Copyright © 1991–2024 Andrew Pam. Last updated November 2024.
References and client testimonials available on request.
In addition to English, I speak, read and write German with some fluency, hold dual Australian and UK citizenship and have travelled extensively in Europe, Japan and the United States.
My main interests are in hypermedia, computer-mediated communications technologies, media and culture. I have been following developments in hypermedia and hypertext, content management and online publishing, file systems, distributed systems and peer-to-peer networking for many years. I am also interested in information retrieval and digital information preservation. I am an active advocate of Free and Open Source software and the energy transition to electricity.
Implemented an administrative database backend and API for a forthcoming product using OpenAPI, PostgreSQL and Ruby on AWS.
Maintained and provided on call support for Confoundry and Tecton Data Pump feature pipelines written in Kotlin and Python respectively.
Performed software development and support under contract to Cogent consulting clients Catch.com.au and Square (later renamed "Block") primarily in Ruby on Rails until Cogent was acquired by Block at the end of April 2022.
Supported, maintained, upgraded, paid down technical debt, addressed security issues, wrote tests for and implemented new features in online applications written in Perl and Python, based on Mojolicious and Django and deployed using Docker containers and Kubernetes orchestration with a PostgreSQL database.
Designed and implemented a new sales and subscription Software-As-A-Service platform in Ruby on Rails using a PostgreSQL database and a user interface based on Bootstrap.
Maintained, supported and implemented changes to Subscriptus, a Ruby on Rails online subscription management system. Maintained, supported and implemented changes to all company websites including WordPress sites Crikey and Crikey Daily Review and Joomla sites Leading Company (later merged with Smart Company), Property Observer, Smart Company, Startup Smart and Women's Agenda. Gathered requirements, developed and deployed the Property Observer Investor Showcase advertising site in Ruby on Rails. Managed Amazon Web Services. Updated MailChimp and custom bulk email templates. Provided mentoring and assistance to other developers. Maintained patch panels for office phone and network cabling. Created and automated MySQL queries for subscriptions team and management reports.
Researched Amazon Web Services, examined and provided feedback on Python code quality, and participated in the deployment of a private alpha test of a cloud-hosted product.
Installed and configured i386 and x86_64 Ubuntu Linux and VirtualBox on Apple iMac hardware. Installed Debian Linux and PostgreSQL 8.1 and 8.3 in a virtual machine. Installed, configured and documented Eclipse with EPIC (Eclipse Perl Integration), Subversion, Trac, git, Perl::Critic, Perl::Tidy and YAML support. Debugged and resolved PL/PgSQL type mismatches. Created and updated Debian packaging for Perl modules. Installed, configured and documented pbuilder and cowbuilder tools locally and under the Hudson (now Jenkins) continuous integration system. Studied and removed obsolete Perl and PL/PgSQL code. Backported debhelper to Debian 4.0. Created custom unit test Perl modules to support Catalyst and PostgreSQL. Created and updated unit tests. Migrated code from DBIx::Class ORM to Class::DBI and from PostgreSQL 8.1 to 8.3. Met with clients to discuss requirements and development progress in person and via teleconference. Created network, UML, module call tree and entity-relationship diagrams and documented system architecture, SQL database structure and code.
Installed FreeNX client and server to improve remote access performance. Added features to SQL::Translator (aka SQLfairy). Refactored Perl code and simplified SQL queries. Profiled and analysed database performance issues, replaced temporary tables with views, and added indexes, column and table comments and foreign keys. Backported lintian to Ubuntu. Set up a web development report generator test environment. Ported 2.11 BSD Unix "diff" utility to Linux. Updated tests, fixed bugs and added features to DBIx::Compare. Migrated SQL table dumps into CSV files. Corrected spelling errors in database rows and documentation. Added new data views, range restrictions in histograms and labels for accumulated minima and maxima. Diagnosed and resolved Unicode issues, tested and deployed PostgreSQL and Perl Unicode support. Assisted Perl training classes. Provided Debian packaging advice and assistance to system administrators and other software developers.
Diagnosed and resolved favicon.ico authentication issues. Developed a tool to perform comprehensive aggregate and row comparisons between two or more databases. Created and published a tool to recursively extract Perl package information from a source tree, showing either all packages provided or all packages required but not provided anywhere in the tree. Refactored and optimised complex PostgreSQL queries to significantly improve performance by an order of magnitude. Presented a talk at the multimedia mini-conference during linux.conf.au 2013 in Canberra.
