Hello, I am Rikxian van Houten, Also known under the name “309Electronics”. I live in the Netherlands in Eindhoven. I am a passion driven young-adult (currently 18 years old, so old enough to drink :) boy who is into electronics, programming and some other fields in the technology world. I am primarily selftaught and have most of my knowledge from Youtube and by doing the things myself and learning from experiences and mistakes. As a kid i was born curious and technical. In this page i will write a bit more about my life and childhood. I wont write down everything here (also some stuff private (some stuff i am not too comfortable to just put out on the public internet but that close family and friends do know from me) or some stuff is not worth to talk about on this blog)
Younger years #
SO while i dont know much from it myself, i do know either through vague memories or what my parents told me a bit about what my childhod was. I went to a couple different schools and met a lot of people. My parents also decided to record our childhoods witha video camera as they it primarily so we could later watch back about our childhoods and how we grew up and got raised. We have a couple of CD’s that all store recordings that they made in the early days with a panasonic video camera. We soemtimes watch those back as we do have a USB dvd drive that can read those discs. So thats also part of what i remember and how i remember the stuff.
birth and younger years #
I was born on the 28th of Januari and i was raised in the Netherlands. As a kid i was naturally curious and i always was interested in how stuff around me worked. I rememeber that as a kid i used to be a bit too curious and often took apart toys and other devices that i should not take apart and that sometimes mad emy parents a bit upset. I then tried to mostly hide those but my parents would always find them and that was kind of emberasing. I also wanted to touch and interact with anything i could find. Funny enough i was scared of grass when i was younger and absolutely refused (often crying) to touch those scary green sprouts :). I spent a lot of time with my brother and system and i would often play with them outside or when it was snowing i would go and sleigh with them. Basically just normal kid things.
First school (Vrijeschool Braband) #
I went to school at “vrijeschoool braband”. Thats basically a school that is part of the Waldorf Steiner education system. Its basically focussed on imagination, creativity, artistic and intellectual skills and practices and is focussed on the student/kid their wellbeing and social skills. And its also a tiny bit hollistic and that basically says that the perosnality of someone is the mind and body that are connected to each other and just some other higher level kind of vagueness and abstraction that i wont go into much detail here. Thats also why its often partially religion connected and we have events like Sint-Maarten (Saint Martin) and other fests that other schools outside of the Waldorf education dont have/celebrate.
My brother and sister went to the same school so my parents also made me go to the school. It was a nice school but i dont remember much from it. Here i did met some of my early friends/classmates that i would play with/befriend. And ton of people i know these days or i later met came from this exact school. Here i spend a little bit of my preschool.
2nd school (Taalbrug) #
Because my speech and articulation was not good, after only a few years, i went to de Taalbrug to improve my speech and articulation. I dont have much memories from this school either but i do know that this is where i got somehting i carry around with me till this day. My left hand middlefinger which has a cracked nail. When i was cleaning up and placing boxes of kinex away, i placed them near a door where they where supposed to be but i accidentally shoved my middlefinger between the door gap and some other kid unknowingly closed that door without knowing that my finger was inbetween it. That basically caused my finger to get broken and they had to stitch it together (yeah kind of gore. My parents litteraly had to come in from work). My finger did heal but my middlefinger’s nail is shattered and it does not really grow back normally and grows in weird layers.
3rd school (vrijeschool Braband) #
So after the taalbrug i went back to the Vrijeschool braband. Here i spend a bit of my onderbouw (class 1 til 6). Here i usually played with classmate Felix and one of my friends i still have till this day, Diando. I did not finish onderbouw here as in the later period I moved from our old house to a small village called Acht (litteraly the number 8 translated). Here i went to another school.
Teen years #
4th school (Sint Antonius Abt) #
SO in this village was a school called Sint Antonius Abt. We decided to move me to this school as it was closer to home. We could litteraly walk to it. When i first came here, i was inmedeatly greeted by 2 kids named Bastiaan and Maarten. They where the first ones who came into contact with me and showed me around the place and we later became friends. Maarten did move to another house and went to another school so i did not see him much. But i spent pretty much my whole time with Bastiaan at this school and we where great friends. I remember that we often after schol met up either at my house or his house. He is also the one who got me into playing minecraft (I did obviously watch it, long before that but i did not yet play it). On my brother’s playstation we built a bunker that was in a mountain and ahd some redstone doors. That made me fall in love with te game and made it so i finally played it. Either building stuff or exploring the mashup pakcs that where part of of the OG console edition. When i came to his house he often showed me around and we played with all sorts of stuff. He wanted to become a DJ and thus he had a bit of basic dj gear and we would play with that and set it up. And we played outside with our bicycles and went to all sorts of places in the village. And i invited him to my party. He was later diagnosed to be diabetic as one ocassion was on a party of mine where he had to drink and pee a lot and those are ofcourse some of the signs that you are diabetic.
At school we worked together also. This school was a bit different cause instead of the black chalkboards with white chalk and paper and fountain pens we had on the Vrijeschool, we had a modern prowise digiboard in the classroom and we had ipad’s that we would use for education. Also we had PE but instead of on-location, we had to travel with the bus a few minutes to a nearby sportshall and here we did our PE.
