Hey guys, I should really introduce myself properly. My name's Gareth (but my friends call me Gari) and I've been lurking around on the irc server from time to time as flux. Some of you will know me as the guy who came along to the City Gate on the 10th and sat in the corner talking to Kirsten for most of it. Forgive me for doing that and not introducing myself, I was feeling kinda shy as I wasn't expecting there to be so many peeps turning up. I enjoyed it all nevertheless, and it was nice to meet some like-minded people, good fun too listening to lots of different stories and of course various rants about floating point math... well maybe I dosed off a bit at that point! ;-)
Anyway I'm basically a 23 year old mac-head whose been in touch with *nix for quite a while now. My first experience was way back in the 90's when I attempted to install something called MKLinux on an old powerpc. I didn't get very far at all but it lit a spark and since then I've had experience with shell accounts and a small amount of programming. I guess my current *nix experience comes from, dare I mention it - MacOSX!.. Tho recently I've been spending most of my time jostling with Debain getting it installed and working on some old world machines to give me something new to play with.
As far as my job is concerned I've just been doing a spot of work for a guy who runs Computek, a macintosh repair place based in Norwich, and also working as a digital assistant photographer. Technically I'm freelance so I get to work from home most of the time, but that can be a curse too, especially when u don't get paid on quiet days to geek out.
I'm hoping to come along to the kit meet on Sunday 20th. It'll be cool to meet some of u guys again and checkout the general vibe a bit more. Should be up for a good few drinks after too!! I may also bring my brother Graeme along as he's back on study leave from Aberystwyth university. He's doing maths there and is more of a geek than I am in many ways. We've both been very interested in Linux and the Open Source community for quite a while and really want to extend our experience in that direction. With the hope that one day soon we can pledge our allegiance to that big giant penguin... :-)
Look forward to meeting you all! Take care
-Gareth