Short Auto Biography

I am currently 16 years old and was born May 8^th, 1990 in Brockville Ontario, Canada. I became interested in computers and programming in Grade 6 when I started to play with databases. I started programming in grade 7 with QBasic, but got bored very fast because I could not do very much with it. Then I switched to a programming language called Turing made by Holt Software. I was also very displeased with it and lost interest in programming. Then in the spring of grade 8, I heard about Java from a student taking grade 11 computer science at my high school; after some investigation I found this was the language for me. At that time I often came home from school and would sit down for four to six hours of learning and programming. After a few months I was able to move onto Swing applications. I created a simple Notepad and programmed a Diary for my little sisters. Over my grade 9 to 10 summer I worked full time at Elite Machine and Gear Inc. (a small automation company). Although the job was not my preference I worked very, very hard and was rewarded with a $300 bonus and over $1.50 in raises. Mid-way through the summer I started designing the new Diary version 2. This was when I switched to NetBeans. I had worked with it a little, as well as Eclipse, but I did not understand all of its features. At this time I also bought my first Java book. At the end of the summer i had the book read completely through and was ready for more. School started and I was enrolled in the grade 11 computer science and grade 11 computer engineering; both subjects I love. I promoted Netbeans throughout my computer science class and anywhere i could. In December of 2005 i attended the NetBeans world tour in Toronto Ontario (Canada). Later on in about February of the same year i was interviewed by Sun Microsystems about my involvement in the NetBeans project. You can read the complete interview here. Unfortunately I have basically stopped the development of Diary 2 because of school and I lost interest, was learning ant and accidentally cleaned my source directory that I had not committed to subversion for about a month so I ended up loosing over 2500 lines of code. Also I was writing a plugin engine and found that I could use the Netbeans platform since it had all the functionality I needed, not to mention there was not a large user group. As of late, I have been receiving a email here and there about the project and when a new release is going to come out so I might revive the project but rebuild it on the Netbeans platform.
After becoming fond of computers, programming (specifically Java with Netbeans) I was introduced to the linux operating system by a older friend named Scott Morris. I first installed it in grade 10 but did start using it full time until June of 2006 (the end of grade 10) although i dual booted windows XP and SuSE 9.1 for many months before making the switch to Ubuntu full time. Now I use Ubuntu 6.10 only and have been windows free since June 2006. In my little time using linux I have seen amazing improvement and innovation thus i decided to support Open-Source even more so then i did before NetBeans. I refuse to use proprietary software (unfortunately i am forced to under some occasions; for example API's proprietary fglrx graphics driver).

My Lusted Knowledge

Since coming to linux I have wanted to learn many new things and have acquired many new books and intend to own many more. Topics I would like to learn include:

• C programming
• C++ programming
• some scripting languages like python, javascript, ruby on rails, groovy, beanshell, and others
• C# programming and mono
• linux API's including WINE API, glibc, the kernel API, gtk+ API's (including C++ interfaces (gtkmm)), pygtk, and others
• J2ME
• J2EE
• Web services and website administration
• Hardware and schematic design

Books

Books I Own

Books I intend to Own

Fun Stuff

Quotes

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character." -Albert Einstein
"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself." -Albert Einstein
"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." -Albert Einstein
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." -Albert Einstein
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." -Albert Einstein
"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people." -Karl Marx
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -Rich Cook
"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut." -Albert Einstein
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity." -Albert Einstein
"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer ." -Albert Einstein
"The only source of knowledge is experience" -Albert Einstein
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." -Albert Einstein
"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value." -Albert Einstein

Games I Own

Games I Would like to Own

Contact Information

IRC and Forum

Launchpad Username: rekahsoft
Freenode IRC Username: rekahsoft
Ubuntu forums Username: rekahsoft
Gentoo Forums Username: rekahsoft

Chat

Skype Username: rekahsoft
MSN: callin_24_7@msn.com (Note: Do NOT email this address; I only use it for MSN)
Yahoo: callin_24_7@yahoo.com (Note: Do NOT email this address; I only use it for Yahoo chat)

Email

Personal: collin dot doering at gmail dot com
Standard: rekahsoft at gmail dot com
Mailing List: rekahsoft dot mail at gmail dot com

Linkage

http://rekahsoft.org <--my current blog
http://claimid.com/rekahsoft <--my claimid site (my claimid has everything about me on it so feel free to explorer)
https://launchpad.net/people/rekahsoft <--Launchpad User Information

Note: change imminent (AKA times change, life goes on making more information that in turn will be published)