Who I Am

I’m an air traffic controller with a love of travel, technology, history and music.

I read and study a lot. Mostly history, math and technology, but my interests are varied and my YouTube saved playlists are filled with everything from board games to calligraphy.

I speak English fluently, I’m formerly fluent in French but it has since lapsed to an advanced level, I’m studying Latin, and I hope to learn a few more languages as I go.

I play guitar ok, and I’m a former trumpeter/bugler, bagpiper, drummer, saxophonist, and pianist. I’d argue that means I have great rhythm, but I’m an abysmal dancer. My singing voice is also something you would do best to avoid.

I currently work as an air traffic controller. Just to clarify: I’m not the guy with the sticks that parks planes - although I have done that in the past. I sit in a building staring at a radar screen and telling pilots when, where, how fast, and how high to fly so they don’t crash into each other or other things. I also kept them updated on things like weather and airport conditions. It’s a fast-paced, challenging job that I really enjoy.

Where I Came From

I come from a military family and grew up all over Canada. I don’t really have a “home” although technically I was born on a Canadian military installation in Germany which now houses the world’s premiere protection dog training facility.

I studied computer science, math, and the classics at a major Canadian university. It was back in the 90’s though so it’s a little dated. My primary areas of study were systems design, software engineering, number theory, cryptography, the classical periods of Greece and Rome, ancient religions, and philosophy primarly consisting of stoicism and platonism.

I served many years with military police, worked in IT and sales, am a lisenced commercial pilot, and have been working in various fields in aviation for almost a decade and a half now.

What I Love

My primary love is travel. There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing the world, meeting new people, and experiencing new cultures. I’m not one to spend weeks on end at a resort sitting on the beach sipping drinks, although for a few days that’s pretty amazing. You’re also more likely to catch me at a hostel than a high-end hotel. The history, culture, architecture and people are what really grab me and what I’m so passionate about.

My tastes in music are pretty varied. I mostly play folk on my accoustic guitar, but I do love picking up my Les Paul standard from time to time and getting dug into some rock. I also really enjoy listening to EDM, pop, classic rock, the oldies and classical music specifically, though all genres have something I can relate to.

I tend to always have multiple books on the go at once: at least one fiction and several non-fiction. My personal library is currently about 70% non-fiction I’d guess and mostly biased towards history. My fiction collection is much more eclectic with a good mix of poetry, the classics, historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy.

Technology has always been a big interest and passion of mine. I’ve made many websites, hosted many servers, built many computers and programmed many applications. Some of my applications were in use for many years by professionals in various fields.

I work mostly on Linux, specifically Arch Linux, and have done so since the late 90’s. My experience with Linux began with Debian, then to the now-defunct Mandrake Linux, to Gentoo, Slack and LFS, and now finally to Arch which I have been using for over 15 years now. I do and have still dabbled in other distros, but Arch is definitely my home.

My program experience began with self-taught coding in Commodore’s BASIC and then Microsoft’s BASIC before beginning my academic pursuits. By the time I finished University, I had added Turbo Pascal, sh/Bash, C/Objective-C/C++/C#, Java, JavaScript, Prolog, Lisp, Assembly (x86 and 68k), COBOL, MATLAB, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP and others to my repertoire. Since then I’ve added a few more to the list as well. These days I primarily work in shell scripting, mostly Bash, and occasionally C. On occasion I dip into Python, Go or Rust when I need something more.

Why This Exists

For a long time now I’ve been wanting to build a course on Arch Linux specifically, and, to a lesser extent, Linux in general. I’ve been procrastinating because I’ve argued I had nowhere to put it. This helps end that procrastination. I also have a habit of keeping notes for myself on various topics and have spreedsheets galore where I track my reviews of everything from movies to different alcohols which I’ve wanted to centralize. I also find writing my thoughts to be very theraputic and wish I had kept them have therefore been contemplating a blog. And then finally, I keep looking for places to put travel plans and travel memories and this is as good a place as any.

In short, this is a holding area for my planned Linux course and if it ever gets down perhaps I’ll move it, and otherwise just a storage area for my personal thoughts and experiences. In short: this is as good a place as any to put all my digital notes, thoughts, plans and memories.

It’s unlikely that anyone will be interested in all of it, but quite possible that some people will be interested in some of it. Regardless, this is my brain’s home on the web.