Refactored, cleaned up and extended a custom statistical analysis Perl script for Request Tracker. Wrote a program to transfer customer data between SQL databases including a Perl module for SMS and email alert handling, XML configuration management, regression tests for all code and an accompanying monitoring shell script. Worked with a team to improve the Perl customer management and billing system.
Wrote a complete reimplementation of the service billing module including a comprehensive test suite and performed all regression and integration tests resulting in a trouble-free deployment and the reporting and correction of previously undetected invalid data. Extended internal utilities to assist in system testing and development. Refactored the online credit card billing bank payment gateway interface software including comprehensive unit tests. Implemented enhancements to management financial reports. Refactored core audit log code and exposed a new API call via SOAP. Added a new field to client database records including implementing and testing changes to the web user interface and developing and testing software to populate the new field based on computed data.
Implemented a new SMS gateway module to provide bulk SMS delivery via a RESTful API including comprehensive unit and integration testing which resulted in the identification and correction of a defect in the SMS provider's system. Specified and supervised the development of software to detect and correct invalid data in the Request Tracker MySQL database. Developed test infrastructure, implemented unit and integration tests and improved code quality for the Perl customer management and billing system. Prepared and presented internal staff training sessions on Perl testing. Analysed requirements, developed and documented a program to provide summary and detailed reports for reconciliation of 3G service invoices from Optus including comprehensive unit tests. Provided Perl and Unix advice and assistance to other software developers.
Installed and configured OpenVPN on FreeBSD, Linux, Windows and MacOS X using PKCS #12 certificates to provide both permanent point-to-point VPN services for remote sites and transient VPN services for roaming users. Installed and configured a Debian Linux infrastructure server providing NFS home directories and LDAP authentication for a network of Linux systems. Specified, purchased and installed two Infrant ReadyNAS storage arrays. Responsible for ongoing maintenance, security and end-user support for two dozen free-standing and rackmount systems including Celeron, Pentium III, Pentium 4, Duron, Athlon, Xeon, Opteron and Core 2 Duo based systems from HP, Dell, Sun and other vendors using IDE, SATA and SCSI hard drives and running CentOS, Debian Linux, Fedora Core Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows XP and 2003, fibre channel RAID arrays and switches, Ethernet switches, two DSL services, a Nortel Contivity VPN router, HP and other KVMs, UPSes and twenty end users with laptops running Fedora Core Linux, Windows XP and MacOS X.
Planned and supervised fit-out of a new server room at new premises including electrical supply, air conditioning, security alarm, fire sensors, cabling, transport and reinstallation of three racks and two dozen systems. Specified, purchased and installed Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet switches and cabling for on-site LAN. Installed and configured a FreeBSD Internet gateway server, installed and configured NTP time synchronization for the site and installed and configured dnscache, tinydns and autoaxfr to provide local DNS service. Planned and carried out IP address renumbering of entire network to integrate with new parent company after acquisition. Installed Brother MFC-8460N scanner, printer and FAX drivers and software for Linux and Windows XP. Installed and configured TWiki. Created and documented a standard CentOS installation procedure for test and development systems using both i386 and x86_64 architectures. Successfully recovered a corrupted Subversion source code repository and converted from Berkeley DB to FSFS storage. Replaced a failed boot drive and reinstalled Windows 2003 Server. Replaced a 3ware 9500S RAID controller with a 9550SX and created a CentOS 4.3 driver disk and custom Linux kernel RPM packages to support that controller model.
Implemented and became maintainer for the Go binding for YAMLSCript.
Continued to provide consulting and support services for clients including WillowIT, Private Media, Pro Bono Australia, Kilmore Country Music Festival, Highbank Vineyards, Nicholas J. Johnson, Leon Moulton Architecture and Interiors, William Mora Galleries, Bluebottle Solutions, Complete Accounting, Dynamic Vegies, Glass Wings and Project Xanadu.
Made changes to MySQL subscription reports on request for Private Media. Senior A/V and lighting technician for monthly variety show Sandbox Land. Senior A/V technician, transport captain, front of house and lighting technician for Melbourne International Comedy Festival production A Bunch of Pirates. Senior A/V and lighting technician and transport captain for Melbourne Fringe Festival production Heard of Elephants.
