Throughout most of the history of the WWW, it has been traditional for web pages to start by warning the user that their `correct' rendering is guaranteed only with the author's choice of lossy SGML-illiterate bugridden browser software, and that unpredicted effects may happen if the viewer's preferred lossy SGML-illiterate bugridden browser software differs. Why buck the trend?
To be honest I more or less just hacked at this page until it looked pretty in Mozilla. If it conforms to any kind of HTML standard I assure you it's purely coincidental.
Courtesy of a nasty bit of elisp.
The objectives of this web page are twofold
So what are you doing here anyway?
For the last couple of years my primary leisure pursuit has involved strapping 8 wheels to my feet and messing with car drivers' heads. Mostly this seems to revolve around the LondonSkaters Speed Team and marshalling for the London Friday Night Skate and Sunday Stroll group street skates. You can find out more about all this at coruskate, which is a webloggy kind of thing.
``Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.''(from "The Humble Programmer", E. Dijkstra, CACM, vol. 15, n. 10, 1972, pag. 859)
I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that there is a Common Lisp community. The fallout from this life of self-delusion includes some fairly neat (I think) resources: see my page on CLiki for a more-likely-to-be-current list than any I'd keep here on this static web page that I never read.
I've been using Linux (my least unfavourite operating system) since 1994 (0.99pl10 or so) and Perl (my second-favourite programming language) since not much later. From time to time I can be seen at OXLUG meetings, sometimes also found at GLLUG. I'd go to London.pm Social Meetings too, if only they didn't always seem to coincide with evenings I want a rest and really don't feel like moving anywhere at all.
Yes, I'm an emacs users. But only until I have the time to rewrite it in Common Lisp ...
You might find my name in various Linux-related places, but most of it's terrifically out of date. As of August 2004 I think the only Linux-specific stuff I've written that's still in use is the orinoco_plx driver, and even that's pretty vestigial in version 2.6.
Who am I?
Born. Still living. I cite the following as formative experiences: Engineering (nominally), St John's College, Oxford University. Then a small web/ecommerce shop called Pentacom, where I worked for several years in a programming/sysadmin/`Internet Consultancy'/general Unix kind of capacity, followed by a stint of self-employment as metacircles, providing contracting/consulting services (Common Lisp, Linux, Perl, "Open Source"(sic), Web) to companies and other entities that need them). Since early 2004 I have a real job again, doing systems development for clara.net
Since I started university in 1992 I seem to have alternated between living in Oxford and London, spending approximately four years at a time in each place. Right now (August 2004) I'm in London.
I have more email addresses than I can remember, most of which see nothing but spam, but you're welcome to help change that by sending interesting, human-written, entertaining mail to dan@telent.net
PGP-encrypted mail is welcome: you can find my key on the public servers.
pub 1024D/1297D4B5 2005/02/02 Daniel Barlow <dan@telent.net>
Key fingerprint = 13D7 02AD 8665 27E0 8F71 5326 776F D7C0 1297 D4B5
Due to the aforementioned spam problem (and also to my laziness), you
may not be guaranteed a reply (though "interesting" and "entertaining"
helps). If you want to get in touch about some software I wrote or
had a hand in and you want a response, I would urge you for your own
comfort and convenience first to check the README or whatever passes
for documentation, and see if there is a mailing list or forum to
which you can instead direct your query.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d- s-: a-- C++(---) ULIS++++ P+++(---) L+++ E++ W+++(--) N+ !o !K-- w(---) !O !M !V- PS+ PE- Y+ PGP+ !t !5 !X !R tv? b+++> DI++ D G+(-) e+++ h r? y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
with the exception that I went through deleting all the $ signs. They remind me of Perl.