Contents

• Technical knowledge
• Education
• Professional experience
• Consulting history
• Publications

Characteristics:	System programmer with intensive knowledge of kernel and hardware. Steep learning curve, ability to handle several independent problems concurrently, very fast working style, broad knowledge of the computer industry and computer science, in particular system architecture. Prominent member of the BSD community.
Desired position:	A varied position in a predominantly technical area with responsibility for complete solutions. On the technical side I prefer to work with open systems such as Linux or BSD UNIX, with which I have great experience. The choice of hardware is less important.
Location:	I work from home, which I find the most efficient way for me to work. I am prepared to spend up to a third of my time away from home, but I am reluctant to take on any job which requires me to spend more than that amount of time away from home.

Areas of activity

• On 1 July 2007 I retired from active work. I am still involved in a number of projects, and am available for short consulting jobs if they interest me.
• I have been actively involved in many aspects of operating systems, notably kernel structure, performance and storage systems. I performed the initial migration of the FreeBSD kernel from a traditional interrupt structure to interrupt threads, thus solving the issue of blocking locks in interrupt handlers.
• I am active in open source advocacy, in particular for BSD UNIX.
• I have written many technical articles and two books, notably “The Complete FreeBSD”, the first English-language book on free BSD UNIX.
• I have made many presentations and tutorials at computer conferences, detailed below.
• I am an ex-President of AUUG, the Australasian UNIX Users Group.
• I have represented AUUG on the ICT Council of South Australia.
• I am a member of the FreeBSD developers team, and an ex-member of the FreeBSD Core team..
• I am a member of the NetBSD developers team.
• I feature on the Free Software Celebrities list (highest ranking number 9).
• My leisure interests include cooking, horse riding and music. I collect old computers and woodwind instruments.

Technical Knowledge

Hardware:	A wide range of past and present computer architectures, including Control Data, DEC, Dietz, EAI, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Motorola and Tandem.
	Current experience centers around UNIX systems based on Intel, Sun, SGI, Siemens-Nixdorf, and Tandem hardware.
Programming languages:	Many assemblers, C, C++, Cobol, Fortran, LISP, Pascal, SQL, TAL (Tandem's System Programming Language), UNIX Shell.
Operating systems:	Prior experience with UNIVAC OS/1100, Omega, Control Data Scope, IBM MVS, Tandem Guardian, OS/2, MS-DOS, UNIX System V and BSD, including IRIX 5.3, SCO, SINIX, Solaris 1 and 2, Tandem NonStop UX, UnixWare, and XENIX.
	Current with FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux.
Datacomms:	X.25, TCP/IP, NFS, ISDN, X.
Natural languages:	English (native language), German, French, Malay.

Education

1954-1966	Schooling in Malaya, Australia, England
1967-1972	Universities of Hamburg, Germany (Chemistry) and Exeter, England (Chemical Engineering). During the latter course I worked extensively with computers (PDP-8, PDP-12, Control Data 3200, EAI 640/3200 hybrid system controlling a sugar pan during a practical at the CSIRO in Clayton, Australia).
January 1973-April 1973	Programming and System Analysis courses at Control Data Institut, Frankfurt.

