keith-penguin

Introduction

About Me

http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/29/l_9fb2719e4bedeb0ac62d51440e409720.gif

I have been a computer geek my entire life, and while my first introduction to Gnu/Linux wasn't until High school in 1997, using Red hat to manage all of our servers (Digital High School Program sponsored by Cisco), I really didn't know what Linux was. In 2002, I was introduced to Debian and couldn't get enough, and as tempting as it was to use it as my primary system, I have always been too much of a hacker ("exploring the limits of what is possible in the spirit of playful cleverness" ~RMS) to keep it running for very long. When I was introduced to Ubuntu (Starting with the release of 6.06) I was in love right away. I immediately felt like I could do more and manage my learning curve as I desired. I continued to have a dual boot system until January 29, 2007 (In anti-celebration of a certain event coming the next day) after several months of not only using Ubuntu exclusively, but not even needing to restart the system.

The image to the left was one of the first things I ever made in Gimp.

Programming Experience

I have been a hobby programmer ever since I wondered what would happen if I booted an Apple II without the floppy and guessed at typing in the word "HELP" on the CL in second grade. While they are nothing notable today, I had great fun doing all kinds of crazy things many people told me wasn't possible using:

  • Apple BASIC
  • LEGO
  • gbasic
  • hypercard
  • VBA

I think of those as simpler times. I found myself spending a lot more time prototyping features and writing game engines than producing content let alone anything playable, and never had anything published beyond my circle of programmer friends. My love for VBA was very short lived. At the time having no experience with databases, used VBA and Excel to do things that I would do today in postgresql and php, but at the time used it to deconstruct game mechanics to look for advantages. Smile :)

Today I advocate for and am actively practicing my skills in:

In that order with respect to my comfort / experience in the language and how much time I spend with them. It is only a coincidence, looking now, that they also happen to fall in alphabetical order. Also, I would not be the person to ask for help regarding any issues with the last two aside from setting up the environments / modules for Apache.

I think I have more fun with Bash than some may consider reasonable, but I could just be weird.

(More to come...)

Ubuntu

While I have been a strong vocal supporter of Ubuntu, giving out CDs and helping people try it out, It has been this year (2009) that I have had a great desire to expand my advocacy beyond my own circle of friends and coworkers. I was surprised to find how many threads on Ubuntuforums I felt I could make a worthy contribution to (since I have broken and fixed just about everything in my system possible).

I have recently begun looking towards Launchpad as a way of focusing my learning / programming skills as one of my greatest barriers is having a project to focus on.

(More to come...)

Current Projects

  • Developing a free "Introduction to Ubuntu and Free Software" class for my local library
  • Getting comfortable with debian package maintainence
  • Understanding the in and outs of bzr and Launchpad for patch testing

(More to come ... )

I apologize for how incomplete this page is. I look forward to updating it in the near future. Life just calls at the moment.

Email: <keith.penguin AT SPAMFREE gmail DOT com>

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keith-penguin (last edited 2009-03-19 23:16:02 by 199)