Continued to provide consulting and support services for clients including Ansco, Glass Wings, Project Xanadu and William Mora Galleries. Replaced hard drives in three laptop/netbook computers with SSDs and migrated all data. Presented at Software Freedom Day 2013, attended the Australian Internet Governance Forum in 2013 and was a panellist in 2014. Invited back as a panellist at the Ruxcon 2013 computer security conference. Senior A/V technician for Melbourne Fringe Festival and Melbourne International Comedy Festival production Pop Mashup: Happy Birthday Doctor. Prepublication technical reviewer for Webmin Administrator's Cookbook (Packt 2014). Speaker (via Skype), "Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson", Chapman University 2014.
Specified, purchased, configured and tested a new server, video card and digital I/O hardware for the interactive Murray-Darling Basin museum exhibit for the Australian Landscape Trust (ALT), copied the software and videos from the original server, migrated to Debian 6.0, developed and tested a new C module for the Advantech USB-4751 I/O hardware driver interface and prepared a wiring diagram for the external hardware. Continued to maintain Drupal 5 and the custom content management system for the South Australian Writers Centre and commenced migration to Drupal 6. Installed and configured Drupal 7 for the Noumena City project of Glass Wings. Performed a CPU upgrade from a Pentium E5200 to a Core 2 Quad Q9505S. Designed, developed, tested and deployed an art exhibition information entry and photograph upload Perl CGI script for William Mora Galleries. Attended Software Freedom Day 2011 and the 2011 Open Source Developer Conference in Canberra. Attended linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat and Software Freedom Day 2012 and was an invited panellist at the Ruxcon 2012 computer security conference. Contributed patches to the Rimuhosting WordPress upgrade shell script.
Organised and chaired the gaming miniconference and attended the linux.conf.au 2009 Linux conference in Hobart, judged the LCA 2009 game development competition, demonstrated Free and Open Source gaming at the LCA 2009 Open Day and created and host a Free and Open Source Games website at games.sericyb.com.au. Provided ongoing support for Rewards Factory including report generation, audio format conversion, changes to existing voicemail scripts and developing Perl software to analyse the call logs and determine the maximum number of concurrent calls. Specified, demonstrated, installed, configured and administer WordPress 2.x for Katherine Phelps. Hosted XanaduSpace™ and ZigZag™ source code in a password protected section of my public Subversion server including installing, configuring and administering a WebSVN interface for Xanadu project members. Provided office IT support on Windows XP, MacOS X, HP Laserjet and Fuji Xerox printers, and continued to maintain Drupal 5 and the custom content management system for the South Australian Writers Centre. Attended the 2009 Open Source Developer Conference in Brisbane.
Attended the linux.conf.au 2010 Linux conference in Wellington, New Zealand and demonstrated Free and Open Source gaming at the LCA 2010 Open Day and at the 2010 Software Freedom Day in Melbourne. Presented talks on Free and Open Source gaming at regular and beginners meetings of Linux Users of Victoria. Documented and migrated services including DNS, IMAP, webmail, git, Subversion, MySQL databases, email, mailing lists and twenty websites (some based on content management systems such as Django and WordPress) from Debian 4.0 to Debian 5.0. Upgraded and continued to administer WordPress 3.x for Katherine Phelps. Acted as documenter and development team leader and installed a gitosis server for the "Ted Nelson Month" OpenLibrary.org project at the Internet Archive in San Francisco. Presented talks on Free and Open Source gaming, on ZigZag and the OpenLibrary.org project, and attended the 2010 Open Source Developer Conference in Melbourne.
Designed, developed, configured, compiled from source code, tested and assisted with the deployment of online e-voting terminal software booted from CD and operating entirely from RAM for Everyone Counts and used in the May 2007 Swindon UK council elections, including a Linux kernel, busybox, Intel and Broadcom WiFi drivers, the X window system, Mozilla Firefox, Java, SSL certificates for each voting terminal and each presiding officer terminal, plus customised startup and build shell scripts. Provided ongoing development and support for Rewards Factory including specification, recommendation, delivery, hardware and driver installation and maintenance of a new Interactive Voice Response server using Voicetronix hardware and software, installation, configuration and testing of a Postfix mail transfer agent, report generation, audio format conversion, changes to existing voicemail scripts and development of new scripts for Australian Unity WellPlan Rewards and Golfers Plus.