Professional experience

May 1973-September 1974		Systems advisor at Sperry Univac, Frankfurt. Wrote an interpretative database compiler for the UNIKABS accounting system for the German health insurance authorities.
October 1974-March 1975		Programmer/Analyst at SPL GmbH, Frankfurt. Wrote a data acquisition system for satellite image data with the German Government organisation for space research (DFVLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen near München (Munich).
April 1974-May 1975		System Programmer with IBAT-AOP, Essen. Wrote ROM-based software for an electronically controlled saw to cut parts for non-standard sized windows. Hardware: Intel 8008. Software: Assembler. Wrote a program system for a company in the packaging industry, including operating system support.
May 1975-May 1982		System Programmer with Karstadt AG, Essen. System programming and maintenance of the Omega operating system of Karstadt's UNIVAC 494 machines. Systems Programming for the IBM-370/168. Wrote device drivers for the IBM 3800 OCR document reader. Wrote programs for inter-machine tape spooling.
April 1977-May 1982		Systems Programming for the Tandem/16 System. Set standards for programming. Wrote a spooler. Wrote an application library.
August 1979-February 1980		Wrote a control program for a computerized filling station, based on the Zilog Z-80.
June 1980-March 1984		Wrote, maintained and marketed a symbolic debugger for the Zilog Z-80 running under CP/M. At the time it was the most advanced debugger available for this processor.
May 1982-March 1992		Employee of Tandem Computers Inc. in Frankfurt, Germany.
May 1982-December 1986		“Advisory Support Specialist” (highest rank of Tandem support personnel worldwide). Responsible for Europe-wide second-line support, including bug fixes, of the Guardian Operating System, disk subsystems and database software and of all products without a designated support specialist. Responsible for data recovery after hardware problems, coordination of emergency situations.
January 1987-May 1990		European technical support manager for Operating System and Hardware with 9 direct reports in England and Germany.
June 1990-March 1992		Tandem internal consultant for UNIX (Integrity S2). Responsible for questions of system integration, software ports, device drivers, adaptation of foreign hardware, all related to the extended VME bus of the S2, as well as choice of products and software houses. Projects: integration of MAP 3.0, SS7 (telco protocol), ISDN S0 interface, SNA software, Token ring boards, ISO CMIP and CMISE protocols, ports of C and C++ compiler and library.
August 1990-March 1993		Wrote an object oriented data retrieval and display package for DOS and UNIX. Language: C++.
March 1992-January 1993		Wrote a keyboard driver, low-level protected mode kernel debugger, ported software for BSDI's BSD/386 Operating system.
October 1992-August 1994		German Federal Railways: Modification and extension of a mask oriented, data base controlled screen and printer driver for the project Relationsloko 1993.
March 1993-February 1994		Production of CD-ROM with pre-ported free software for UNIX System V.4.2 on Intel platforms.
August 1994-October 1994		Adaptation of the GNU C library to SCO UNIX.
April-June 1995		Installation and debugging of a national Internet node in Singapore.
July-November 1995		Installation of a network based on BSD/OS for a furniture company in München (Munich), Germany.
January-April 1996		SINIX-N kernel debugging and development with Siemens-Nixdorf, Paderborn, Germany (UNIX System V on MIPS R4400).
April-July 1996		Co-development and testing of ISDN driver package for FreeBSD.
August 1996		Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Ltd., Ichon, Korea: Performance analysis of cellular telephone Home Location Registry system, resulting in double the transaction rate (from 600 to 1200 tps), 20% more than expected.
September 1996-March 1997		Participation in design of instruction set for a new generation digital signal processor, with particular regard to the suitability for use with the C programming language.
January 1997		Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Ltd., I'chon, Korea: Port of a device driver for Tandem Integrity 1475 under NonStop UX B30 to Integrity S4000 running NonStop UX C10. The work was done at Tandem's integration facility in Austin, Texas, and was completed in 85% of the estimated time.
February-May 1997		Qinghua (Tsinghua) University, Beijing, China: series of UNIX classes with particular emphasis on telecommunications applications.
June-July 1997		URMET Sud , Rome, Italy: Debugging an intelligent network solution for Telecom Italia
August 1997		Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Tokyo, Japan. Kernel and Oracle performance tuning for the project DoCoMo
October 1997-December 1998		Cybernet Systems Corporation Inc. Wrote the Vinum volume manager, a volume manager with software RAID solution for the FreeBSD operating system, similar to the VERITAS Volume Manager.
November 1997		EDS, Deutz, Germany. C++ compiler consulting.
December 1997		Compaq Computers, Hong Kong: UNIX classes on telecommunications applications.
April 1998		Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Tokyo, Japan. Project migration planning for the project DoCoMo
April 1998		Compaq Computers, Singapore: UNIX classes on telecommunications applications.
June 1998		Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Austin, Texas. Project migration benchmarks for the project DoCoMo
August 1998		Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Ltd., I'chon, Korea: troubleshooting of HLR application.
September-November 1998		Design of C compiler for next-generation DSP
March 2000-February 2001		Open Source Researcher with Linuxcare Inc.
July-November 2000		Involved in FreeBSD SMPng project, rewriting the SMP support for FreeBSD. Converted the interrupt system from a traditional UNIX interrupt system to a thread-based system.
May 2001-August 2002		Kernel hacker in IBM's Linux Technology Center, Ozlabs. Wrote clone of the AIX Journalled File System, the predecessor of the JFS ported by the JFS for Linux project.
August 2002-May 2004		Work on the Vinum Volume Manager, including port to NetBSD.
March 2004-September 2005		Director of Storage Systems Development at Rocksoft, working on next-generation file system technology.
September 2005-August 2006		Senior Software Engineer at MySQL AB, working on database backup technology.
August 2006-June 2007		Development of original digital video recording technology.

