About

A little about me

Raoul Pop

Raoul

My name is Raoul Pop. I love to write and take photographs. I get asked often whether I am the sole author of this website. The answer is yes. I designed the look and feel of the site, and I wrote all of the articles.

I’m Romanian by birth and American by upbringing. I emigrated to the United States with my family in 1991 and grew up in America. Having spent half of my childhood in Romania and half in the US, this makes me somewhat of a mongrel.

I discovered my love for writing in college, where I majored in English. The best outlet I’ve found for my passion has been this website, and here is where I intend to keep writing for a long time to come.

Although I’ve been using a camera since the early 90s, I fell in love with photography in 2006, and that’s when I decided I should improve my skills. I taught myself from books and online articles, and continued to learn new things every day. I believe that photography, like writing, involves a certain amount of talent, which, when combined with learning and perseverance, can yield some wonderful results.

I am deeply in love with the beauty, majesty and peace of nature, and on a smaller scale, that of everyday objects or situations. I preserve glimpses of what I see in my photographs.

You are welcome to not only browse this website, but also my photography site. I license my photos for commercial uses and also sell prints. If you see a photo that you’d like to get, feel free to buy it directly from the website. My prices are reasonable, and the photos are delivered instantly after payment is received. You can also order prints of my photos in various sizes and finishes to suit your needs and taste.

My interests are varied. I like photography (naturally), old movies, old cartoons, old and new music, new information, new computers and new technology, especially new DSLR cameras.

I’ve got knowledge and experience in the following fields:

  • Writing, blogging, podcasting
  • Photography
  • Web design and development
  • Information/knowledge systems management (i.e. EMR/LMS/CMS implementation & management)
  • Server and desktop virtualization, administration and management
  • Database design and administration
  • Healthcare administration
  • Product reviews and product improvement
  • Cost reduction and streamlining of processes

You’ll notice that I write a lot about technology, and you may wonder what gives me the authority to do so. I have been an IT professional for almost 15 years, and have served in various capacities, including tech support, programmer, webmaster, manager and director. I now work as a consultant. I have implemented and developed electronic medical records systems and online learning systems and content management systems. I have written policies and have hired and fired employees. I assembled server rooms and servers and desktops and purchased all sorts of IT equipment. In short, I’ve worked a LOT in IT. It’s a field that I know and like.

Ligia Pop

Ligia

Ligia, my wife, is an accomplished piano teacher and raw food cook and writer. She has published her first book, entitled “Pasi in Lumea Muzicii” (Steps in the World of Music) in 2008. The book was published in Romania, and it’s an innovative and very approachable method for teaching children piano. She likes old movies, old cartoons and old music, just like me.

What you’ll find here

I publish original content about 3-4 times per week, plus links to other interesting articles that I want to share with you (some of which you can only get if you subscribe to the site feed).

If there’s a lull in my posts, that means I’m either busy with projects or I’m working on an article that takes a lot of time to put together. There could be other reasons of course, such as travel or sickness, but the former two are the more likely.

Here’s a list of the various subjects I write about:

  • Technology: I am naturally interested in everything that has to do with computers and various other technologies that make our life better or worse.
  • Photography: I often do reviews of cameras and lenses or write about advances in the field. I post my own photography as well, gathered from my numerous outings and trips. All of the photographs that I post here or on my portfolio site are available for license or for sale as prints, if they are marked with my name.
  • Travel: I get around — thanks to my wife and my thirst for photography — and when I do, I take photos, and tend to reflect on the places I visit.
  • Movies and Cartoons: I love old movies and cartoons (silent, classic, black and white, color, you name it), and I write about them. I also write about current movies and cartoons that interest me.
  • Products: New and innovative products get me really excited. I love good design, and I admire products where design, function, durability and reliability are tightly integrated. I review cameras, computers and other technology-related products on my site.
  • Books: I do book reviews from time to time.
  • News and discoveries: I love to find out what’s new in the world, and to share that information right here on my blog.
  • Ideas: I post my own ideas here, because I want to do what I can to contribute to our overall well-being.
  • Life: I write about various things in my life, or life in general, with all its quirks, pleasures, frustrations and yes, sorrows.

There are plenty of digital trails that lead to me. Here are a few of them:

Would you like to ask me a particular question? Do you want to see my current CV? Email me.

Background info

After years of writing articles for my other sites and several months of blogging in late 2005 and early 2006, I finally said enough is enough, I should have only one place where I write. I consolidated my blog from Blogger and my published articles from Amalgamy, a site where I had coded a blogging engine myself, into a single site, called ComeAcross, in April of 2006, where I decided to use WordPress. This explains why you’ll see posts from as early as 2001 if you look through the Archives. That’s when I started writing and publishing articles online. When I imported them into the WordPress platform, I kept the original dates of publication for each article.

In December of 2007, I moved all my content here (to raoulpop.com) from ComeAcross (comeacross.info). This was the culmination of a torturous decision process about whether I should have a separate site or whether I should store it all under my name and be done with it. I’m somewhat obsessive about these things…

I initially chose comeacross.info for a good reason. In spite of the fact that there are tons of splogs on the .info TLD, I took the meaning of the .info to heart, and wanted to create a site where you could truly come across interesting information. Simple enough, right? I thought of my site as one of the few real websites on the .info TLD. I also thought that it’d be hard for people to remember and type raoulpop.com, and that they’d mess it up. Well, the truth is that people seldom type in URLs. Most often, they click on links, and as long as the link is correct, and the content is good they don’t really care how it’s spelled.

To make a long story short, all my content is here now, and here’s where I plan to keep it.

Feedback is welcome

Your ideas and suggestions about anything that pertains to the site are welcome. If you know of an interesting piece of news or some tidbit of knowledge, let me know.

You may also want to look at the following pages:

Accolades and mentions

Here are some of the websites that have linked to, or excerpted from my articles, or where my photographs appear — listed in no particular order:

If you know of any other websites where my content appears, please let me know, and I’ll list them here.