Introducing myself

[Alan Chandler]

Having seen the anouncement of dot-news of this new team, I decided this might 
be the route into giving something back to the community for all the pleasure 
I have got from Open Source Software.  I have been using linux at home for 
about 3 years, all of the time with debian, and most of the time with kde (I 
have sudden urges to switch to gnome - but it lasts about a week and I get so 
fed up I switch back).  I have been "meaning" to do something for all that 
time, but I never quite get going.

I learnt to programme in the mid 1960's (Algol 60 and Honeywill 516 assember) 
whilst still at school.  I started working as a programmer professionally in 
1972, when I joined the company I am still working for today (now called 
LogicaCMG, but was just plain Logica back them).  I did a lot of my work in 
assembler language on PDP11s, where I developed real time systems, but I have 
also written the operating system kernels for embedded communications 
devices. 

As is the way of things, I moved on out of programming into managing things, 
although in the early days this still had a technical bias.  These days even 
that technical strategy element has gone.

So in my spare time I would like to get back to some of my roots. 

Unlike most hackers, I did not (and therefore assume I will still not) enjoy 
writing code of any significant substance.  What I used to love, and I think 
therefore I would like to find some tasks of that nature, is solving bugs 
(including writing the code that fixes the problem).  I am the same way with 
documentation - hate the initial creation, am good at reviewing others work 
and providing corrections.

There is one thing that worries me.  I have been attempting to be serious at 
doing something like this for about 2 years.  So far I managed a few tweaks 
to kmail (to handle space bar navigation in a slightly more ergonomic way), 
bug fixes to kate (which were actually written a different way by the 
maintainer of kate and so were not used), and a month long investigation a 
year ago into undertanding how which fonts got selected in kde.  Other than 
that I prevaricate and never seem to get things done.  I just hope that 
annoucing myself here will give enough impetus to do something a little more 
positives.

And business pressures make solid work difficult. I live near London, but am 
now working 3-4 days a week in Paris.  Whilst theoretically this should give 
me more time on my own in the hotel, its amazing how the simple act of going 
to eat (particularly with collegues who are with me) eats away the evening, 
and lack of personal e-mail cuts me off from communications with the mailing 
lists such as this.  

Still, I have repartitioned the harddrive on my laptop, loaded up linux, and 
downloaded the source from arts, kdelibs and kdebase, and am ready to find 
some bugs to go chasing.  Any suggestions on where to start would be most 
welcome.


-- 
Alan Chandler
alan at chandlerfamily.org.uk
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
 then they fight you, then you win. --Gandhi