Provided ongoing maintenance for the Australian Landscape Trust Renmark museum exhibit computer system including diagnosis and correction of hardware issues, hard drive replacement and upgrade to a RAID-1 mirror and upgrade and testing of an updated Linux kernel. Attended the 2007 Open Source Developer Conference in Brisbane. Migrated forty domains including nameservers, email hosting, mailing lists and web sites from Fedora and Debian 3.1 dedicated servers to a Debian 4.0 virtual private server for Glass Wings. Transcoded video and implemented a streaming video web site using FlowPlayer for Fly Glass Wings. Developed and hosted a custom Perl content management system including daily updated event listings, provided Windows and MacOS X support, installed and configured an Ethernet switch and WiFi router for the office network and specified, demonstrated, installed, configured and administered a Drupal 5.x Content Management System including forty plugin modules to host the successful "WriteByte" online club for young writers for the South Australian Writers Centre. Attended the linux.conf.au 2008 Linux conference in Melbourne. Installed DELL aacraid management software, diagnosed and rectified a RAID drive failure and implemented a nightly backup solution for AsteQ. Configured the DSL router to permit remote security monitoring, diagnosed and resolved issues with the VoIP system for Ansco. Assisted Professor Ted Nelson with ongoing research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
Wrote a Python implementation of the DeepLit™ transquoter for Xanadu and installed a Subversion server including a WebDAV interface to host it publically at svn.sericyb.com.au. Installed, configured and tested a Billion BIPAC 5100 ADSL modem/router for Easy Guides Australia to replace an Alcatel Speedtouch USB ADSL modem. Installed Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux on a Mac Mini and migrated a user desktop from PC hardware for Glass Wings. Migrated a user desktop from Windows 98 to MacOS X for William Mora Galleries. Installed, configured and tested a PPTP virtual private network (VPN) for Ansco to enable remote access from a Windows XP laptop. Installed, reconfigured and customised a GNU Bayonne interactive voice response system for Rewards Factory including writing and testing new IVR scripts in GNU ccScript and implementing an RFC3801 voice profile for Internet mail (VPIM) gateway in Perl. Attended the linux.conf.au 2005 Linux conference in Canberra.
Provided System Administration and support services to WE.net.au including compiling and installing MySQL database, PHP scripting and clamav Anti-Virus software, automating backups, installing security updates and ongoing remote administration of servers located in Australia and the US. Installed, configured and tested a cyrus-imap server and performed a data recovery migration of user mailboxes for Technetics. Provided technical support and assistance for Flipside Publishing including configuring MySQL and Google SiteMap, installing and applying updates to phpBB2 and vBulletin, and installing MagpieRSS and creating a sample newsfeed PHP script. Enabled autofs and wrote a backup script using rsync to USB external hard drives for a client of Technetics. Modified a System Imager Perl backup script for Kubota Tractor (Australia) to use isolinux instead of syslinux to create bootable CD-ROMs. Installed Plesk 7.5.4 for a client of Technetics. Ported the Myson MTP008 hardware monitoring chip driver to the Linux 2.6 kernel.
Installed ClamWin Windows anti-virus software for Ansco. Researched Voice over IP (VoIP) software and providers for Everyone Counts and configured and tested Asterisk using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Attended the linux.conf.au 2006 Linux conference in Dunedin, New Zealand. Designed, wrote, tested and deployed Perl software to gateway multilingual mailing lists to a blog format on the web using Unicode and published the source code on my Subversion server. Assisted with the design, testing and deployment of a website redesign for Easy Guides Australia including creating custom Perl programs to generate product information pages and to generate and update advertiser listings from a spreadsheet. Wrote a Java application for a client using the Java Media Framework (JMF) to display average percentages of RGB and CMYK colours in live video images and tested on Linux and Windows XP. Transferred video from DVD, edited together a short 30 second presentation using Cinelerra, encoded for Internet presentation using Ogg Theora and made available online for streaming playback using the Cortado Java applet for Janet Lillie. Provided Windows desktop support for Economic Indicator Services.
Attended the linux.conf.au 2003 Linux conference in Perth and became a member of Linux Australia. Became System Administrator for the Ozy and Millie network including managing the domain names, coordinating a network of mirrored web servers in Australia and across the United States using rsync and revising the content management system to support an automated service to email daily comic strips to subscribers and daily updates to downloadable archives. Continued providing ongoing software and hardware support and maintenance for William Mora Galleries including removing adware, installing Vet anti-virus software and upgrading Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux on the server and Mozilla on the Windows 98 workstations. Designed and created a custom content management system in Perl for the William Mora Galleries website including automatically generated indexes of all artists, artworks and exhibitions. Replaced a failed hard drive and reinstalled and configured SCO OpenServer for the Australian Banking Industry Ombudsman. Diagnosed file download corruption issues and upgraded InterScan VirusWall for the Victorian branch of Scouts Australia. Recovered the Windows NT Server password for Field's Knitwear. Migrated Ansco from dialup Internet access to Telstra BigPond ADSL including specification, purchase, installation and configuration of a RedHat Linux based firewall running PPP over RFC2684 Ethernet bridging over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).
