gerowen

Gerowen

Personal Information

Name

Marcus Dean Adams

Location

Kentucky, United States

Languages

English

About Me

Me and Linux

I first started using Linux back in 2005 when I was a senior in high school transitioning into college. At that time I was introduced to Mandrake Linux, and a love affair with Linux began. Over the years I've bounced around using Mandrake/Mandriva, Fedora, Debian, and finally Ubuntu. I've never had a particular distribution that I didn't like, but over the years I've realized that whenever I engage with the Ubuntu community I seem to get more of a response whether I'm asking for help, or offering it. The operating system is easy to use and the code of conduct is fairly straight-forward and easy to understand. I've been running Linux exclusively for years, and regardless of what distribution I happened to be tinkering with, I've always had a place in my heart for Ubuntu after I tried it back in 2006. For many reasons, all of the PCs in my home run Ubuntu Linux; mine, my wife's and kids'. Even our home servers run Ubuntu Server Edition. It offers a stable, cohesive, open source and free (as in freedom) computing environment for us to do everything from play video games to file taxes to host a media server.

Just Me

I'm just a regular guy. I live in the woods of Kentucky. I served in the military for a while and enjoy a variety of things. I work on cars, hunt, drive and work on school buses, play video games, and I'm husband to a wonderful woman who has given me two amazing children.

Contributions to the Community

Summary of Contributions

Online Communities in Which I Participate

Note: Some links in this section may go to non-Ubuntu websites

Explanation of Some Contributions

As a person with no real formal training in programming languages, I have always felt like I should give more to the Linux community as a whole. Since I don't have the skills to review and edit code, I've tried to be as helpful as I can in other ways. I've written walkthroughs, scripts to automate daily tasks, and I frequently visit various Linux forums including the Ubuntu Forums, Linuxquestions.org, and more so I can help newcomers to the Linux community as much as I can.

As an IT Specialist in a county of less than 12,000 people, I know a lot of the local people. I've worked on personal computers, and if reasonable for the customer, after conferring with them, have successfully converted quite a few people from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu Linux with great success and good reviews after the fact. I have handed out Ubuntu Linux CDs and documentation when available, and let people use a guest account on my own computer to try it out before having it installed on their machines. I chose Ubuntu because, especially for the average user, it is the easiest for a normal person to sit down and start using.

Technical Experience

Work

From early 2007 until late 2012 I worked as an Information Technology Specialist with the U.S. Army. I served as the primary IT guy for a brigade size element. I deployed to Iraq one time for a year. During my time with the Army, I was attached to a brigade of combat engineers, which meant that if it had to do with computers, I was "the" guy. I also worked for a university, prior to my service with the Army, where my primary duties were to repair and troubleshoot laptop computers.

Hardware

I have run miles and miles of CatV/CatVI cable, terminated it both in patch panels and with RJ-45 connectors. I have built servers from the ground up including both the physical construction, and installing and configuring their operating systems. I have built PCs from the ground up given a budget, and I have replaced components both in PCs and in server systems. I operate a CB radio base station and have can install PL-259 connectors, install/erect antennas, run coax, and convert old computer power supplies to power a radio.

Software

I have experience with Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007, Microsoft SharePoint, RedHat/Fedora Linux, Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and I've touched on Windows 8 and Windows 10 virtual machines. I have some basic experience configuring software RAID, mostly on Dell servers I set up in Iraq using the pre-packaged Dell software. I have set up and configured Windows domain controllers, Windows and Linux webservers, Windows and Linux DNS servers, Windows and Linux print servers, Windows and Linux FTP servers, Windows telnet services, and Linux SSH services. I have configured switches, and was at one time awarded for troubleshooting and correcting a connectivity issue that prevented two networks thousands of miles apart from communicating. I have a good working knowledge of basic networking fundamentals and have experience actually doing a lot of it. I have built web-pages from the ground up using both Microsoft Frontpage (back in the day), Microsoft Expression Web, NVU, Mozilla Seamonkey, and with regular text editors such as Geany or GEdit. I have some basic knowledge of Python, BASH, and HTML. I regularly develop scripts/programs to automate everyday tasks for myself using these languages.

Software and Scripts Written

These projects are mostly hosted on sourceforge, so be aware that any hyperlinks in this section will take you away from any Ubuntu website. They're mostly just scripts that make my life easier, and therefore don't warrant a full blown project page on Launchpad.

CheckMD5

Description

CheckMD5 is a python program that calculates the MD5 checksum of a file, and compares it to an original either by selecting an original copy of the file, or manually entering the checksum of the original file, such as when it is provided on a website from which you downloaded a file.

For more information reference the Readme file inside the archive.

There's a video tutorial I recorded that you can watch at: http://youtu.be/ksIB9iQKHWg

PingChecker

Description

PingChecker is a tool I wrote to help myself with pinging multiple hostnames or IP addresses for the purpose of determining patterns. It takes targets from the user, stores them in a file, then pings those targets, exports the results to a text file and displays it to the user so they can save it somewhere else. There's a lot that can be done with this script(The version I actually made at work is different than this one), so I encourage you to open it up and edit it to suit your needs.

PyNuker

Description

PyNuker is a network stress testing tool written in Python. I have tested it on Linux and Windows. It infinitely(until stopped) sends a string of text via a UDP packet to a target computer or network device in an effort to flood the target with so much useless traffic that it stops responding to valid requests. If you run it on a "posix" system like Linux, it will generate colored text output while it runs to help you keep an eye on things.

Mupen64Plus-PyTK

Description

Mupen64Plus-PyTK is a Python/TK launcher for Mupen64Plus. It can run with or without being installed. If installed it creates desktop shortcuts and menu icons for the user. On first run it asks the user for configuration variables (screen resolution, location of executables, etc.) and stores those in a config file. Every subsequent run those variables are loaded automatically and passed to the emulator so that the end-user only has to double click an icon, pick their game and play. There is a "reconfigure" program to change configuration options or the config file can be edited directly with a text editor. It can also detect most package manager supplied installations of Mupen64Plus so the user doesn't have to go digging for the executable during the initial setup process.

It does require that you have the python3-tk package installed.

YouTube-DL-PyTK

Description

YouTube-DL-PyTK is a Python/TK front-end/launcher for youtube-dl and downloads videos from YouTube. It can be installed or ran straight from its folder. If installed it creates desktop shortcuts and menu icons for the user. It supports downloading videos anonymously as well as authenticating with a google username/password for restricted videos. Since youtube-dl is in the public domain, it comes with a copy bundled with it so end-users do not have to download and install youtube-dl themselves, it comes included so that software as a package is ready to roll right out of the gate.

It does require that you have the python3-tk package installed.

FreqLength

Description

FreqLength is a simple wavelength calculator that I wrote in Python. I wrote it to help CB and ham radio operators who want to build their own antennas. You input a frequency in Mhz and it spits out various wavelengths (full, half, quarter, and 5/8) in both feet and inches.

It uses easygui to draw graphical dialog boxes so it requires that you have the python3-tk package installed.

gerowen (last edited 2019-07-20 00:39:24 by gerowen)