretty much marking my very first registered presence on the internet apart from my old Facebook account, on my old **HP 550** laptop with Windows XP (it originally ran Windows Vista Home Basic). I used to have a little YouTube channel full of crappy videos made with Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Paint, I don't even remember making most of these, I only remember of recording a bunch of VB.NET related tutorials with Camtasia, but I never uploaded them since exporting the Camtasia Studio videos was pretty much impossible.

Talking about VB.NET, that was **my very first exposure to programming**, so I used to make crappy little programs in Visual Basic 2010, especially those that are generally referred to as **VB OSes**, which are little fake operating systems with their own apps and features, kinda like a simulator. My series of VB OSes was called **"My mini OS"** (or "My Mini OS", "MMOS" for short). VB OSes would eventually become more popular among VB.NET coders in the following years (watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW4V4vXm-ZI) for an in-depth history).

Back to YouTube, I really liked watching videos like computer tutorials, videos regarding videogames and funny street signs (don't ask me why).

![My first YouTube channel](2012ytc.png)

In around mid 2013 I got my second computer: the **Asus Vivobook S200E laptop** with Windows 8 (I've been using it as my secondary machine until the beginning of 2022). I was much more up to date in terms of software, including the latest version of Visual Studio Community Edition. I started making more and more of those VB OSes and these were the times when they slowly started to become popular.

I also made a new Google account on the **May 14th, 2014**, since I forgot the password for the old one long ago (~~but then I found it again so nevermind~~), so this meant that I was starting to make YouTube videos again. My videos were originally a bunch of generic tutorials on programs like Pivot Animator, Install Creator, TextAloud, some Nintendo emulators, including videos of me showcasing the many versions of my VB OS, from version 3 or 4 (I can't really remember the very first one that I showed publicly) up to 16.1. In the meanwhile I started making other kinds of videos especially ones that were pretty much **inspired by SMG4**, my favorite YouTube channel at the time, and it lasted for around 26 episodes.

During these years of activity I got involved in several VB OS contests called **"Battle OS"** organized by an italian guy called xDragon System (now known simply as [xDragon](https://www.youtube.com/user/xdragonyt)), I participated with some of the last versions of My Mini OS, especially the last one nicknamed **Chocolate**, and I always got a relatively high score for the UI looks, generally inspired by **Google's Material Design**, of which I was a big fan back then, giving me confidence in graphic design, even though I always made some kind of crappy graphic design stuff using PowerPoint 2013/2016.

On August 18th, 2016, I assembled **my first desktop** since it was my birthday, I still use it today, although some of the specs were updated like the RAM and the graphics card. On October 24th, 2016, I announced that I was working on two projects: Nova (a Minecraft server) and Remix (a completely new VB OS series, later renamed to codename "Infectious", inspired by the song by Tobu); unfortunately both projects ended up being cancelled simply because they required too much time and effort. On November 19th, 2016, since my channel had too many old and crappy videos, I made a new one trying to revamp my content with some 3D animations made in a program called Mine-Imator and with some YouTube Poops, but I eventually quit making videos completely after a few months.

![My Mini OS 16 Chocolate](mmos16.png)

On **March 3rd, 2017**, I opened my fourth and last Google account, calling it originally **G Softwares** because I still was into VB.NET and at the time I was probably still working on Infectious. I kept this brand also when I quit VB.NET and started experimenting with Unity and C# in late 2017; on December 12th of the same year I compiled the first Pre-Alpha of my little game called **Bubble Knife**, the development continued for most of 2018 until July 30th, when I released the first Alpha (v1.0.0) on GameJolt. After one small update on August 26th (v1.1.0), the game's development was cancelled and support was dropped on March 1st, 2019.

![Bubble Knife](bk_alpha.png)

In late 2018 I was tired of all of the bloatware that Windows 10 had to offer so I tried to **hackintosh** my PC with macOS High Sierra (I later upgraded to Mojave), since I had already hackintoshed my laptop with macOS Sierra, which turned out to be a pretty pleasing change.

Between 2017 and 2018 I started to get interested in **art and photography**; on May 24th, 2018, I opened **my Instagram account** where I posted my drawings and photos of landscapes and such, including some photos that I took all the way back in 2016. I got **my first drawing tablet** for my birthday, the Huion H420 which is a small tablet with no screen, then two years later I got the Huion Kamvas 13 2020 which this time had an actual screen to look at while drawing on it. I used to make drawings and small animations on a software called FireAlpaca, but at some point I eventually decided to move to another software called **Krita** since it was generally better in terms of features and reliability.

This is when I approached the world of **GNU/Linux and free and open source software** (Krita was developed by **KDE** which makes a lot of FOSS) and in late 2019 I made the switch to Kubuntu, a variant of Ubuntu which ships with the KDE Plasma desktop environment, and later switched to Arch Linux.

In early 2020 I closed my old G Softwares website and made a new one with the **Gianmarco Gargiulo branding**, its purpose was to be a portfolio of my works, I eventually decided to remake the website using a static site generator called Hugo on August 9th, 2021, since it was more optimized and less of a pain to manage. During the Coronavirus lockdown of 2020 I decided to **start making YouTube videos again** about kinda obscure hardware and software, speedpaints of my drawings and also videos about my opinions on tech with a (unoriginal) format that I like to call "dvlog" (drawn vlog).

![My 2020 website](2020site.png)

In late 2022 I participated in the Apple Developer Academy in Naples after passing a selection, I also became member of the [NaLUG (Napoli GNU/Linux User Group)](https://www.nalug.tech/).

*This page is always updating!*