Provided extensive Linux and GNU Bayonne troubleshooting, software upgrades and technical support for Vocall Interactive including creation and testing of new interactive voice response (IVR) scripts in GNU ccScript and recovery of a corrupted MySQL database table. Diagnosed and resolved point of sale WAN issues for RSEA. Diagnosed and resolved Internet connectivity issues for Paton's Macadamias. Investigated and rectified SCSI hard drive issues for the Victorian Arts Centre Trust. Continued to provide ongoing consulting support for Ansco including Samba configuration. Specified, integrated and tested hardware and designed, developed, tested and deployed software in Python and C as a subcontractor to Lloyd Interactive for an interactive Murray-Darling Basin museum exhibit for the Australian Landscape Trust (ALT) including a Debian GNU/Linux based system streaming uncompressed high definition 1024x768 pixel video clips to a large plasma screen and activating neon lights and LEDs in a large lightbox, all controlled via external pushbuttons and a custom user interface on an Elographics industrial touchscreen. Provided remote maintenance via modem to the ALT museum exhibit installed in Renmark, South Australia.
Attended the linux.conf.au 2004 Linux conference in Adelaide. Installed Nessus and provided training to Professional Service Integrators staff. Became a member of Open Source Industry Australia. Designed, sourced, assembled, configured, tested, installed and currently administer a dual-processor SMP rack mount Debian GNU/Linux based RAID-0+1 SCSI file server for Project Xanadu. Provided support for a Linux retail Point of Sale (POS) system for Riki Nathan. Continued to provide ongoing consulting support for Kubota Tractor (Australia) including migrating from SquirrelMail to Horde/IMP webmail and from qmail to Lotus Notes. Researched Voice over IP (VoIP) software for Everyone Counts and configured, compiled, installed and tested Asterisk with H.323 protocol and G.726 codec support. Diagnosed and configured remote printing from an AIX server in Melbourne to a print server in Brisbane for Jarvis Walker. Migrated email and other services from a Windows server to a NetBSD server for Select Harvests including configuring and providing training for a Watchguard firewall, Webmin administration software, Squid proxy cache software, Postfix email server software and Dovecot IMAP server software.
Attended the 2001 Linux World conference in San Francisco and an invitation-only intellectual property strategy meeting with Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bradley Kuhn, Eric Raymond, Don Marti and others. Attended the Linux 10th birthday party in Sunnyvale California. Performed Red Hat Linux upgrades and provided support for software including wuftpd, sshd, XFree86, mgetty, rshd, Webmin, sendmail and qmail to the Royal Victorian Insititute for the Blind. Attended the linux.conf.au 2001 Linux conference in Sydney. Performed BIOS upgrades, installed Windows 2000 Server and InterScan VirusWall and secured the server for the Australian Psychological Society. Diagnosed and resolved problems with MS Internet Security and Acceleration Server and MS Exchange Server for A. Genser & Associates. Upgraded the email server to Windows 2000 SP2 and installed ServerProtect for the Tricom Group. Installed ServerProtect, OfficeScan and InterScan VirusWall for the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind. Made configuration changes to Checkpoint Firewall-1 for Apex-Enerka. Reconfigured Watchguard Firebox II+ firewalls in Melbourne and Sydney and implemented and tested a PPTP virtual private network (VPN) for Eclipse.
Installed GNU tools including gcc, make and groff and installed, compiled, configured and tested Samba for Rider Hunt. Installed eManager plugin for InterScan VirusWall, upgraded Apache, installed PHP and Horde/IMP/Turba webmail, provided Linux maintenance and support, Ethernet network troubleshooting and diagnosed Windows 95 dialup configuration problems for the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind. Researched and wrote a detailed technical overview with cost estimates for an Internet project under a non-disclosure agreement. Installed, configured and tested Red Hat Linux workstations, provided basic Linux user training, installed nmap and nessus and performed a security audit for Professional Service Integrators. Reconfigured SCO Unix server IP addresses and assisted with Cisco PIX firewall and SwitchView client software configuration and testing for the Australian Banking Industry Ombudsman. Provided Linux technical support to Jarvis Walker. Migrated William Mora Galleries from dialup Internet access to ADSL, performed hardware maintenance and repairs and specified and deployed a Wireless LAN.
