Contact Details

About Me

I manage the Infrastructure team within Professional & Engineering Services in Canonical where we provide tools and services to the rest of the group. Prior to this role I was a software engineer working primarily on web-based projects. I have also worked on Launchpad and Ubuntu. I'm also a father (of three, soon to be four) and a husband. I live near Wigton, Cumbria in the UK.

I was introduced to Linux for the first time in 1996 by a colleague. After trying various distributions, another colleague introduced me to OpenBSD which gave me my proper introduction to UNIX. After that I settled on Red Hat Linux, and subsequently Fedora. I switched to Ubuntu when Warty was released and have been running (and supporting) it ever since.

I joined Canonical in 2007, and have worked on both Launchpad and Ubuntu.

What I do for Ubuntu

The Official Ubuntu Book

I co-authored the second edition of The Official Ubuntu Book.

Translations

I am a member of Ubuntu English (United Kingdom) translation team, and have contributed translations to Dapper and Feisty.

UK LoCo Team

I am member of the UK LoCo team, active on both the mailing list and our irc channel. Along with other members I represented the team at the recent Linux World Expo in London, where I answered questions and generally promoted Ubuntu and the UK LoCo team. During the event I was active collecting signatures for our charity T-shirt, including getting Jon 'Maddog' Hall to sign it. Finally I created the UK Loco Team logo (created entirely using FOSS) which has been approved by Canonical as an acceptable derivative of the Ubuntu logo.

Ubuntu UK Podcast

I designed their logo, website, and marketing materials, and have contributed both as a guest and behind the scenes.

General Support

I am active in the #ubuntu-testing, #ubuntu-quality, and #ubuntu-uk channels on IRC providing support where I can.

Wiki Pages

• I wrote the community document Mono From Source for Hoary as the packaged version of Mono was quite out-of-date at that point

• I rewrote the Rails on Ubuntu page for the Ruby on Rails wiki for Dapper

Laptop Testing

• Whilst configuring a newly purchased laptop for a friend, I completed a laptop testing record for it. Unfortunately at the time, support for the laptop was limited so it was impossible to test everything

Non-Ubuntu, but Linux related

• I co-ordinate the Cumbria LUG

• I wrote "How to run your own yum repository" - for linux.com

• I contributed hacks #49 "Share Applications and Monitors with screen" and #59 "Convert Your Mailbox" to Linux Desktop Hacks published by O'Reilly

• "Introducing Screen" is an article I wrote for my LUG, and formed the basis for my "Share Applications and Monitors with screen" hack for Linux Desktop Hacks

• My article about Open Source software for children was published in issue 66 of Linux User & Developer

• My article "RADical Python" - an introduction to Rapid Application Development with Python and GTK - was published in issue 68 of Linux User & Developer

• I was the first LugRadio fan. I helped crew LugRadio Live 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. I also appear in a couple of episodes in the early seasons

• I wrote "Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion" published by Packt Publishing, Dec 2007