[plug] #Introducing Onno Benschop

[Onno Benschop]

Hello, it occurred to me that with over 300 subscribers, we're a community
and as such we might consider doing communal things, like introducing
ourselves. According to my Inbox, I've been a subscriber to PLUG since 8
March 2011, but I doubt more than a handful of people know who I am or what
I do and perhaps more importantly, what I bring to the community.

I'm Onno (pronounced On - no) and truth be told, I'm an unashamed Geek and
have been for most of my life.

I started playing with computers with a friend's dads' HP-85, learned more
with a high-school Apple ][, then bought a Commodore VIC 20 from the
earnings of my first job (a home computer games company, now long gone,
Aackosoft), followed by a Mac 512k ED, at work some DOS, VAX/VMS
mainframes, early Windows, Netware, then many different Macs, then I
continued with Windows NT and since 1999 Debian Linux - even ran Potato on
a SPARCstation ELC [^1].

It's often repeated that you cannot use Windows applications under Linux
and the knee-jerk response is generally to point at tools like "Wine" and
"Crossover", but that misses the point that there's plenty of software
available under Linux to run your office and be productive whilst
maintaining compatibility with the rest of the world. Open document
standards are the way to go.

That said, I've been locked into MYOB since the GST was introduced and thus
far it's proven impossible to escape from, so that's running on a virtual
machine with Windows 98 .. feel free to berate me, better yet, offer a
viable alternative and a way to migrate all my data to it.

I've been a self-employed ICT consultant for the past 25+ years, providing
weird and wonderful ICT solutions to people around the world [^2].

With my partner I travelled around Australia for four years with a 2-way
vSat satellite terminal and ended up installing satellite internet in
remote locations across the country for a while.

When I'm not solving ICT issues or writing software, I learned to fly a
plane [^3], drive a HR truck and in 2010 I became a licensed radio amateur
and I have been producing a weekly amateur radio podcast for the past 14
years .. "Foundations of Amateur Radio". It has a couple of million
downloads a year [^4].

For a number of years I hosted a national radio show on, then 6NR, now
Curtin Radio, "Online Computing Radio", as part of my role at the Curtin
Computing Centre before I started my company ITmaze in 1999. I conducted
some 1,600 radio interviews during that time, probably more than double
that since while co-producing and presenting WA Amateur Radio News for
seven years.

My preferred OS is Debian Linux, though I have dabbled with Ubuntu and was
for a spell a member of the ubuntu-server team. Together with Malinda
McCall I wrote the original Alt.Best.Of.Internet FAQ in 1994 [^5], in other
words, I'm old and crusty and remember eternal September.

This to say that you can ask me pretty much anything about computing and
there's a good chance I'll know the answer, or know where the bodies are
buried.

You can also talk to me about editing audio, conducting interviews, writing
technical articles, analysing databases with billions of rows,
deobfuscating 300k lines of code, or using 10 mW to transmit across the
globe.

Right now I'm playing with Docker, designing virtual EC2 workstations,
attempting to restore an ancient HP 606A Signal Generator,  creating a
modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system
that leverages GNU Radio whilst attempting to determine if a dummy load
really doesn't radiate, or if that's just a myth.

Thanks for having me.

Links from the text:

   1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2000/09/msg00038.html
   2. https://www.itmaze.com.au/projects
   3. https://www.itmaze.com.au/articles/first-solo
   4. https://podcasts.vk6flab.com/
   5. https://www.itmaze.com.au/articles/aboi-faq


You can find stuff I've done here:

   - https://www.itmaze.com.au/
   - https://vk6flab.com/
   - https://github.com/ITmaze/
   - https://github.com/vk6flab/
   - https://www.youtube.com/@vk6flab


Social Media:

   - https://mastodon.radio/@vk6flab
   - https://lemmy.radio/u/vk6flab
   - https://bsky.app/profile/owh.bsky.social

-- 
Onno Benschop

()/)/)()        ..ASCII for Onno..
|>>?            ..EBCDIC for Onno..
--- -. -. ---   ..Morse for Onno..

If you need to know: "What computer should I buy?" http://goo.gl/spsb66

ITmaze   -   ABN: 56 178 057 063   -  ph: 04 1219 8888   -
onno at itmaze.com.au
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