Attended the linux.conf.au 2002 Linux conference in Brisbane and the AUUG2002 conference in Melbourne. Designed, implemented and tested an online registration system for the Ausgather 2002 convention. Installed, configured and tested InterScan VirusWall and integrated with existing Postfix and Squid servers for the Victorian branch of Scouts Australia. Installed, configured and tested a secure web server including iptables filtering, portsentry, dshield.org blocklists, server status graphs using rrdtool and IP accounting using IPAC-NG. Elected to the board of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Became a member of Open Source Victoria. Installed, maintained and administered the Request Tracker trouble ticket system on both MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. Provided Linux technical support to the Melbourne offices of Oxford University Press.
Gave talks to and assisted students in the RMIT Writing for Multimedia course in each semester of 1999. Supervised and assisted the programming team at Keio University for the Japanese government (JIPDEC) funded 1999 transpublishing project including further development and integration of the OSMIC (and the Interactive Non-Linear Undo and Versioning subset, aka INLUV) microversioning system. Beta tester for VMware virtual machine software. Attended the inaugural Conference of Australian Linux Users at Monash University, July 1999. Created a custom content management system in Perl for the Ozy and Millie comic strip including daily, monthly and yearly indexed and searchable web archives. Attended the 1999 and 2000 Perl and O'Reilly Open Source Conferences in Monterey California, giving a presentation on Zigzag at the 2000 Conference. Attended the 1999 and 2000 Linux World conferences in San Jose.
Designed and assisted in the deployment and day-to-day management, administration and growth of a major national fibre-optic IPv4 and IPv6 over ATM backbone network for Uecomm, taking on the roles of lead design authority, IP address assignment coordinator and official Uecomm APNIC contact. Gave talks on Xanadu and Zigzag to the Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) user group. Met with the Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) IPv6 team in Tokyo to discuss their goals and deployment of IPv6 in Japan. Acted as a winners round judge for the Australian Financial Review Internet Awards. Assisted with the testing and debugging of USB Ethernet support for Linux. Attended the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) 2000 meeting in Brisbane. Assisted Kubota Tractors (Australia) with the configuration of a frame relay service to the parent company in Japan.
Assisted students at Shonan Fujisawa Campus of Keio University, Japan, with various research projects including the Open System for Media Inter-Connection (OSMIC). Gave talks to and assisted students in the RMIT Writing for Multimedia course in each semester of 1997. Gave a Hyperwave tutorial at Hypertext '97 in Southampton, England and also appeared on a panel as a substitute for Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems. Presented a submission to the 3.0 Open Hypermedia Working Group meeting at Hypertext '97 and became an active member of the working group. Attended the 3.5 OHS WG meeting at the University of Aarhus, Denmark and became chair of the Transclusion sub-group. Attended ISPCON'97 in San Francisco and assisted with the presentation of a talk by Ted Nelson.
Became a life member of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Continued freelance Unix and Internet consulting for Paradigm4, Interactive OmniMedia and Professional Service Integrators. Hired and supervised web designers and assisted with the design and implementation of the Kubota Tractors (Australia) website. Designed and implemented a unique High Availability firewall configuration for the Australian Institute of Management. Added support for the SMC 1211TX 10/100Mbps PCI Ethernet adapter to the Linux kernel and contributed bugfixes to the international cryptography kernel modules.
Worked with Ted Nelson to develop and program Zigzag, a revolutionary multi-dimensional data organizing system. Became coordinator of the open-source development process and responsible for packaging and announcing releases. Commenced providing the authorised mirror of Ted Nelson's web pages and implemented searchable full-text indexes of the mirror, the Xanadu Australia and Glass Wings web sites and mailing list archives. Attended the 7th World Wide Web conference, April 1998 in Brisbane and participated in the Hypertext Functionality working group. Attended the Perl Conference 2.0 and assisted with a presentation of Zigzag at the 1998 O'Reilly Open Source Developer Day in San Jose. Consulted to Internet service providers RUCC (Melbourne) and AusWorld (Sydney) on network design and security issues. Assisted RUCC with installation of a primary rate ISDN service. Provided Solaris support to the Leader Newspaper Group.
Presented the first paper at the inaugural Asia-Pacific World Wide Web conference in Sydney. Gave a talk and demonstration of Hyper-G at the Sapporo Hyperlab in Japan. Attended the invitation-only Vannevar Bush symposium at MIT and toured the MIT Media Lab with Marvin Minsky. Gave a talk at RMIT. Attended the inaugural Hyper-G Consortium meeting in Linz, Austria and was elected to the grants committee. Gave a talk at the IICM (Institute for collaborative hypermedia) of the Technical University of Graz, Austria.
