Contact Info

Introduction

Hello, my name is Clint and I live in Brisbane, Australia.

My first interest in Linux first started with PCLinuxOS 2007, through reading the APC Magazine. You might recall that for a very brief time, PCLinuxOS was more popular than Ubuntu on distro watch.

My first introduction to a personal computer was probably back in 1989, a school friend had some sort of variety of 8-bit Amstrad PC. I recall it took a few minutes to games from 5.25" floppy drives. We finally got a PC at home in my early teenage years - 486 DX2, 66 MHz processor, 8 MB RAM, 300 MB HDD running IBM Dos with IBM Dosshell and then eventually Windows 3.11.

Education

My computer knowledge steadily grew through my own tinkering and in the computer lab in high school, where I also learnt basic programming in Pascal and GUI programming in Delphi Pascal v3, the pinnacle of my high school programming being a Mandlebrot/Julia Set generator. I also took IPT as a Board Subject for Year 11 and 12.

After high school, I decided to study IT rather than music after much discussion and research and did a Diploma of IT - Network Engineering. During the Diploma I did in 2000 was also the year I got my first taste of Linux - Red Hat. It formed only a very small part of the course and was mainly covering the basics using the cli, and trying to get the GUI working. At the time I wasn't really all that impressed by it and didn't give it much thought.

Work

After finishing the Diploma I ended up getting a job at a law firm...as a Photocopy Clerk (trust SRJA to get one of their graduates a job not even in their studied field!). It all worked out in the wash though, as I managed to transfer to the IT department as an IT Support Analyst (Helpdesk) when an opening arose and have been there ever since (> 10 years now)

IT Skill-set

I think of myself as an all-rounder - I have a wide breadth of knowledge and skills but none of them I have followed through to an high level of expertise. Although I work in the IT, the majority of my work and knowledge gained at work is based around the proprietary systems required by the law firm. However, I got involved in the Socialclub for awhile, which led to quite a few "outside of the square" IT projects that got me interested in various other areas that are outlined below.

Programming

• Python
  • Years Used: approx. 4
  • Experience: Mostly writing small cli scripts, I have started building GUIs in wxPython using Glade - most notable a program that acts as a GUI front for Windows Remote Access at work.
• Java
  • Years Used: less than 1
  • Experience: I decided to start learning it when I discovered it was the language using for Droid applications. Due to lack of time, and suprisingly, patience. I have put it on the back-burner. Compared to Python I find the syntax a little cumbersome.

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