Published by Linux Journal

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About This Month's Authors

Larry Ayers

Larry lives on a small farm in northern Missouri, where he is currently engaged in building a timber-frame house for his family. He operates a portable band-saw mill, does general woodworking, plays the fiddle and searches for rare prairie plants, as well as growing shiitake mushrooms. He is also struggling with configuring a Usenet news server for his local ISP.

Bill Bennet

Bill, the ComputerHelperGuy, lives in Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada; the "Catfish Capitol of North America" if not the world. He is on the Internet at www.chguy.net. He tells us "I have been a PC user since 1983 when I got my start as a Radio Shack manager. After five years in the trenches, I went into business for myself. Now happily divorced from reality, I live next to my Linux box and sell and support GPL distributions of all major Linux flavours. I was a beta tester for the PC version of Playmaker Football and I play `pentium-required' games on the i486. I want to help Linux become a great success in the gaming world, since that will be how Linux will take over the desktop from DOS." It is hard to believe that his five years of university was only good for fostering creative writing skills.

Jim Dennis

Jim is the proprietor of Starshine Technical Services and is now working for LinuxCare. His professional experience includes work in the technical support, quality assurance, and information services (MIS) departments of software companies like Quarterdeck, Symantec/Peter Norton Group and McAfee Associates -- as well as positions (field service rep) with smaller VAR's. He's been using Linux since version 0.99p10 and is an active participant on an ever-changing list of mailing lists and newsgroups. He's just started collaborating on the 2nd Edition for a book on Unix systems administration. Jim is an avid science fiction fan -- and was married at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim.

Michael J. Hammel

A Computer Science graduate of Texas Tech University, Michael J. Hammel, mjhammel@graphics-muse.org, is an software developer specializing in X/Motif living in Dallas, Texas (but calls Boulder, CO home for some reason). His background includes everything from data communications to GUI development to Interactive Cable systems, all based in Unix. He has worked for companies such as Nortel, Dell Computer, and Xi Graphics. Michael writes the monthly Graphics Muse column in the Linux Gazette, maintains the Graphics Muse Web site and theLinux Graphics mini-Howto, helps administer the Internet Ray Tracing Competition (http://irtc.org) and recently completed work on his new book "The Artist's Guide to the Gimp", published by SSC, Inc. His outside interests include running, basketball, Thai food, gardening, and dogs.

Ron Jenkins

Ron has over 20 years experience in RF design, satellite systems, and UNIX/NT administration. He currently resides in Central Missouri where he is pursuing his writing, helping folks solve problems and find solutions, teaching, and generally having a dandy time while looking for some telecommuting work. Ron is married and has two stepchildren. Ron has begun to worry about referring to himself in the third person.

Eric Marsden

Eric is studying computer science in Toulouse, France, and is a member of the local Linux Users Group. He enjoys programming, cycling and Led Zeppelin. He admits to once having owned a Macintosh, but denies any connection with the the Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs.

J.W. Pennington

After 8 years, J.W. Pennington escaped from the U.S. Military and is currently in hiding. He is posing as an older student who is completing his degrees in Anthropology and Geology at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He began playing with computers at the age of 12, and still has the TI 99/4A on which he taught himself BASIC. A collector of old computers, his lifelong dream is to build a house in the shape and color of a Vic-20, with a huge keyboard as the front porch, and a game port as the garage. Sometimes he hears voices.

James Rogers

James and Shala Rogers live on the Olympic Peninsula in the middle of nowhere. James is a systems programmer for the University of Washington Medical Centers, Harborview Medical Centers and the University of Washington Physicians Network. He is a Health Level 7 Interface programmer who is currently writing a GNU licensed HL7 interface. These interfaces allow approximately 40 medical computer systems to communicate with each other across the entire Seattle Metropolitan area.

Richard Sevenich

Richard is a Professor of computer science at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA. He is also a part-time ski patroller at Schweitzer Mountain near Sandpoint, Idaho. His computer science interests include Fuzzy Logic, Application-Specific Languages and Parallel, Distributed, Real-time Industrial Control. He is an enthusiastic user of Debian/GNU Linux.

Karyl F. Stein

Karyl is an undergraduate student at Purdue University. He has been involved with running various public-access systems for a number of years including "America's First Public Access UNIX System" M-Net, (found at m-net.arbornet.org), and his own personal system, Freeport, (which may be found at freeport.xenos.net).

Matus Telgarsky

Matus has been avid an avid Linux user for many years now. Web page design has been dear to hime due to many jobs he receives being webmaster and making web pages, and since he will not touch anything but Linux, that is where he makes his web pages.

Paul Woods

Paul is an electrical engineer who, together with wife Suzanne, has four young children, a mortgage, and little free time. So he is glad to be able to play with Linux at his job with Hewlett-Packard Company, where he has worked since 1994. Paul graduated with a M.Sc.E.E. from Brigham Young University.

Not Linux

Thanks to all our authors, not just the ones above, but also those who wrote giving us their tips and tricks and making suggestions. Thanks also to our new mirror sites.

Have fun!

Marjorie L. Richardson
Editor, Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com