Performed a comparative review of Internet audio compression software, obtained, installed and configured Mac and PC hardware and software and provided consulting and staff training for Radio Australia. Assisted the Museum of Victoria Scienceworks with the development of their presentation on the Internet. Implemented an online video camera featuring live video with Netscape clients and high-resolution stills with other clients for Cinemedia. Suggested the concept for "Ping Body" by noted performance artist Stelarc. Attended the second Hyper-G Consortium meeting in Boston, USA and became the Australian agent for Hyper-G (now renamed HyperWave). Presented a poster session at the AusWeb '96 conference.
Appointed Chief Scientist of Xanadu. Chaired the 1996 Australian National Conference on Intranets in Melbourne and presented a paper. Invited participant in the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering study on Technology, Productivity and Employment in Australia 2005. Attended the ACM Multimedia conference in Boston and the World Wide Web Consortium Symposium on Distributed Authoring and Versioning in Sunnyvale, California. Toured the Ars Electronica centre in Linz, Austria and attended the third Hyper-G Consortium meeting in Graz, Austria. Acted as software category winners round judge for the Telstra Financial Review Australian Internet Awards each year from their inception in 1996 to 1999.
Established and maintain the primary Australian mirror site for the qmail Mail Transfer Agent software. Specified, installed, configured and maintained Internet services including internal and external email, web server, caching and security for the Australian Institute of Management and Kubota Tractors (Australia). Performed Internet, Linux, IRIX and multilink PPP installation, configuration, security and system maintenance for Global Internet Directories. Assisted a variety of Melbourne-based community groups with Unix and Internet security and support issues. Provided Internet and Intranet configuration and support for Cinemedia on Windows 95, IRIX, VMS and Cisco routers. Provided ongoing technical support under Linux, Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and 2000, MacOS and Solaris for Project Xanadu internationally including the Tokyo and San Francisco offices.
Compiled, installed, tested and debugged Internet IRC clients for SCO Unix. Installed and tested Internet TCP/IP network software for Windows 3.x and OS/2 2.x over static and dynamic dialup SLIP including Archie, Finger, FTP, Gopher, Hyper-G, IRC, NNTP, Route, SMTP, Talk, Telnet, WAIS and WWW. Became the Australian licensee and an active member of the worldwide research and development team for Xanadu, the original Hypermedia system which coined the words "Hypertext" and "Hypermedia" in 1965 and which holds some of the key answers to the problems of networked information storage and retrieval. Became a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Internet Working Group on Resource Discovery. Compiled under SunOS Unix, installed, tested, maintained and administered the first commercial Gopher/WWW server in Australia, providing a worldwide information service for Xanadu, Serious Cybernetics, Glass Wings and Electronic Frontiers Australia at http://www.xanadu.com.au/.
Became a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force Working Group on Uniform Resource Identifiers. Installed and tested Dialogic voice processing hardware and software under DOS, Windows and UnixWare. Wrote a Unix high-level Dialogic support library in C. Pioneered the use of GSM 06.10 encoding (5:1 lossy compression) for commercial voice response applications. Installed and maintained a Linux Internet host including regular kernel upgrades, permanent and dialup CSLIP and PPP networking, IP address registration, and DNS domain name registration, maintenance and delegation. Contributed a Linux kernel patch to add support for 43-line EGA text mode.
Compiled, configured, installed and maintained sendmail v8 including support for multiple domains, host and user masquerading and mailing lists. Contributed a minor sendmail bugfix. Wrote and published log analysis programs in Perl for the GN Gopher and WWW server. Wrote bug fixes, a silence trim effect and GSM 06.10 format support for sox v12 sound exchange software. Installed and configured Cisco routers for remote bridging over ISDN.
Became a system administrator for the Internet research facility of the State Film Centre of Victoria (later Cinemedia, now ACMI) and the RMIT Animation and Interactive Multimedia Studio Annexe, configuring, securing and maintaining the Silicon Graphics workstations and server, Macs, PCs, dial-in modems and permanent ISDN Internet connection on a day to day basis. Pioneered the use of Hyper-G second-generation WWW software in Australia and established the official Australian mirror site for Hyper-G and the VR-Web VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) browser.
