BCurtisWX - Ubuntu Wiki

Contents

Personal Information
Brian and Ubuntu!
About Brian Curtis
1. School
2. Programming
PGP Key

Personal Information

Name	Brian Curtis
Location	Fairfax, VA/Washington, DC
Hometown	Rochester, NY
Email	bcurtiswx@ubuntu.com
IRC	bcurtiswx @ irc.freenode.net #ubuntu-bugs #ubuntu-dc
AIM	bcurtiswx
Launchpad	https://launchpad.net/~bcurtiswx
LoCo	DC LoCo Team
Current OS	Lucid Lynx
Blog	http://ubuntutrap.blogspot.com/

Brian and Ubuntu!

I have been using Linux ever since 2004, I have been using the Ubuntu OS ever since 2007. I became involved with Ubuntu just around the beginning of Gutsy. It's my main OS now both at school and at home.

Community Involvement

http://dc.ubuntu-us.org/
1. I am currently a participant in my Local Community.
2. I will be hosting my first bug jam in mid August at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
BugSquad / UbuntuBugControl
1. I find a great deal of fun in triaging bugs. Immediately after joining the Bug Squad I tried really hard in learning the basics of bug triage so I could help as many people as possible. I found out that the bug triage community has been so helpful to me, and its a privilege of mine to be able to return the favor.
2. In order to return the favor to the best of my ability, I joined the Bug Control team so I could answer other triagers help requests in making sure the bugs they are triaging are done right and that they learn from this experience.
3. I have brought up the idea for a team of people to go and work on testing bug patches provided by the community in bug reports that have gone untested thus far so we can push these to the developers. I hope to take this knowledge into being able to make patches myself and adopt a package. Thanks to Brian Murray and his work in making This Page to help me out with this.
Others: 5-a-day, Ubuntu Users, Ayatana Discussions, Launchpad Users
1. My community is my job and my colleagues and my family and friends, and I spread Ubuntu and help all of them every chance I get.

Future Plans

RDiff System Restore

RDiff will allow users to return their operating system to a previous state
I imagine a major benefit of using RDiff is that you aren't backing up the files themselves, you are only logging the changes made to the filesystem. This will ensure minimal file system usage. I don't think this is worthy of a system backup title as this doesn't protect against data corruption. Backups should still be recommended for use with this.
I hope to start learning GTK so I can develop a GUI that goes with this system. If this becomes much of a hastle, I may be able to come up with a few drawings of how I want it to look and work with someone who knows GTK very well.

Bringing Science Applications into Ubuntu

I have found a space weather application that I would like to adopt and make a part of Ubuntu. I am in the works of figuring out how to package it correctly for Debian.
This application offers users different views of the sun. Something like this is interesting, especially during a solar max cycle with all the different features of the sun.
Hopefully this will gain interest from youngsters to go into a space science field out of high school.

Spreading

In my department I have gotten a majority of my colleagues and friends to start using the Ubuntu OS, my advisor and I maintain three network computers that are used by many people through the country as a part of his grant work. I am known through my department as "that guy you go to see if you have a linux/ubuntu problem" and have frequent visits by people who have questions about Ubuntu/Linux.

I had acquired a friend through playing the game armagetron who had constantly talked to me about how much he loved Microsoft (in specific a windows server). I constantly badgered him about how great Ubuntu is and how Bill Gates just wanted his money when finally he decided to give Ubuntu a try just to see how it compared. Now I'm quite sure that he wanted to do that just to finally get me off his back, but instead of finding ways to "fight back", he fell in love with it. All I had to teach him was a few command line items and im sure google has helped him the rest of the way. He's been running an Ubuntu server ever since and he uses it to host an armagetron server for others to play. (Note: he's taken tons of microsoft testing to get good jobs, and in a sense he's thrown a lot of that away)

I plan on starting an Ubuntu blog on blogspot and spreading my ideas and gossip about Ubuntu through that. I will include the address as soon as I think of a few things to add to it to start off with.

Get my help!

You can see me idling and helping out in #ubuntu-bugs, since I am a member of bug control I will try my best to learn from others as they help. I am always helping fellow colleagues in my workplace with Ubuntu/Linux problems as well.

Bug Mentors

I am a bug mentor for the Ubuntu BugSquad. I can offer advice and triaging help to anyone interested in learning the best bug traige practices.

1800-0400UTC (2PM-11PM ET) availability on #ubuntu-bugs
I work with empathy bugs, but I can help give beginners basic triage knowledge.
Following 3 are great starting resources
* How To Triage
* Bug Importances
* Bug Statuses

Testimonials

Brian's a regular (and helpful) soul on IRC and is organizing regular DC LoCo Bug Jams. -- KevinCole

Brian has been helping hard on -bugs; this help is extremely appreciated (even more because he shows all the right attitudes -- helpful, interested, and willing to learn when needed). +1. -- Hggdh

Brian is a valuable member of the Ubuntu Bug Control team and I find his insights, comments and ideas very helpful. Additionally, he does a fantastic job of helping new bug triagers along. He also has a great name! -- BrianMurray

One day Brian showed up in #ubuntu-dc while I was triaging and we started working on 5-a-day together. Even though he was sick on the day of the Global Bug Jam, he still participated with our LoCo remotely, helping out some of the new people who showed up with no triaging experience. Now he's organizing another in-person bug jam (and hopefully will be healthy this time!) for August. I'm hoping that means the people we convert at our September event will have a better experience with Ubuntu. I gave him a +1 for joining Bug Control, and I'll cheer for him in #ubuntu-meeting when his name comes up. -- MacoMorgan

About Brian Curtis

School

I'm a Graduate Student at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, VA. I'm a Computational Sciences and Informatics major with a concentration in Space Sciences and Astrophysics. Since it is a computational science, I hope to eventually work on coding some Magneto-HydroDynamic Physics Models in hopes to better space weather prediction.

Programming

Being a part of a computational sciences program at the graduate level I have always had to do some type of programming. I enjoy the C language the most and I am very familiar with FORTRAN, Bash, PHP, CSS, HTML and MySQL.

PGP Key

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