Here first follows an overview of my computer-related background

A brief overview of my computer-related background: I touched my first computer at the age of 8, an Apple][+, on which I immediately wanted to code games, mostly of the text type. I then learned 6802 assembly, as AppleSoft BASIC was pretty much useless, and Z80 assembly, which was available through a bridgeboard. I then wrote disk utilities (backup, data retreival).

I then at my great joy had my first Amiga when I was 15, on which I first used mildly AmigaBASIC. Of course a year later I was learning C, and using the RKMS wrote AstralPortal (Voice/Fido/Data Modem software) in the few following years. I then did some 2d vector graphics using 68000 assembly, C and sometimes BlitzBasic (which accepted direct assembly instructions and had nice blit routines. Some playing with ARexx was then done. The last thing I developed on Amiga was audio sample manipulation and compression utilities in C, along with a programmable binaural/hemisync braintrainer, and some custom GUI library. Another latest project was a control server which allowed several RS232 terminals to be synchronized with a main multitasking server application with abstract tty-specific code translation. What a great box that was.

Then finally, I decided to get an i386DX/40/8megs although it was already deprecated, and started doing some Turbo-C and 8088 assembly on MS-DOS, and wrote trivial 2d 8-bit functions library along with a graphic block-oriented editor for game programming. Some scrolling, sprite and collision code was added, and it was a ready system to write games, but none were ever written using it, but demos. As I always was avoiding windows since, but had to at least confront it for a while, I finally bought an AMD-K6-2/450 and learned some Win32 API, tried various compilers with GUI frontends. I unfortunately was pretty discouraged after a year or so, and was not programming anything useful; Until I made a discovery... Linux 2.0.35 (RH6) in December 1999.

I used RedHat 6 for a few months, getting aquainted with GCC (which fortunately had the same base interface than DICE dcc from Matt Dillon which I was using on the Amiga). And, glibc info/man pages. Linux finally made me discover that a PC could finally be worth it, as much as Amiga was. I soon found that on an AmigaOS shell I couldn't remember the commands, erroneously typing unix ones. The switch was made. I then tried Debian Potato, which of course made me forget RH for good, and eventually did my own distribution, Ginseng, a security and server related distribution. Between Debian and Ginseng I started to write a few meaningful TCP server-oriented utilities. I then discovered NetBSD.

Obviously I then had found my ideal OS, which I am still heavily using today on all my systems. I finally was free from glibc, which was everyday getting more bloated without true additionnal functionallity. I tried other BSD variants and was more convinced that NetBSD still was my choice. My current publically available software was written using it. Current projects include mmmail, which is now being totally redesigned from scratch (for v2), mmftpd, Xisop (a portable non-SMP multitasking preemptive microkernel similar to AmigaOS), an arbitrary math library and C-like simplified tokernizer/interpretor language for secure distributed network clients, along with their distributed server counterpart. I mostly emphasize my projects on security (good tactics as running virtual services as non-privileged users, encryption, etc are useful).

I also use and test various tunnelling/VPN solutions, am working on a secure NFS alternative, and various work-related projects. I try to eventually provide easy solutions to common administration nightmares such as sendmail administration, localized central data servers and similar tasks. Some work has also been done on a state-persistant secure HTTP authentication protocol where unique cookies are exchanged between each page under SSL, and their origin/expiration verified on the server-side, possibly that an ssl-httpd will eventually become available for safe remote administration of mmmail, mmftpd and other server daemons I write.

I often don't mind to redesign existing systems, re-invent them or be inspired by their concepts, when a happy result can be obtained afterwards. Other non-computer related interests exist, including swimming, martial arts, meditation (often a necessity for relaxation), international foods, microbrewered and rare dark, rich beers, especially the stout type. Writing also has always been a great passion all my life, from adventure novels (unpublished) to technical documentation (some only has been made available publically). And music. What a great way to express soul states, composing and producing various music types, especially Fusion-Jazz remains a never-ending story.

Matt