The FlamingSpork

The home page of Stewart Smith styled in that unforgettable "I am a programmer that can't be bothered making a fancy-dancing web site" style.

What's Here?

• My Weblog, Ramblings
• PortaWiki - a Wiki for people to collaborate on portability issues.
• Talks that I've given at various places
• Free Software Projects:
  • MemberDB - A Membership Database. Used by Linux Australia among others.
  • libeatmydata - A LD_PRELOAD library for disabling fsync - making your programs no longer crash-safe. Very useful in making test suites run faster.
• My Gallery with a bunch of photos taken here and there. I expect to put more photos up there as time permits
• Some Photos - but not many, I've been too lazy to do something properly here. But there are some great ones of the dunking at linux.conf.au 2004 - and Linus in speedos.
• Arch Mirrors - A set of mirrors for my projects kept in the GNU arch revision control system.
• Some Linux related stuff I've written. Mostly out of date now, but may be useful for hysterical raisins. All about Linux on an iBook 2 (with XFS) and 15 inch PowerBook and linux.
• Old Software Projects of mine, now under GPL.
• Junkcode - misc bits of code that don't really fit anywhere.
• Things relating to my honors project from my fourth year at Monash University (2003).

Bio

Stewart Smith works for Sun as a senior software engineer working on MySQL Cluster. He is often found hacking on MySQL, taking photos, baking bread, drinking beer (or whisky) and talking at conferences. He's co-authored two books (Practical MythTV and MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide). He's currently the President of Linux Australia and eager to get to Jiu Jitsu training.

Some of the things I'm involved with at the moment include:

• Linux Australia - A community group which (among other things) organises linux.conf.au. I was the Vice President for 2003 and 2004 and Ordinary Committe Member for 2005-2006. In 2007, I was involved with linux.conf.au 2008 in Melbourne. I am now (2008) the President.
• LUV - Linux Users of Victoria - I've been on the board and am currently an active member
• MemberDB - my Membership database project
• MySQL AB - my current employer, where I work on MySQL Cluster as a Software Engineer.
• A firm opponent of Software Patents

In the past, I have been involved in:

• No Software Patents - the very important fight against software patents.
• Linux Australia's position on the FTA - Chapter 17 of the AU-US Trade Agreement aren't good for Open Source.
• SGI - I used to work there.
• OpenDarwin - (more specifically, DarwinPorts) a BSD ports like architecture for MacOS X and Darwin. I no longer run MacOS X regularly.
• I was a Monash Univ, Honours Student in Computer Science. You can see my honors stuff up on the web at /honors/.
• I became an Honorary Member of the Monash Uni CSSE Student Club in 2002 after having been actively involved in it since arriving at Monash (2000). I plan to still be casually involved (even though I am no longer at Monash) purely in an advisory role.
• YoYo and GAUNIX - The Monash Uni General Access UNIX group, which runs the YoYo machine (aptly named after the reliability of the original hardware). I learnt how much Tru64 sucks here, and how to move it to FreeBSD. Then, I learned how much FreeBSD really does irritate me.

Contact Information

You can reach me via email by mailing stewart at flamingspork dot com. Other options include ICQ (6734154) or Jabber (macplusg3@jabber.org).

Mobile (Cell) phone is: +61 438 844 332. Reach me over VOIP on 6616 at sip.us.mysql.com.