When the covid19 period started somewhere in 2019/2020, we also experienced the lockdown and we had online lessons. We used these tablets to do our lessons. Also we could not do our Musical but we still performed that somewhere later. Our Musical was called “Verboden te voeren” and had a zoo theme. Sadly we could not do all of our final activities, but we did have a small graduation party. We had a big inflateable slide that we could slide off. They would announce our name and then what school we chose and then we could slide down it. It was quite fun but it was also sad that we had to say goodbye to each other. We had a teacher called Ira in the later grades, but we had someone else before Ira. We also got a small present, a picture frame with some of our moments with the class and our class pictures and each got one with their own name on it. Below is a nice picture. I put it on the shelves which has my plant, books and has my led strips illuminating the shelves.
5th school (Novalis College) #
So after Sint Antonius Abt prmary school, i finally could go to highschool. Again i chose Novalis as my brother and sister where on it. It again is a school thats part of the Waldorf Steiner education. When i went to this school, Diando was also going to that school and some other people that where on the Vrijeschol Braband. I spent class 7 with Diando and some other students. I got quite high grades in this class and passed with almost no struggles. This was of the level of MAVO (secondary general education). I managed to move to class 8 but with the level of HAVO (Higher general education). Diando decided to stay in MAVO so after that i sadly did not have him in class anymore, but outside of school we still had contact ofcourse. Also i met Tom in this period. Both me and Tom moved to HAVO and it was a bit of getting used to but we became friends and kind of pulled each other forward and made the transition less scary. We also still where a bit in the pandemic so we did have some online lessons alongside some normal lessons.
Tom has autism and other than the fact that sometimes he can be a bit energetic, he is a good friend and i spent pretty much whole Novalis period with him. We made homework together, teamed up for projects and after school often met up. Also we had to choose a direction/education packet. I chose N/T (Nature and Technology) and thus i had subjects like Biology, chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, English, Dutch, KUA (Art). Some of those subjects where included/mandatory in every education packet but physics, Wiskunde B (Mathematics algebra and gemotery), chemistry could be selected as the education package. Sometimes for Art we had to make a video and then I would team up with Tom and then i would edit it. We also had in earlier years subjects like Music practice where we would learn to play a song on the piano (electronic keyboard).
In the later grades we were slowly working towards the final exam. In the last years we had a Mr Verdonschot as our mentor. I liked him a lot and he has been one of my favorite mentors we have ever gotten! He can do good mentor stuff and he likes some humor and jokes and he is not really grumpy.
In the last year at Novalis this was basically exam-year. This year we had the exams and we where realy working towards the exams. Before the exams we often have whats called a exam stunt. This is basically where the students of the final exam year class can one day for a few hours do whatever they want with the school and then ofcourse clean up everything and return everything back to normal afterwards. This can be anything from filing the school with toilet paper to basically whatever we want as long as it does fit in some ethical and non-permanent borders. We decided with the other final exam classes on a sort of party. It was fun and we did really unpack for those few hours. After that we cleaned up everything and returned everything back to normal.
After that period is where we mostly study for tests. I spent some time studying for the exams. And to hear if we had passed or not, the mentor would call each person seperately and tell them if they graduated or not. This would happen after the we went on Eindreis, basically a trip to a location with the class and other final exam classes. This trip would often be a week and at that location (somewhere in europe but thats reachable by bus) we would do some activities and we would stay in a hostel. Eindreis was fun and with our class and the other exam classes, we went to Prague in Czechia. Our class stayed at the Franz kafka hostel so pretty much in the city and we would do different activities. We also had one day that we went bouldering with the class which was fun but i am also kind of sad as the other classes had climbing or swimming as activities.
Also as another post-exam activity/event, we had an exam-prom that school had hired a location for. Which was fun and you could chose what verhicle you would take to the prom and then ride the last few meters til the netrance in a sort of parade. Then you would walk over the red carpet and inside would be a fun party with music and some drinks. That was soo much fun and everyone came in beautifull outputs.
Then on 12 Juni was the moment we would hear if we graduated or not. That day i was anxious as i did not know if i had passed the tests but then some time that day i got a call by my mentor and he told me “Rikxian je bent geslaagd. Gefeliciteerd!” (Meaning in english littteraly: “Congratulations, you passed!” and that moment made me really happy! We hung out the flag and we hung my old schoolbag on the flag pole as thats a symbol that someone has graduated. After that we had to come to school to get our pre-official diploma and a small present.
Then on another day we had the real diploma handout. They had setup a classroom with chairs for us and everyones parents to sit down and in front a small table and next to it was a sort of stage. They would call your name and you could step on that stage and then some teacher would do a short speech about that person. After that you could go to that table behind which the school’s rector and our mentor was sitting. Then they would sign your diploma and give it to us and then we could see it in and then everyone will clap and you can sit again with your diploma in hand. That was a really nice moment. WIP
Adulthood #
WIP