About

My true self greets your true self. my name is Kevin Demarest. i have a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Information Systems from California State University Long Beach. My GPA was 3.03. i started in Computer Science, but after getting my butt kicked as a result of terrible discipline, i found a job and worked for two years, then returned part time, and changed majors. Unfortunately, i didn't get any exposure to linux (that i was aware of) in the business program at CSULB, but i did take classes in Oracle, VB, Decision Support Systems, Business Statistics, Calculus, and Statistics. There were also some other courses, like Accounting and Managerial Economics, but they weren't technical in the Free Open Source Software sense.

presently working on webcam from cli.

---

Past and current contributions

• Advocated FOSS at Cerritos Community college by communicating with the school's newspaper.

• Getting behind distruptive technologies like Unhosted.org and other distributed (p2p) systems.

• Maintain a torrent server that seeds FOSS.

• Did an on the fly presentation at the Ubuntu Global jam for 9.04 for the CaliforniaTeam.

• Created a more philosophical marketing flier, expressing the concept choosing Ubuntu community over monopolies. Download it here.

• Did software testing for the wifix project.

• Help out in #ubuntu-beginners.
• Document my own experience utilizing Ubuntu on a Toshiba u305-s7448, continue to create bugs in order to keep developers informed.
• Tested fluxbox*, openbox, enlightenment, lxde, and xfce as an alternative to gnome with a retro feel.

• Added instructions on how to update colors for gtk apps on the Fluxbox wiki.

Future plans

• Learn packaging.
• Learn GLAMP, Python, C and any other language that strikes my fancy, hopefully help solve some bugs.

• Solve more project euler problems.

• get the "if i were an ubuntu, what version would i be" program to beta.
• learn to use fluxbox predominantly.
• advocate Ubuntu at more Universities and Colleges in the area, such as CSULB.
• Learn how to access source code for wireless drivers, hopefully to contribute some solutions to problematic drivers and/or hardware.
• Learn to utilize the shell to customize packages as much as possible.
• Automate my customizations in an Ubuntu installation script.
• Study the CLIcompanion source code further.

Friends in Training

Just me!

Testimonials

Kevin demonstrates a strong caring interest in Ubuntu beginners and volunteers quite a amount of his free time helping them out on #ubuntu and #ubuntu-beginners. i've observed he does everything he can to help but is humble and doesn't try to pretend to know more than he does. He tries to let people know he cares about them and their situation even when he doesn't have an answer. As an Ubuntu beginner myself, when a computer i was working on had a serious power manager bug Kevin provided two clever scripts he'd previously created that helped me out in my situation a lot as well as being educational. Also Kevin has been making the effort to courageously stretch the boundaries of his PHP and SQL knowledge by working on development of the Beginner's Team Development project, Wifix. He also has volunteered some valuable Wifix testing. i heartily recommend Kevin for the Ubuntu Beginners Team. nUboon2Age 8-3-2010

I have known Kevin for well over a year now thanks to IRC. Sometimes with both of us working on Ubuntu projects late into the night, we would be the only creatures stirring in the California IRC channel and it has given me great joy to speak in depth with Kevin about the direction of Ubuntu and about life in general. It was like meeting an old friend from a bygone era when we met at SCaLE9x in Los Angeles in early 2011. Kevin offers a unique perspective on all things, Ubuntu included. And I feel Ubuntu would greatly benefit from this sort of unique input. Ubuntu is about diversity and Kevin is not afraid to share his thoughts. Sometimes to break out of a spell or a stuck moment, you need to look at all sides of a story, of a project, of the leaders, to fully grasp the right direction to go. Im thankful to know Kevin and believe Ubuntu would benefit from his curiosity and thoughtful input. iheartubuntu 5/17/2011