This blog is an amalgamation of my writings about various interests. I maintain other sites specific to each topic, so if you’re only interested in one topic, feel free to jump over to the appropriate blog:
woodnerd.net - Woodworking Blog
undergroundguitar.com - Guitar Blog
greenmonkeylabs.com - Tech Blog
About Me
Born in 1970, I grew up during the explosion of personal computers. I began programming with a TRS-80 Colour Computer in the early 1980s by typing pages and pages of Basic and Assembly programs in from the pages of Rainbow magazine. During high school I was exposed to the Commodore Pet, Commodore 64, and Vic20 as well as various Apple machines that friends owned. For ultimate geek cred, I attended a summer Computer Camp at the University of Guelph between 9th and 10th grade.
Post secondary education took me on a tangent as I studied English Literature at the University of Western Ontario in London. During the summers I rediscovered an interest in technology at summer jobs with various insurance companies. It was there that I was exposed to green screen terminals attached to mainframes and the power of the UNIX operating system. The summer jobs eventually morphed into a full time job as a Business Systems Analyst around 1994.
Playing with various UNIX based machines at work lead me to Linux around 1998 when I found myself really wanting a UNIX machine at home. Living in Toronto at the time, I happened upon the local Linux User’s Group, found a boxed copy of Red Hat Linux at the local bookstore and the rest is history.
I’ve always been drawn to the lower level aspects of computing and this lead me to Embedded Linux. I discovered the Consumer Embedded Linux Forum around 2004 or so and offered my services rewriting their wiki content and porting their current wiki pages to a MediaWiki-based site at http://elinux.org. I’ve been administering and writing for elinux.org ever since.
Over the years my interest in Linux and Free Software has lead me to jobs with several well know Linux and Open Source Software companies such as MontaVista Software and CodeSourcery. Outside of full time work, I’ve contracted for many companies, helping them to document the technical aspects of Embedded Linux as well as administer MediaWiki instances. The companies have included Renesas, Texas Instruments, and the The Linux Foundation.