Publications and Papers

June 1992	iX magazine (Germany): Test of BSD/386.
August 1992	iX magazine: Article about installing and tuning X11 servers.
February 1993	iX magazine: Test of Motorola's Altair wireless Ethernet.
February 1993	iX magazine: Tests of Consensys SVR4.2 and Novell UnixWare.
February 1993	iX magazine: Article about porting software.
February, March 1993	iX magazine: Articles about choice of PC hardware for running UNIX.
April 1993	unixOPEN magazine: Article about debugging techniques.
August 1993	iX magazine: Review of PC based display cards.
July 1995	Article Setting up X11, published in Linux Journal.
August 1993-February 1995	Book Porting UNIX Software, published by O'Reilly and Associates
October 1995-March 1996	Book “Installing and Running FreeBSD”, published by Walnut Creek CDROM.
April-June 1996	Book “The complete FreeBSD”, also published by Walnut Creek CDROM.
September-December 1997	Book “The complete FreeBSD”, second edition.
September 1998	Paper The Vinum Volume Manager presented at the AUUG Winter Conference in Sydney.
October 1998	Article Sign language published in Dæmon News.
December 1998	Article Who's in control? published in Dæmon News.
January 1999	Article The return of BSD published in SunWorld.
February 1999	Article How the world sees you published in Dæmon News.
March-May 1999	Book The complete FreeBSD, third edition.
April 1999	Article Microsoft beats BSD! published in Dæmon News.
June 1999	Article UNIX and BSD published in Dæmon News.
June 1999	Paper The Vinum Volume Manager presented at the USENIX annual conference in Monterey CA.
July 1999	Workshop “Installing FreeBSD” presented at the AUUG NT Chapter conference in Darwin NT.
July 1999	Book “The Complete FreeBSD”, third edition.
August 1999	Article BSD or Linux? published in Dæmon News.
October 1999	Article A question of perspective published in Dæmon News.
October 1999	Demonstration “The Vinum Volume Manager” at the FreeBSDCon in Berkeley, CA.
December 1999	Article The path ahead published in Dæmon News.
February 2000	Article Commercial BSD support published in Dæmon News.
April 2000	Article For the times, they are a'changing published in Dæmon News.
June 2000	Article Seen it all before? published in Dæmon News.
June 2000	Paper “Benchmarking mass storage subsystems” at the AUUG2K conference in Canberra, Australia.
August 2000	Article The year of BSD published in Dæmon News.
October 2000	Paper “Improving the FreeBSD SMP implementation” at the BSDCon conference in Monterey, CA.
October 2000	Article Anarchies, monarchies and dictatorships published in Dæmon News.
November 2000	Tutorial “Installing FreeBSD” at the Linuxworld expo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
December 2000	Article Leading the way published in Dæmon News.
February 2001	Article Whither BSD? published in Dæmon News.
March 2001	Tutorial “Installing FreeBSD” at the Linuxworld expo in Singapore.
April 2001	Article And where does the money come from? published in Dæmon News.
June 2001	Article Getting our acts together published in Dæmon News.
June 2001	Paper “Improving the FreeBSD SMP implementation” at the USENIX conference in Boston, MA.
August 2001	Article BSD in the news published in Dæmon News.
September 2001	Paper “FreeBSD SMPng: a case study in open source development” at the AUUG 2001 conference in Sydney, Australia.
October 2001	Article Life after the slump published in Dæmon News.
November 2001	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the BSDCon Europe in Brighton, UK.
