General
I am 31 years old, recently married, and living in Sweden. My interests include:
- Cycling with my wife.
- Software development (AJAX, version control systems, functional programming and software security).
- Astrophysics and space exploraation.
- Social responsibility.
- Reading. I read a lot of technical works related to my interests. Most people read novels. Although I do a little of that too, the vast majority of my time is spent reading user manuals, technical essays, wikipedia, etc.
- Writing. I enjoy technical writing. Once in a while I will spend a week or two writing a detailed technical essay. I don’t always publish them, since I don’t know if other people would be interested in them. Maybe I should publish more of them.
My favourite charities are UNICEF, CARE, Oxfam and Plan International.
My favourite programming languages are Perl and anything with functional programming (JavaScript – don’t laugh).
My favourite Ajax toolkit is jQuery.
My favourite version control systems are Darcs, Mercurial and Bazaar.
Work and Education
I have a degree in Math and Physics from the University of Toronto. Most recently I worked as a web software developer, mainly working with PHP, MySQL and AJAX. I recently quit my job to start a asters in Astrophysics at the university of Lund. Going further back in time, I spent many years working as a teaching assistant or course instructor (Mathematics).
Languages and travel
I am a Venezuelan by birth and a Canadian by choice. As someone who has lived in seven countries over four continents (Venezuela, Canada, Hong Kong, USA, England, Germany and Sweden), I consider myself first and foremost a citizen of the world.
I am fluent in Spanish and English. I can manage a simple conversation in German. I am currently trying to learn Swedish.
Books and writing
I enjoy technical writing. I’ve had the pleasure to co-author several books on open source, specifically OpenOffice.org. I co-authored Point and Click OpenOffice.org with Robin Miller, and also Getting Started with OpenOffice.org, the OpenOffice.org Draw Guide and the OpenOffice.org Writer Guide.
Everything I’ve learnt about technical writing I’ve learnt from Jean Hollis Weber and her excellent website Technical Editors’ Eyrie. It has some great articles for aspiring technical writers. Some people may recognize Jean’s name from Taming OpenOffice.org Writer, the very first published book about OpenOffice.org.
