[mnet-devel] Allow me to introduce myself...

[rob kinninmont]

Having recently joined the Mnet community (I'm now working for 
HiveCache), I thought I'd drop you all a quick note to introduce myself 
a little.

My focus is going to be on applying Mnet tech to doing backups more 
than internet publishing, but I'm hoping that I can help with the 
progress of the project as a whole.  One of the things I gather I'll 
need to work on is how to build a ContentTracker.  I didn't see much in 
the way of docs about that specifically, and wonder if anyone can point 
me in the right direction for figuring out how to run a ContentTracker, 
and then also altering it and debugging it.

While I've a bunch of programming experience, I've very little 
experience with python.  Everything I know of it (including writing a 
few tools and scripts) makes me excited to be learning more - I hope 
you'll humour me in my python naïveté.  Perhaps more importantly, with 
regard to Mnet, I have a reasonable grasp of the principles from 
talking to Jim over the years, from a CS perspective more than anything 
else, but don't know my way around the code at all, so I'm going to be 
trying to wrap my head around it, make sense of it, and figure out 
where I fit into it.

You might have noticed me lurking (as evilotto) on #mnet; I'll probably 
pipe up occasionally with requests for hand-holding, code or design 
demystification, or perhaps even just sympathy :-)

I've been thinking for some time that I should get involved in an open 
source project or two, since I support the open-source philosophy, and 
I believe that I'll get to know more people who are interesting and 
like minded.  Hence I'm pleased to be joining the Mnet community, 
though I'll admit I'm apprehensive about coming into the group as an 
almost complete stranger.

In amongst my reading I looked at the Twisted coding standards, and saw 
a recommendation to use emacs.  I've been a vim user for years 
(initially a left over from learning vi for doing sysad, later mostly a 
familiarity thing) and have been thinking for a while that I should 
learn emacs.   I wondered what the folks on the mnet team use/recommend 
as a dev environment - partly since I imagine it'd be easier to 
collaborate if we're using the same tools, but mostly since I don't 
know what the best choices and approaches are for python development 
and debugging.  Also, I hope you'll humour me in any unfamiliarity I 
have with the tools, and would appreciate any recommendations folks 
have for learning to use e.g. emacs effectively.


As for my background, I'm a Brit - but please don't hold that against 
me, at least not until you know me ;-)  I grew up in the North East of 
England, in an area predominantly serving local chemical and steel 
industries, but surrounded by agriculture.  After escaping to 
university in cambridge and studying CompSci for a few years, I managed 
to escape further - this time to California.

Aside from a year spent dead for tax reasons, I've lived here in 
California for the last six years working in a variety of tech jobs 
mostly programming, but with a good dose of sysad, and mostly unix but 
with a splattering of windows and mac.  The job I moved here for was at 
the (in some circles) infamous Electric Communities, and amongst the 
things I gained from that experience were: exposure to distributed 
systems and p2p before they became buzzwords; a lasting interest in 
security and distributed systems (which I then, for the most part, 
failed to pursue, but that's another story); and getting to know Jim 
McCoy (as well as a wealth of other cool people).


So, I'm pleased to be here, and am looking forward to being able to 
contribute.

cheers,
rob



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