DanaOlson

Brief Introduction

Personal

I'm Arnold Dana Olson, I've been running Linux off and on for many years, and fully ditched the seldom-used remnants of Windows from my system on August 18th, 2002.

I went to college and graduated as a Computer Network Engineering Technologist, and I am currently working at an ISP/webhost/VoIP/CLEC/LEC as a Perl developer. I run Ubuntu exclusively on my workstation at work and my desktops at home.

I am 24, happily married for 4 years, with two pets, a huge cat and a cool ferret. Soon, I'll have a ball python. Well, when I can afford the initial costs, that is. I own my own home, and contractors that come to repair things invariably ask if this is my parent's place, even after I tell them that I do own it.

I am a musician before most other things, although I'm not very good at it. I don't have a full band, but I make my own songs using Linux under the RIVIR moniker. I'm self-taught on guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, ocarina, penny whistle, and harmonica, but I'm not necessarily good at all of them.

I started with experimenting on my parents' first PC between Windows reinstalls with distros such as Dragon Linux, Storm Linux, Mandrake, and a few others. I discovered WinLinux 2000 on a warez site in 1999, and I downloaded it (because at that time, I cared only about downloading every bit of warez that I could find... Something that would change once I discovered just exactly what open-source was).

It worked on all the PCs that I could find, and I didn't need to partition, so I was able to get my feet wet. This was at a time before Live CDs were the norm, and no matter what the Mandrake and Red Hat users at the time told me, I didn't care - WinLinux did NOT suck, it filled a void that the others could not easily fill, and I learned a lot.

It is thanks to WinLinux 2000 and my early love affair with warez that I am here today, on Ubuntu. Had it not existed, nor had it been on the warez sites that I frequented from the high school computer room with my trusty floppy discs, I may not have gone on to desire it so badly and be running it today.

In 2000 I got a part-time job and bought my own PC and immediately started dual-booting with Mandrake 7. I learned even more (at my own pace) through to the end of 2002 when I jumped ship to Debian Sid. Boy, did I ever learn a lot here! My system frequently broke and I learned how to fix it. It was awesome. It was like discovering Linux all over again...

Perpetual upgrades took a toll on me, and when Ubuntu came along, I was ready for a change. I was ready to use my PC as a PC, instead of constantly fiddling with things. And so here I am today, an official Ubuntu Member.

My Contributions

See my Launchpad page for Karma and other Launchpad stuff.

Bugs I Have Reported

Patches Submitted

Packages

I began learning packaging on Feb. 10th of this year after deciding that I had to do something myself to get Ubuntu up to scratch for music users. I didn't fully succeed, but I made a small dent in the missing music production package list. As it stands currently, Dapper is missing only 15% of the applications currently on our list of important audio software (available here).

I was recently approached by dancerj to put most of these packages into Debian, which I agreed to work on, as I believe that it is more ideal to have things in Debian, and then Ubuntu, but I was concerned about getting new apps into Dapper before the cutoff date. With only 13 days to learn and package as much as I could, I feel I made the right decision.

I also encourage others to assist, and as a result, Forest Bond also worked on moving several applications out of his personal repository and into REVU.

New Packages for Dapper

* - I am also upstream for this package.

Simple Bugfix Uploads for Dapper

UVF Exception Requests

IRC Activity

I'm active on IRC, mostly on irc.freenode.net in #ubuntu-studio, helping people with audio stuff, and just generally being friendly.

I also sit in with a bunch of awesome, talented, and friendly individuals in #ubuntu-motu.

My Projects

The Ubuntu Studio Project

Homepage: http://www.ubuntustudio.com/wiki

Description: This is my new baby. It's a community wiki for Ubuntu-using musicians. Its aim is to have easy, foolproof tutorials for users to get their Ubuntu system up to speed for realtime, low-latency audio work. I also hope to see it branch out to provide quick tutorials and introductions to the various software available, to help inform people what options there are, and get them up and running quickly.

RIVIR

Homepage: http://www.rivironline.com/

Description: This is my music project. Styles range widely, but mostly expect metal/industrial/electronic goodness. I have a demo CD available, even though all of my music can be downloaded for free in MP3 and/or Ogg formats. I try and promote Ubuntu and Debian in some, small way on the site, and I used all open-source apps to record all of my music.

Scapegoat Software

Homepage: http://www.scapegoatsoftware.com/

Description: This is a site where I put up a lot of my old code that I didn't lose in the various system crashes over the years... I'm not a good developer, really, and there are some projects there that will probably never be finished, such as Battle Tic Tac Toe (which is hosted at icculus.org).

The Mandrake eXPerience

Homepage: http://www.pgshopping.com/mdkxp/

Description: This is a now-defunct tutorial website that I used to maintain for Mandrake users. It was featured in the official Mandrake newsletter, issue 68 (Nov. 14, 2002). I still get emails and IMs from people who still use the site, request updates or further assistance. Of course I point them to Ubuntu now.