##master-page:HomepageTemplate #format wiki #language en || '''Name''' || Bruno Girin || || '''Location''' || London, United Kingdom || || '''Time Zone''' || Europe/London || || '''Home Town''' || [[http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=brest,+france&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=11.25,28.256836&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Brest,+Finistere,+Brittany,+France&ll=48.390914,-4.485168&spn=0.789716,1.766052&z=9|Brest, France]] || || '''LP Account''' || [[https://launchpad.net/~brunogirin|brunogirin]] || || '''Blog''' || [[http://brunogirin.blogspot.com/]] || || <> || == A Short Introduction == I come from a small town called Brest, located at the very west end of Brittany, in France. If you've ever read any of the [[http://www.asterix.com/|Astérix]] novels, I come from the same region, but even further west. I graduated in computer science in 1994, in another small French town called Nancy, about an hour away from the German and Luxembourg borders. I eventually ended up moving to London in 1998 and I still live here today. == Ubuntu and Me == === How I Came to Ubuntu === I got introduced to computers at a time when a home computer was called Amstrad CPC 464, Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum and when Windows and the Internet didn't exist. Home computing was fun then. At uni, I learnt the ins and outs of UNIX and software design on green text terminals. By the time I got my first job, Windows was already dominant on the desktop and I hated it. I didn't hate it because it was bad or proprietary. I hated it because I am the sort of person who learns a lot better when I can understand how things work rather than learn stuff by heart. And for me that was the difference: I could understand UNIX, it made sense but I couldn't understand Windows, its logic escaped me. I tried a lot of things at home in order not to use Windows: as I knew Sun Solaris well, I had a refurbished Sun Sparc 10 at home at some point; then I tried Red Hat but being more a developer than a sys admin, I found that it was too difficult to get Red Hat to work as I wanted. I eventually bought a PowerMac G5 on the grounds that it worked out of the box but it was UNIX underneath. Eventually, the company I was working for ended up being wound down and we all got made redundant, with our work laptop given to us as part of the redundancy package. This was a very nice IBM ThinkPad T42, with specs meant for heavy-weight Java/J2EE development. Unfortunately it was running Windows XP. I had heard of this new distro on the block called Ubuntu, I downloaded an ISO, burnt a CD, booted the CD and lo and behold, 30 minutes later my ThinkPad was running Feisty Faun without a glitch! The Windows install CDs were never seen again. I still use the ThinkPad today and in fact it's my main machine from which I am currently writing this page. === My Contribution === I try to contribute to Ubuntu as and when time allows, so here's what I've been doing so far: * I am a member of [[http://ubuntu-uk.org/|the Ubuntu UK LoCo team]]; * I report bugs as and when I find them; * As a member of the [[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad|Bug Squad team]] I contribute to triaging bugs; * I am a member of the [[BugSquad/AdoptPackage/Nautilus|Nautilus adoption team]] started by [[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Qense|Sense]], who has been great in mentoring me on bug triaging; * I contribute new snippets to the [[https://launchpad.net/python-snippets|Python Snippets]] project whenever I learn new python tricks; * I contribute to the forums, mailing lists as well as the [[http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=27258|LinkedIn Ubuntu Users group]]; * I created my first Ubuntu application, [[https://launchpad.net/~brunogirin/+archive/cacofonix|Cacofonix]]. It won't change the world but it provided me with a workaround for [[https://bugs.launchpad.net/exaile/+bug/559746|bug 559746]]; * And recently, I started contributing fixes and new code to [[http://yorba.org/shotwell/|Shotwell]], the photo manager that will come in the next version of Ubuntu. === The Future === There are a lot of things I would like to do and get involved with in Ubuntu: * As a contractor, I have my own business and I would love for it to have a larger Ubuntu component; * I am a developer at heart but my experience is with Java, which is why I find [[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpportunisticDeveloperWeek|Jono's opportunistic developer initiative]] a great idea: I am exactly the sort of person this is aimed at; hopefully that will be a good spring board to get me started in producing code for Ubuntu; * And anything else that can help Ubuntu grow and that I can fit around my diary. == Random Bits and Bobs == Here are all the other things about me that didn't fit above: * I have [[http://brunogirin.blogspot.com/|a weblog]] that I fill sporadically with random stuff, generally technology related, including a number of [[http://brunogirin.blogspot.com/search/label/ubuntu|Ubuntu related posts]]; * I am a keen photographer so you can find my photos [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/brunogirin/|in my flickr stream]]; * I have [[http://uk.linkedin.com/in/brunogirin|a LinkedIn profile]]; * I love travelling and have visited nearly 40 countries but none in Asia so far. ---- [[CategoryUKTeamProfile]]