Contributions to Ubuntu

Ubuntu Forums

• Ubuntu Forum Staff

• Beginners Team

  • BT Council member

  • Wiki Focus Group lead

• Unanswered Posts Team

UF Work

Aside from my work with the UF teams and doing regular help on the forums, here are a couple of short guides I have written:

• HowTo: Reconfigure X with "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" (Gutsy and older)

• HowTo: Compiz Fusion in Hardy on cards with "ati"/"radeon" open source drivers

• A cool little add-on to bodhi.zazen's Intrusion Detection guide

• Improving Ubuntu: A Beginners Guide to Filing Bug Reports

Of course, let's not forget - the famous, the hilarious, the completely useless, The BUMP Thread (yes I have a sense of humor, too).

Launchpad

• Ubuntu BugSquad

• Ubuntu Bug Control

• Ubuntu Beginners Answers

Doing healthy doses of bug triage has also helped bring me further into testing out development releases of Ubuntu. And vice versa! This makes it convenient to perform triage on development release bugs as well as file my own. That's not to say that I don't work on stable release bugs, though, getting those triaged is a necessary step to getting fixes released in the development version.

I also help in the Answers section of Launchpad from time to time, though I prefer to use the forums since they are more responsive and seem to promote more of a community atmosphere.

Wiki Involvement

• Ubuntu Documentation Students

  • Ubuntu Wiki

For the UF Beginners Team, I maintain our wiki area as head of the Wiki Focus Group, and have rewritten and/or reorganized most of the team wiki pages. I think it's also worth saying that whenever I mention the wiki (community docs) during BT meetings, it seems that some new member always gets interested in helping out!

Summer of Documentation:

I also helped lead the charge to get the community wiki up to date in the summer of 2008, with the help of the UF BT Wiki Focus Group and support from the Ubuntu Documentation Team. I recruited members from the BT to help with this effort, which we called the Summer of Documentation. Now that it is over, you can read the report at BeginnersTeam/FocusGroups/Wiki/SoD2008.

I continue to work with the doc-team on the Community Docs, and still focus on maintaining pages that I worked on during our Summer of Documentation.

Completed Work

An up to date listing of pages I have done major work on:

• Fstab - complete rewrite. This has become a shared effort with BodhiZazen who expanded a lot on the page.

• HowToRemoveWindows - complete rewrite.

• NetworkAdmin - almost complete rewrite.

• MountingWindowsPartitions/ThirdPartyNTFS3G - largely rewritten, and updated for Gutsy and Hardy.

• MoveMountpointHowto - largely rewritten and expanded.

• Mounting Windows Partitions - complete rewrite.

• K9Copy - largely rewritten, updated.

• Dns and Dhcp - basically wrote this page from scratch.

• UsingUUID - major rewrite, expansion.

• RenameUSBDrive - major rewrite, kept some core material.

• Nvidia Multi Monitors - complete write, mostly empty page beforehand.

• Binary Drivers - Nvidia - major cleanup, updates.

• Nvidia Manual driver install - heavy reorganization and cleanup, and additions. Kept most pre-existing material.

• Binary Driver Howto - reorganized, major cleanup. Kept core material (not much actually added).

• Mount USB - major rework and cleanup. Kept a decent amount of content, esp. the Troubleshooting; rewrote much of it and added material. Redirected and updated a few pages in the process.

• Repositories/Ubuntu/Dapper - cleaned up this page so that it applies only to Dapper (since Dapper's methods are different).

Future Plans

I originally intended on getting more involved with FOSS programming once I arrived in Pennsylvania, but with the growth of the UF Beginners Team and my activities as a forum moderator, this has ended up in the back seat for now. I also spoke with Stephen Kidney about expanding a web based tracker that is used by the Unanswered Posts Team so that it can be used between different UF teams. While I had a release almost ready to be used by the Beginners Team, this has also taken a back seat because of recent activities.

