Machines
I’ll admit it straight away, I’m an Open Source fanatic. I have been using various flavours of Linux for several years now and the only version of Windows I use is within a virtual machine. I do love to make websites though, for that you always need a copy of Windows at hand to compatibility check. Because of my time playing with these machines I understand enough that I am the friends and family tech guru. Does that mean I know how to use Excel? No (well, not really). Does it mean that I can recover all your data on what looks like a lost machine, recover your system and have your OS of choice running faster than it did when it came out of the box? More likely a yes.
I love to resurrect old machines with slimmed down software, making what was once a lump into a mean web machine/file server/webserver. Here is what I have in my set-up today:
Kamajii – This is my main workstation and what I am writing this on now, and a fine contraption it is too. It’s brain is an Intel Core2 Quad (Q6600) running at a combined 9.6GHz. It has 2Gb of memory, which can sometimes be a problem when I’m running a few VMs, but is sufficient for my needs. I’ve also got an nVidia and a 22″HD monitor for the pretty bits, but I don’t really play games so the most it gets used for is desktop effects ala Compiz. The box is running a pretty much standard Ubuntu with a generic kernel (KVM module removed for running VirtualBox). It is used as the main Samba server for our media collection. It does it’s job without any problems, and that’s what you want.
Eeep – I think we can guess what type of machine this is. Running Ubuntu Intrepid with the array.org kernel
Haku – My trusty laptop. 1.4GHz Celeron. Pretty battered now but it just keeps on going. Currently running Arch Linux and is mainly used for messing around and traveling.
Yubaba – An old 1.2GHz beige box that I use as a development server. Currently running Ubuntu Server Edition.
Edit: I’ve given Haku to my Mum, she loves the little fella now. Yubaba, like her namesake, was an evil witch, so she has gone to Freecycle.
Top Software Apps
Though I’m a Gnome user, I do love the KDE app Amarok for managing my music collection. Amarok is currently a Linux only bit of kit, it will be available for Windows users as part of the port of KDE to the Windows platform
The Gimp is a fantastic image creation and manipulation tool. I find it indispensable in creating websites. Also available for Windows with the GTK toolkit
I have tried many GUI ftp clients, I always come back to Filezilla, especially now it has been ported to the unix platform.
One of the unsung heroes from the Mozilla foundation, Thunderbird is just fantastic. It is also extendable (like Firefox), so you can make it do as you choose. My fourite extension of the now is Lightening, a calendar extension.
Programming
My ‘geek creds’ are probably not so much in out and out programming, which is probably due to my obsessions with design, layout and typography. I can write usable code in Ruby as I’ve had quite extensive experience using the Rails framework, and much of my uni work was done in Pascal and PHP. I like programming though so I’m sure I will improve. Where I really shine though is in web-coding, strict XHTML, CSS, XML, some Javascript, these languages are becoming like second nature.
PGP Key
My public key, use for general encryption stuff. I’ve also uploaded this to the keyservers, which you can easily grab via the command line:
gpg --keyserver=x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu --search-keys kevin carmody
Or however you prefer, anyway:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
mQGiBEpyKXgRBADlQPmiUVjNpbdj4Dm4rQTSCdYZgoCYlxcGedKzMTECCcYJpfR2
EJnE4e9PcNd49NenoVD27A4H71AESpA8u0mN8FiNG5ebcU+2TA1JKjGtCaJPjAbN
w/ccEY7K0by5RhQh627M/RH2Wbvfhyv4ki6JytnfdYNL/aR4t8EQO7ohEwCg9BV0
M8ALBtU2zlzwnnPRnCdRBfcD/26A053+pm1txQ9O0ZR9X6wDzrQmfy3pT7iKeT1t
Ajpl3vV+jxncGsA1BSMQnNMuQRNSIVCSiCm0ZmLdoY3W9cSiT7zQ/4gWIRlQKAWJ
/qdUX2pdNg7hsLKlTWygQjo/s9bwLu1tY13Rq3iBs6MmHDmzXhT+ETi+eWpfzTpU
9kB0BADYecEnYgf7JZx0MkzLaP7mgonuPZcPgAchX0Jw5l8nKnRHdQQlvzJHGkYA
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TAe+kXwYF0f/tMiLpw1/nr/2z79xv06D0psv42TwzdfXWDifO7RTAOQhzreCbkUX
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pKVsJgLg4HzdAtIdy0fAyUzhwrRa/bkyE20QlXddclHI75h08Y6PrN1G7q45JaPF
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a8YMHdxMA2D0LBVapWBKRfTQGSOvme0SL3a7Jufy5RLWjuf8l8Jv1x7/Rv4ltWMQ
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fI2BjtAXkT1AX633fAMmntuDkBzig+HZFOckt0qb234Q7Ipfpq4BApOcfhN1Eeon
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oMpOcK9GYdJY4UMWU8RbMC1I/F5V
=GBm+
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----