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NotZed - aka Michael Zucchi (aka Zed, zZed, Grumpy, Mike, Mick, and a
few other less repeatable names), is me. I'm a long-time software
engineer/hacker/coder coming definitely from the Un*x camp, with a
strong bent for Free Software (but not open source - that's just
marketing rubbish).
Currently i'm working for a small contractor on a mainly
user-interface based application which is targetting the windows
presentation foundation graphical toolit, in c-hash. Which should
eventually be covered somewhat in the diary on the main page.
I've worked for Ximian/Novell for 6 years on Evolution, although I
basically burnt out on that project fairly badly, and haven't been
able to look at it since. Despite Novell being saviour of the
project, I didn't get along terribly well with the HR department, and
eventually tired of working alone. Pity - overall it was a great
experience, I met a large group of smart and dedicated guys, and I
learnt more than I ever wanted to about e-mail and mail processing.
Before that I spent around 2 years in my spare
time working on GNOME stuff, mainly the original GNOME terminal and
the 'zvt' widget. Which helped get me the Ximian job. For work I did
a bunch of enterprise middleware stuff in C, and later Java. Oh, and
wrote some shitty wrapper to CVS for COBOL programmers, which is still
in use today (and in the process learnt more than i needed to know
about CVS too).
My first job was working with "that new world wide web
thing" back in '95. That lead to a systems adminstrator job with
solawaris, some GNU/Linux, some windbloats95 and macintrash. It's
surprising to see just how little windows has changed since then -
it's still slow, unreliable, ugly, and feature-lacking. And I still
can't look at a wankintoss without groaning in pain.
And ... before that ... well uni, and Amiga hacking. Ahh the
days. Uni sucked, but the Amiga hacking was (mostly) fun. Nothing
like being able to crash your machine by poking the wrong registers -
yet for actual fun reasons, not just to write a driver. 68K assembly
was great too, and I learnt a terrific amount about computer
architecture which is still relevant today and continues to help me
write better code.
Now i'm not really involved in GNOME, although I still like to use it.
I can't say i'm entirely happy with the direction Novell is taking
their desktop lately, but it's functional, and more featureful a
distribution than Fedora is (or windoze for that matter). So i'm
sticking with it for now.
I like cycling - just as well since I still have no drivers license
(laziness, not broken laws). I'm short-tempered, opinionated, often
pretty grumpy and rarely smile without good reason, yet I can have a
mountain of patience for those who deserve it. I have little or no
time for the credulousness of people who should know better in this
modern age (e.g. all god-based religious followers, new age medicine,
etc), but still have an open mind to genuine non-mainstream science.
I never get enough sleep (sleeping disorder), but otherwise generally
look after myself ok - i've done a little Karate (Kyokushin) but
haven't found a close enough place to do it in Adelaide again. I have
been known to drink heavily, but generally only to have fun with
mates. I've travelled a reasonable amount (related to work or
family), although don't particularly like the travelling part, and
it's never fun travelling alone.
I have a gmail account of the same name as my handle.
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