This is me

My name is Beni Álvarez and I'm from Ponferrada, in the province of León, in northwest Spain. I've worked as a computer programmer in the innovation department of the Ponferrada City Council ↗️ since 2009. Although in recent years my work has been more administrative and project management.

I like many things and I have always been one to do many different things, but what I have always maintained throughout my life is my passion for sports, electronic music (dance, house, techno, minimal...), computers and motorcycles.

Social links

Sports

I've always (or almost always) played sports.
As a child, I played football/scoocer, and at school, I played other sports like volleyball, handball, and athletics. When I was a bit older, I played a lot of tennis, especially in the summer.

In 2007, I started running, and the following year I ran my first marathon. Since then, in a way, I haven't stopped running…
But in 2016, running alone wasn't enough for me, and triathlon seemed interesting, even though I'd never swum competitively. Aware of my limitations, I started advanced swimming courses, and in 2018, I did my first triathlon.

One of my sport challenges for 2026 is to complete my fifth Ironman 70.3 in Mallorca ↗️. And I say challenge because I don't know how I'm going to manage to combine training with FabAcademy (plus work and sleep). I signed up for this test on October 25th, well before I decided to enroll in FabAcademy; otherwise, I probably wouldn't have signed up. Will I survive? Time to find out!

What is an 70.3 Ironman? It's a half-distance triathlon that consists of completing (half of an Ironman 140.6):
- 1900m swim (1.2 mi)
- 90km bike ride (56 mi)
- 21.1km half marathon run (13.1 mi)
If we add up all the distances, it's 70.3 mi

Music

One of the things that perhaps most influenced my youth was belonging to a youth center called CIMA ↗️, where we could participate in a lot of free workshops, some of them, like the radio program, of indefinite duration.
At the radio station, first as a participant and later as an instructor teaching younger people, I produced several music radio programs. Radio broadcasting is something I'm passionate about (always electronic music), which led me to become a professional DJ while I was studying for a higher degree in Computer Application Development.

Music and Computers

Years later, combining my DJing skills with my programming background, I created the first website in Spain for buying DJ vinyl records that allowed customers to listen to the records before purchasing them (in 2000). A few years later, with the e-commerce boom, European online stores were selling the same record with free shipping to Spain for less than what it cost me to buy it from official Spanish distributors… incredible! I tried to transition to selling MP3s, but Spanish copyright laws hadn't yet evolved.

For many years, I combined DJing with other jobs, such as working in IT, until being a DJ no longer motivated me. Although I evolved to CDs and computers (I was also one of the first to DJ music from the computer controlled from turntables with timecode vinyl records -Final Scratch ↗️-), there came a time when any song was available for download (.mp3) to anyone, and for me, it lost the charm of what I consider one of the arts of DJing, which is to build your own musical collection including the vinyl records you were able to find or obtain by going to stores to listen to music.

Computers

I've had a computer since I was 8 years old; specifically, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ 48kb. I remember playing many games, but I have a special fondness for generating the Star Wars intro music in Sinclair Basic with the "Beep" command, figuring out all the notes and durations by ear... It's a shame that everything disappeared when you had to turn off the Spectrum.

And at 9, I discovered the Apple world using a Macintosh SE that my godmother brought back from the US after completing her doctoral thesis in medicine at Stanford University.

I remember playing a game whose objective was to familiarize myself with using a mouse. It consisted of moving the cursor, passing over stars (they disappeared at that moment), and when there were none left, I had to be in a kind of goal, always dodging obstacles.

It was a huge change, going from loading games on cassette tapes from my Spectrum to the floppy disk and mouse of the Macintosh. Years later, my godmother gave it to me as a gift, and I still have it!
Since then, I've combined the use of Apple computers with Windows operating systems, depending on the requirements and resources available at the places I've worked.

Motorbikes

Where did my passion for motorsports come from? That's what my parents wondered when, as a little kid, I'd set my alarm to watch motorcycle races on TV, even if it was in the middle of the night because of the time difference. Those were different times, and the only way to watch them was live.

At nine years old, I started saving up, and years later, at twelve, I bought my first motorcycle (a Puch Condor). The first one is always special, especially because it was the culmination of many years of dreaming about it.

Over the years, I've owned several, and I have fond memories of them all.
Today, I have three. One for the track, one for everyday use (a city scooter), and one for off-road excursions.
And yes, even though we're in the era of on-demand content, I still get up to watch the races live, no matter the time.

My other motorbikes:

Why FabAcademy

And here we are… how? Why?

I've always tried to understand, out of curiosity, how things that fascinate me work, although to be honest, I'd never considered making any of them myself.

A few years ago, as part of the innovation department, the city decided to create a municipal FabLab with the help of FabLab León. While I was already familiar with some of the techniques, I have to say that now that I know the FabLab, I've discovered an incredible world of endless possibilities.

That's why, once I was "inside" this world and learned about the FabAcademy, it became one of the opportunities that shaped the evolution of my work.

I hope to live up to expectations and enjoy these exciting months ahead.

Here is my Student Agreement.

Credits

Texts written in Spanish and translated with Google Translate

myriammira social logos in Freepik ↗️