Ubuntu Wiki

My Contributions

My main focus is on Lubuntu in the following areas:

1. Bug reporting and triage on Launchpad and less so, on Sourceforge where the main LXDE tracker is. I am a member of Lubuntu Packages team, so I regularly get updates on bugs related to our project.

2. IRC support on #lubuntu on Freenode.

3. Testing/QA on both virtual and real hardware, with a particular focus on Lubuntu QA, but also PowerPC/Mac (I'm the de facto Point Of Contact), Ubuntu server, and netboot. I recently was added as a testcase admin to help keep our procedures up to date. I'm proud to say that I was part of the team that kept PowerPC afloat for 12.10 by some very last minute testing.

4. Documentation on the Lubuntu Wiki but also general pages where relevant.

5. Facebook, where I helped create and help administer the official group.

Future Goals

I want to fully learn Python, Vala, GTK, and related languages, as well as packaging, so I can help with the development of Lubuntu and ultimately be able to do a better job in the areas I already contribute to.

Testimonials

Feel free to contribute here.

About Me

I'm a lifelong geek, having delved deeply into the many intricacies of my first computer, a Commodore 128, at 8 years old. I taught myself how to program BASIC immediately. Eventually, armed with a little experience from the CP/M mode (read: PC emulation) on said computer, I upgraded to MS-DOS on a new PC.

As a pre-teen, I made good use out of my 1200 baud modem, calling all over Ohio, much to the chagrin of my father. Soon I found the Cleveland FreeNet, the first free network, and with it discovered gopher, telnet, ftp, IRC, and ultimately, FreeBSD.

Meanwhile I kept loading up Windows on to my PC for those rare cases I might need it. I lived in the shell. One day, after upgrading to Windows 95, I typed some normal command, and was faced with "wrong version." The VER command revealed that Windows had truly taken over DOS. At that point, our relationship was over.

So began a long search for a new love. After a positive experience with Red Hat on a work computer, I installed Slackware on a ThinkPad which was wrought with difficulty, but I made it work, until the hard drive failed. At the time, replacing hardware on a desktop was fine and dandy with me, but I wasn't comfortable opening up a laptop, so I gave it away.

Since I was in college (for a degree in biology), I got a great discount on an Apple PowerBook G4 PPC (New World) I couldn't pass up. For a while, I had quite the love affair with OS X, but the more I used it, the more I found myself in Terminal and the more I did, the more I longed for a UNIX-like experience that wasn't quite so proprietary and funky. I was exploring various and sundry areas of networking and wanted a platform that would require less effort to get things done. Meanwhile I cut my teeth upgrading hardware, getting over that fear of repairing smaller-scale hardware. I even did some repairs on a tiny Palm Pre phone.

After being blown away by the state of Ubuntu, but not entirely liking its bloat, I kept searching. Xubuntu was good but not enough, though I did find myself liking XFCE. I went through all sorts of things, including a rather good long run with Arch (mainly from the XFCE connection though I like their "keep it simple" philosophy). Finally Lubuntu came out with a PPC release. I got it going on the PowerBook and loved it. When I again got a hold of a ThinkPad that needed a little hardware help, I immediately loaded it up with Lubuntu. I also have a PowerBook G3 PPC (Old World) that has proven quite challenging to get anything on easily. It will eventually be Lubuntized. I've also got Lubuntu on an Asus eeePC and an old Dell desktop.

I guess at my core, I'm a hacker: always tinkering, trying to figure out what various pieces do, experimenting. Linux is, for sure, the perfect platform for me.

I've decided, thusly, to quit ignoring my calling and have went back to school to get my degree in IT, with an emphasis in software development. . This way I can actually be getting paid for what I'll ultimately be doing on my own anyways. I've got experience with Bash, Java, C, C++, C#, and Python's next on the agenda.

Hobbies

I'm an everyday cyclist and bike commuter and my primary employment is selling handcrafted folding bicycles to an international audience at Bike Friday.

I'm also a music geek and a free culture junkie. These two often go hand in hand.

I host an electronic music radio show broadcast with my own Icecast server (called ∃ radio) using Mixxx to DJ exclusively free Creative Commons-licensed tunes.

Also, on the other end of the spectrum, I have two more avant-garde/experimental projects that work in the loosely described genre of noise, Brownian Motion and The ERNIE 4, the latter being a collaboration with Jon 7/President Blair. Traditionally they have involved taking some source material and manipulating it with the Apple-specific product Audio Hijack Pro. Often, there's a subtle commentary on the nature of intellectual copyright and what exactly is "free" in not only the implementation but the selection of sources. It is ironic then, to not use free software. I'm proud to say current works use Lubuntu, JACK, Pure Data, FreqTweak, jack-rack, and a variety of other free softwares. It is also likely that some generative video will be created via either Pure Data or Processing. Much of my work through my label Brownian e/Motion(s).

There is also a likelihood that an electronic music project (likely breakcore) will come into existence care of some tracker (lgpt or Buzztard).