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About Me

I am a 31-year-old father of two, Connagh (4) and Callum (1), married to Michelle. Currently living and working in Derby, with a view to moving to South Africa at some point in the hopefully-not-too-distant future. I am a Java programmer by trade, but I also do some freelance web consultancy work using Free Software (Nvu, Eclipse, Apache, PHP, MySQL) and maintain a network of computers at home. I have also been known to write C/C++ and a little Perl, and am learning Python as it seems to be used quite a lot in Ubuntu.

I started using Slackware Linux (Slackware '96) on an old 486 I got from a skip while I was still at Middlesex University back in 1997, wanting a free Unix-based OS on which to develop a MUD. Eventually it found its way onto my "proper" computer, which went through several hardware upgrades and is now my external web/mail/DNS server. Upon joining South Derbyshire LUG, I was convinced of the merits of switching to Debian, in spite of its reputation as a hacker's distribution, and intranet server now runs Debian Sarge, with my external server running Ubuntu Gutsy.

I first installed Ubuntu Breezy on my wife's desktop after getting frustrated with Red Hat and being impressed with the package management in Debian, but wanting a distribution oriented towards "normal" users. This machine is currently running Dapper. In February 2006 I bought an Acer Ferrari 4005WLMi and installed Breezy AMD64 on that, then later edited my /etc/apt/sources.list to follow the changes to Dapper, before following the prescribed process for upgrading to Edgy, Feisty and Gutsy. I intend to upgrade to Hardy Beta and try to help contribute to ironing out some bugs.

Ubuntu Contributions

• Some testing on the Acer Ferrari 4005WLMi (including off-list discussion with a couple of other users, Lakin Wecker and Stefano Rivera).

• Contributions to several bugs (65159, 53216, 69872, 46771, 66900, 90709, 47971, 93413).

• A member of the UK LoCo team and Launchpad Beta Testers team.

• Some advocacy work -- burning Dapper CDs and handing them out to friends and associates. Also trying to arrange a trial of Edubuntu in the nursery/daycare centre Connagh attends.
• Somewhat active on IRC (#ubuntu-uk) and UK Team mailing list.
• Wrote to my MP about EDM179. Unfortunately, my MP is Margaret Beckett, Foreign Secretary, and cannot sign EDMs. She did, however, forward my letter on to Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who replied with a stock response. I intend to write back to him.

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