New BugZapper Introduction

[Mathieu Bouffard]

Hello everyone,

Some contact information:
IRC: mbouffard on freenode
Doors Live: joklem at live dot ca

I've used GNU/Linux distros in the past but had never acquired much 
knowledge on its workings. Recently, in the past 6 months or so I 
switched to it entirely, starting with Ubuntu (of course...) to mess 
around the android source and especially its kernel. Tried a few other 
distros too, in other words I was torn on which one I'd settle on, and I 
guess that this can confirm that it's Fedora 15 (installed recently, of 
course the first order of business was a custom kernel!) & future 
releases. :-)

Some more about me including some experience -- I'm 24 and a physicist, 
I use Linux obviously for the available software and power of just 
making it do what you want it to. I quickly began gaining an interest in 
the inner workings of the OS and started off building customized kernels 
from mainline, adding patches that looked interesting, and I even have a 
pretty minor one in linux-next (probably git## by now) that apparently 
adds support to a previously unsupported USB sound card (hey, I wanted 
it to work so I had to figure it out, right?). Also learned to write 
decent bash scripts for my needs, and all along taking it one error or 
problem at a time and solving them like little puzzles, along the way 
understanding more and more about the underpinnings of what makes this 
system work. I'm truly amazed that I can have an idea that sounds 
completely stupid or inefficient in practice, but with the right 
Lego(tm) blocks and plan, one can make it work and enjoy a little 
challenge. An infinite loop that downloads a dynamic PNG image graph 
from the internet, crops target information and outputs it to a text 
file so that conky can have 3 lines about the status of the Large Hadron 
Collider? Why not?!

Needless to say I fell in love with open source, both the concept and 
the community, and also the "sheer power" that can build an idea that 
you have from simple lego blocks and a plan to put them together. :-)

Well that was alot to say "I like this and I want to contribute and 
learn more!"

I read the wiki pages in a bit of a glance and I'll read them again. As 
for help getting started, maybe some pointers in general directions of 
some things that someone learned that wasn't obvious, or some things 
that aren't well documented perhaps?

-- 
---
Mathieu Bouffard<mbouffard strangequarks org>
"Physics is like sex; sure, it may give some practical
results, but that's not why we do it."
                       --Richard P. Feynman