Eventually I plan on becoming an Ubuntu Member, but for now I am focusing on helping others contribute to Ubuntu. This especially applies to users who show up on the Beginners Team and are looking to get more involved, but just don't know where to start.

Personal Information and Experience

Originally from northern California, I graduated from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles with a BS in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. I now live and work in Pennsylvania as a Software Engineer.

As a side job, I maintain my roommate's film production company's website, Mirror Images LTD.

My first experience with *nix came from using SunOS Solaris UNIX at my university beginning in 2004. I started with linux in 2006 and started using Ubuntu in 2007 after Feisty Fawn was released and there was a stable version of the ntfs-3g driver. I originally dual booted my laptop with Ubuntu and XP, but have since wiped out XP and gone pure Ubuntu there. My desktop dual boots with Ubuntu and Vista, and I experiment with other linux distributions and Ubuntu testing versions on a spare laptop.

While in school, I joined my school's LUG, but unfortunately we only had a few meetings since there was not a lot of interest in group. I did, however, support the nomination of trading their RHEL mirror for an Ubuntu one, which they did. I now attend Ubuntu-US-PA LoCo meetings about once a month (which is when they hold meetings within a reasonable distance).

I also host a Counter-Strike 1.6 game server and clan, you can find our (horrible, but free) website here. The server, which has been up since 2004, runs on a tower with CentOS 5.1 and is hosted out of my college roommate's apartment in Los Angeles. My first experience with linux was when I switched the server from Windows XP to Fedora Core 5 in 2006, so it holds a special place in my heart.

Testimonials

I do not even no where to begin when it comes to talking about Rocket2DMn. I met him on the Ubuntu Forums Beginners Team. There, he demonstrates leadership by serving on the council and as the Wiki Focus Group Leader. He also has done a great job maintaining the team wiki pages. Rocket2DMn is always willing to help people. Whether it be on the forums, where he serves as a moderator, or on IRC, he is always willing to answer any question that he might be asked. One other area that I have worked with Rocket2DMn on is bug triaging. He has done a great job cleaning up the list of open bugs on Launchpad. Rocket2DMn is always learning and finding new ways to contribute to the community. As can be seen from his wiki page, his contributions in all of these areas have been substantial. "A member is someone who's made a substantial contribution to the Ubuntu community". Rocket2DMn has clearly made a substantial contribution to the Ubuntu community, and he has my full support for Ubuntu Membership. Keep up the great work Rocket2DMn! -- Nathan Handler (nhandler)

Connor contributes actively to the documentation team by working on the help wiki - he has done great work to organise and improve the wiki, as well as contributing very positively on the documentation team mailing list. He is a worthy Ubuntu member. -- mdke 2008-12-06 07:51:42

Connor is a wonderful addition to the Ubuntu Forums and has been helpful, friendly, and an excellent example to others during his time with us, beginning long before we invited him to join the staff. His contributions to the community are real, sustained, and he is a great guy. If he were applying to the regional membership board on which I serve, it would be a no-brainer to give him membership. I recommend him highly. -- Matthew Helmke

BodhiZazen It is a privilege to add a testimonial on behalf of Rocket2DMn. Rocket has contributed in many ways to Ubuntu, including working with the Beginners Team (where is is a natural leader and is respected by all the members). In addition he is active on Forums (as a moderator) and somehow finds the time to contribute to both the Wiki pages and Launchpad. Honestly I do not know how he finds the time. His behaviour is always friendly and professional. His biggest weakness is Pizza, he will do anything for Pizza.

PrivateVoid Connor is an active contributor to the Ubuntu community and a stellar example of what makes the Ubuntu community such a positive experience for its members. His leadership role in the Beginners Team's summer of documentation helped several people to get more involved in the larger Ubuntu community. His leadership role in the Beginners Team has made a noticeable impact in the quality of the team.

michaelgodawski Rocket2DMn was one of the very first people I met on my Ubuntu voyage. If it were another one, perhaps I would not be here anymore. Rocket has my full support.

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