Self-Introduction of Mark Walker

[Douglas Silas]

Welcome Mark!

Paul is right that we are looking for more contributors, and now is 
a good time. I am spearheading a project to update the Deployment 
Guide for Fedora 12, which is a book that might interest you. We are 
definitely looking for good writers with networking experience; the 
guide's second major part contains chapters on Network Interfaces, 
Network Configuration, Service Access, OpenSSH, Samba, DHCP 
(Servers), Apache, FTP, Email, and LDAP. The online copy lives here:

http://dsilas.fedorapeople.org/Deployment_Guide/en-US/html-single/

And the project page is here, along with a link to the mailing list:

https://fedorahosted.org/deploymentguide/

It is not necessary to write in DocBook XML to contribute, though of 
course you would be welcome to. The Deployment Guide (and probably 
the other DocBook projects) currently adhere to DocBook 4.5, which 
is DTD-based instead of Relax NG-based (theoretically unfortunate, I 
agree, but turns out to matter little in practice). We use the 
Publican publishing tool to build the documentation (I am testing 
the much-faster Publican 1.0 beta for building the Deployment Guide, 
and it's working well so far):

https://fedorahosted.org/publican/

If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know! Hope 
to see you on IRC on Wednesday.

Cheers,

Silas

On 09/15/2009 12:34 AM, marwalk at marwalk.com wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> 
> Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself. I Googled the name
> "Mark Walker" and about 22,600,000 hits were returned; none of them me
> in the first few pages. I then Googled the name "Mark Caldwell Walker"
> and about 168,000 hits were returned; all of them me in the first few
> pages.
>
> As one of those "older guys" my curriculum vitae might not be the best
> approach for an introduction, but I will point out that I've had plenty
> of chances to make mistakes and to learn from them. I do love to learn,
> and that's one of the reasons I'm here. I am here also in search of new
> challenges, new ways to produce meaningful results that actually help
> people, and along with that genuine personal fulfillment. That might
> seem a little demanding, especially from someone who's not yet retired
> from his day job and therefore has only nights and weekends to offer for
> now. But I sense that the time is right for me to venture into these
> areas where I've only been lurking in listservs for far too long.
>
> My writing projects include the three science fiction novels that appear
> in the Google search returns mentioned above. My professional writing
> includes some newspaper writing in my younger years, which naturally
> followed my BA in Journalism. I've since written some professional
> documents for previous employers, which were in the telecommunications
> and computer project management fields and briefed them to executive
> management.
>
> My other degree is an MS in Management. That's not very computer related
> on the surface, but I've also been a licensed radio amateur since 1967
> (although I'm "rare DX") and my first home computer was a Commodore 64.
> I'm not a programmer, but I've played with FORTRAN, Basic, Pascal, C++,
> Visual Basic, Java, and Bash scripting. Certs include A+ and Network+,
> and I've been studying up on Security+ and Certified Ethical Hacker. In
> the past few years I've been researching XML, and think I could produce
> DocBook products based on the v5 RELAXNG schema.
>
> I also have a radio broadcasting background that spans about 9
> commercial stations. This was on-air experience; yes, I was your
> friendly local radio DJ. My production of the FredPod podcast (feel free
> to Google it) is my effort to enjoy broadcasting activities that take
> advantage of the people-empowering trends in this field. I've been
> attempting to get the open source Rivendell application running, but so
> far that remains a work in progress.
>
> One other thing about me that might be of interest is I'm also known as
> "Santa Claus." I like to say that the white beard is real and so is the
> jolliness, but I wear the red suit only on special occasions anymore.
>
> Pleased to meet you,
> Mark
>
> gpg --fingerprint AA482E46
> pub 1024D/AA482E46 2006-07-06 [expires: 2011-07-05]
> Key fingerprint = D780 2F66 B08D 739D 3BF0 2468 7C22 870D AA48 2E46
> uid Mark Walker (marwalk.net) <mark at marwalk.net>
> uid Mark Walker (alternate address) <marwalk at gmail.com>
> uid Mark Caldwell Walker (Earth Alien) <marwalk at marwalk.com>
> sub 2048g/4421C0B1 2006-07-06 [expires: 2011-07-05]
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkquwVIACgkQfCKHDapILkZTMQCghYPbrypxWZxGeOf96MzzsChg
> WH4AoOXk3ZGsxxts7KO2z0OevASj5RL0
> =Z+Lf
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>

-- 
Douglas Silas
Technical Writer | Red Hat, Inc.