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Christian Bryant
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Introduction
My name is Christian Bryant, OLPC Support volunteer #262, and my place on the olpcMap is Southern California. I am a GNU/Linux engineer specializing in software configuration management and project management for collaborative, distributed GNU technologies. Additionally, I create customized GNU/Linux implementations demonstrating minimal, development-oriented packages with inherent configuration management. I work only with free software on these projects and future plans include replacing my GNU/Linux builds with GNU/Hurd once that kernel is mature, and writing an interface to provide custom GNU/Hurd build tools for software configuration managers interested in creating secure, configuration-managed servers for free software development teams.
While I am essentially a Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) technology hobbyist, I do also have an interest in philanthropy and non-profit organizations. Because much of the software I use in my work is GNU and associated with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the Linux Foundation, I have taken up work with a local non-profit to learn more about how GNU/FSF and Linux can most benefit philanthropic causes. Over the course of my career, I hope to learn more about how philanthropic organizations work, and eventually form my own non-profit organization to meet the needs of a community under stress using humanitarian FLOSS.
To learn more about the non-profit I currently work with as a GNU/FSF and Linux resource, you can visit their website here:
- Sampa Community Educational Project - http://myscep.org
One Laptop Per Child
As a Support Group volunteer for OLPC, my current responsibilities include:
- Contribute to improvement of curation and maintenance of documentation and other digital OLPC artifacts.
- Participate in Contributor Program proposal reviews.
- Mentoring new project contributors.
- Member of the OLPC Support Gang, helping other users.
- Local support for the Southern California OLPC team.
- Volunteer for OLPC booths at events such as SCALE 9x.
Current Projects
UV Light Water Purifier USB
I am currently acting as mentor for the UV Water Sterilizer USB Cable for XO project, conceived by Corbin Cambell. The project seeks to create a UV water sterilization lamp that attaches to a USB port on the OLPC and will last long enough to sterilize several liters of water on one battery charge. This has humanitarian implications as well as educational uses. It also promotes usefulness of the OLPC in regions where water quality is questionable and as an emergency response equipment in disaster areas. You can follow Corbin's progress at his blog. Find Corbin on the olpcMAP here.
For an understanding of why projects like this are important, see the XOs for Humanitarian Aid / Disaster Relief page.
IRC
I can often be found on several channels in Freenode. The best way to get in contact with me is to engage me in conversation on a topic of interest to me. These are the channels I most often join, under the nickname ``christianabryant:
- #olpc - Contact point for all things olpc, and the core hardware development team's own channel.
- #olpc-help - Community help. If you need help using your XO, and you haven't asked anywhere else: try here first.
- #olpc-support-gang - The Support Gang is a group of worldwide volunteers that help other users.
- #sugar-newbies - If you're starting to develop in Sugar, you can ask here and help contribute to the new developers manual and FAQ.
- #sugar - Sugar development.
- #fedora-olpc - The home of the Fedora interest group for OLPC.
- #flossmanuals - Discussion about free manuals for free software and flossmanuals.net.
- #oscatholic - Channel for www.opensourcecatholic.com members.
GNU/Linux Software
While I use many FLOSS applications from day-to-day in my working environment, particularly when working with the Sugar Learning Platform, the applications I tend to use the most on a technical level are listed below in alphabetical order. Indicative of my focus as a GNU/Linux engineer, they are the core tools used to write, build, debug, test and release GNU software packages and a custom GNU/Linux OS. As a regular user of many GNU/Linux distributions, any additional software I use in my daily activities is likely to be part of a standard KDE or GNOME desktop release on any major GNU/Linux distribution. Sugar under Fedora is my default desktop environment for OLPC troubleshooting, development and experimentation. I also use the Sugar Creation Kit. My primary development environment is Fedora.