For info about the BikeGremlin project – see the BikeGremlin ODEI™ page.
Why is this called BikeGremlin?
What is Mostly harmless™ ?
My name is Relja Novović – I was born and still live in Novi Sad, Serbia (former Yugoslavia). Still the most beautiful city in the world (Relja Novović Linkedin profile).
I’m an IT engineer (and a bachelor of economics) and have worked for most of my life as (computer) systems administrator and technical support. Some of my other great passions are cycling and mechanics. And motorcycling, with varying success – as the picture below shows.
Both my father and uncle were experts in their fields (communications engineer, and brain surgeon – respectively), but they both always fixed everything around the house – and friends’ and neighbours’ houses. Guess I picked that from them – getting my own first toolbox well before the age of 10.
Thanks to my grandmother, who highly valued education, I was encouraged to read a lot. By the age of 8, I had already read several encyclopedias from front to back. She thought that was the best way to get knowledgeable, so I was given the encyclopedia and read them from front to back – like a “normal” book. The “worst” part was I quite enjoyed it, even though I didn’t understand most things at the time. Started off with a great set of “Children’s encyclopedia”.
Afterwards, I went on to excellent Brehm’s Life of Animals and Grand Larousse encyclopédique – those two have stuck in my memory as excellent, often getting back to them with more understanding throughout my growing up.
What this did, I believe, is help me understand the (importance of the) structure and system of knowledge and information. In addition to getting me in love with the books. Throughout my life I have continued reading a lot and learning about various different topics.
This has enabled me to get a good, functional understanding of various fields of expertise. I’m still the happiest when presented with new, unknown problems and learning how to solve them.
I try to look at life from the bright side and find humour even in difficult situations. In that respect, the text above is also a good material for a posthumous speech: in case I get run over by a truck while on a bike – you can just copy/paste this. 🙂
Then came the internet. The treasure of human knowledge and experience at one’s fingertips – click of a button away! However, with that also came the problem of, how should I put it… integrity! Anyone can write anything, be published online and present themselves as an expert. From my own field of expertise (computers and bicycle mechanics notably), I find more and more misinformation – even on some reputable, popular websites. Apart from outright wrong information, which is relatively easy to spot and correct, there’s lots of incomplete information and, even more “dangerous”, information that is structured in such a way that it can easily lead a novice to a wrong conclusion.
My article discussing: “Is BikeGremlin a reliable source of information?“
The driving idea of the Bike Gremlin project is to be(come) a hub for objective, complete, thorough and correct information from various fields of expertise. My goal is to gather experts of various fields, let them write informative articles and have it all linked in one place, easily searched. Something like Wikipedia, but with more facts checking (which, as a downside, dictates a lot slower gathering and publishing of information).
For now, all most of the articles are my own work – and my responsibility in case of any errors, but the goal is to encourage other experts to join.
Anyone willing to contribute is free to email me using the email address (written “strangely” for spam prevention): my name (relja) at (@) this domain (bikegremlin.com).