December 2001	Article Meanwhile, in Europe published in Dæmon News.
February 2002	Article Two kinds of advocacy published in Dæmon News.
February 2002	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the BSDCon 02 in San Francisco, CA.
April 2002	Article BSD Project management published in Dæmon News.
April 2002	Article Trawling the Ports Collection published in Dæmon News.
May 2002	Article Document formats published in Dæmon News.
June 2002	Article Are we having fun yet? published in Dæmon News.
June 2002	Article Playing CDs published in Dæmon News.
July 2002	Article Image processing published in Dæmon News.
August 2002	Article Desktops: why bother? published in Dæmon News.
August 2002	Article Replacing Netscape published in Dæmon News.
September 2002	Paper “Two years in the trenches” presented at the AUUG Winter Conference in Melbourne.
September 2002	Article Web browsers revisited published in Dæmon News.
October 2002	Article Using mutt for email published in Dæmon News.
October 2002	Article Repeatable results published in Dæmon News.
November 2002	Article rsync: The intelligent way to copy files published in Dæmon News.
December 2002	Article BSD rules! published in Dæmon News.
February 2003	Article Social conflicts published in Dæmon News.
April 2003	Article Some assembly required published in Dæmon News.
April 2003	Book The Complete FreeBSD, fourth edition, published by O'Reilly and Associates.
June 2003	Article The Linux wars? published in Dæmon News.
August 2003	Article BSD is dying, film at 10 published in Dæmon News.
September 2003	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the AUUG 2003 conference in Sydney, Australia.
September 2003	Paper Why I hate OpenOffice at the AUUG 2003 conference in Sydney, Australia.
September 2003	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the BSDCon 03 in San Mateo, CA.
October 2003	Article Dæmon's Advocate–Five years on published in Dæmon News.
October 2003	Paper The FreeBSD SMPng Implementation at the Asian Enterprise Open Source Conference in Singapore.
October 2003	Paper Why I hate OpenOffice at the Asian Enterprise Open Source Conference in Singapore.
December 2003	Article The freedom to innovate published in Dæmon News.
January 2004	Paper The Vinum Volume Manager presented at the Linux.conf.au in Adelaide, South Australia.
February 2004	Article BSD: The professional's choice published in Dæmon News.
March 2004	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the AsiaBSDCon in Taipei.
September 2004	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the AUUG'2004 conference in Melbourne.
October 2004	Tutorial “Debugging Kernel Problems” at the BSDCon Europe conference in Karlsruhe.
May 2005	Tutorial Debugging Kernel Problems at the BSDCan conference in Ottawa.
October 2005	Tutorial Debugging Kernel Problems at the AUUG 2005 conference in Sydney.
October 2005	Paper Free as in Free Beer at the AUUG 2005 conference in Sydney.
January 2006	Paper Free as in Free Beer at the linux.conf.au 2006 conference in Dunedin, NZ.
May 2006	Paper Free as in Free Beer at the BSDCan 2006 conference in Ottawa.
May 2006	Tutorial Debugging Kernel Problems at the BSDCan 2006 conference in Ottawa.

Since retirement I am no longer actively publishing, but I am interested in writing on a number of topics, including debugging and further FreeBSD books. If you have any ideas, or if you are interested in reviewing one of these books, please send me mail.