Performed system analysis, design, programming, hiring and supervision of programming team for a major upgrade of the world's largest online community resources database provided by the InfoXchange (formerly Housing Bulletin Board Network, originally the Inner Urban Regional Housing Council) to a Unix SQL database server, custom Windows client and full Internet access. Hired and supervised the programmer for a WWW interface to the Victorian government Streamwatch project. Designed and supervised the programming of GLOMP (GlassWings Link Object for MUD Players), a tool to support multimedia enhancements for all text-based Multi-User Domains using Netscape Navigator client software.
Technical Editor and columnist for Megacom/Megacomp/Megazone (a national home computer magazine) until it was taken over by another company. Sold, installed, repaired and upgraded PCs. Built, sold, installed and provided training and support for DTP system for Spotted Dog Typesetting. Became a director of and provided ongoing technical support and equipment to Melbourne publishing company Glass Wings Press. Became an official beta tester for Technojocks Object Toolkit, a Turbo Pascal object-oriented programming toolkit.
Assisted Glass Wings Press in a database publishing project and in the design and planning of a magazine-on-disk for the PC market. Converted my BBS to Remote Access software and continued to operate it under the name "S.I.G. BBS." Organised and managed a BBS network (RainbowNet, commenced November 1990) comprising approximately a dozen systems in three states (Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales) using FidoNet mail technology. Provided technical assistance to other RainbowNet system operators. Contracted to upgrade and maintain hardware and software for a commercial 3-line support BBS with twenty service providers running Maximus under Netware. Supplied hardware and technical assistance on an ongoing basis to The Age Green Guide home computer games review columnist Lee Perkins. Became an official beta tester for Unique Computing products including BNU, Ping and InspectA. Wrote and distributed a variety of technical proposals and documentation. Wrote, documented, distributed and supported a variety of shareware software internationally. Designed and implemented an accommodation database for the Melbourne Inner Urban Regional Housing Council including multiuser remote access software to permit dialup searches and remote maintenance of individual records by each organisation listed in the database.
Converted my BBS to Maximus 2.x software and continued to operate it into its seventh year under the name "Gummi Glen." Became a member of the IBM Developer Assistance Program and an OS/2 2.1 beta tester. Wrote a QWKmail offline mail reader interface module and an archiver support module for a Unix-based national communications service provider (Pro-Net Australia). Wrote QWKmail interface specifications to assist third-party developers. Designed and wrote a videotext X.25 bulk update interface toolkit for Telecom Australia's Discovery 40 national teletext service (formerly Viatel) including an enhanced teletext file transfer encoding module. Wrote a national satellite weather image service, a file library service, an RFC822 worldwide Internet electronic mail gateway and a Usenet news service for Discovery 40. Wrote and demonstrated a prototype of an interactive Towers of Hanoi game for Discovery 40 and did initial design work for a 3D maze game.
Wrote a high-speed fully interrupt-driven PC serial driver in both C and 80286 assembly language, added Sun PC-NFS and FTP Software PC/FTP TCP/IP network support and integrated it into an existing product for DynaSoft. Fixed a variety of small bugs and recommended a graphics toolkit for future development. Modified Intel CAS Fax mailing-list software in Turbo Pascal for Computer Town. Became a regular guest technology expert for the JJJ national radio network.
Planned and rewrote CARAPAK caravan park management software in Microsoft C based on previous CBASIC version. Provided technical support including national phone support. Designed, programmed, installed and attended company logo display software for trade show at Melbourne's Royal Exhibition buildings. Designed and implemented a communications protocol for caravan park bookings via modem. Worked at the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria to design, program, install and support a micro-to-mainframe link to allow RACV booking operators to place caravan park bookings via modem from their mainframe terminals. Continued to operate my BBS under the name "The Cage" and assisted others in installing WWIV software including an experimental BBS at Canon Business Equipment service department.
Started a consultancy business under the name of Serious Cybernetics. Installed and supported VLRKS for the ABC Video and Homeshow Video chains, and for independent video libraries throughout Victoria. Also built, sold, installed, repaired and upgraded PCs. Modified and upgraded WWIV software in Turbo C. Continued to operate the BBS under the name "Cave 76."
Wrote, installed and supported Video Library Record Keeping System (VLRKS) versions 3.x and later 4.x in Turbo Pascal on multiuser CP/M systems, standalone IBM PCs and PCs under Netware/G for the Video Update chain of video libraries. Started a public access bulletin board service (BBS) called "Haus Holzloeffel" under WWIV software on a PC clone.
Programming jobs for local businesses on Apple II and Commodore 64 computers using BASIC and 6502 assembly. Part of school programming team for 3D graphics fantasy game written on the Apple II in Forth.