Program development has mostly been a hobby, not an avocation. I am expert in C. spent some years with Java, and program and configure databases.

My journey to Linux began when the alternative Windows Desktop called DesqView/X by Quarterdeck Systems. then with SCO/Xenix, and finally, my distro of choice, Slackware in the late '90s which I continue to use and support to this day. I run Windows only when I have to, and that, under a VM.

I have been a consultant where I used C and designed and configured databases in a variety of industry verticals:

• Television, Film, Media, and Advertising
• Recording arts
• Banking, Insurance, and Financial Services
• Healthcare and Life Sciences

• Developed one of the first Ratings Analysis Systems for the Cable TV Industry
• Debugged and reprogrammed a global stock market index database that was providing inaccurate results by 200 basis points
• Designed Executive Compensation Systems used by a multi-national in 63 countries
• Designed and Developed a Music Video Licensing System
• Was Product Manager at an Enterprise Quality Management Software company
• More recently, have been involved in Regulatory Compliance for Medical Device, Biotech, and Pharma Companies designing and configuring reporting systems for Adverse Events, Device Registrations, CAPA, etc.

lrzip-next is the project I work on the most. It is a detached fork of the lrzip long range data compression program by Con Kolivas. I began contributing to that project in 2007 and eventually, my modifications became too divergent to manage two forks. So, lrzip-next was born in 2019 and continues to this day. Features include:

• Updated APIs for LZMA and ZPAQ
• Enhanced and more readable print and info output
• Updated x86 ASM routines for LZMA
• Additions of new compression backends, bzip3 and zstd

See the FEATURES file for more info.

bitpacker is a C project that will pack 7-bit ASCII strings into 8-bit bytes. This is accomplished by successively shifting bytes 1 bit at a time, rotating throughout the array of bytes. The result is a string which is obfuscated with unprintable characters. While not encryption, this result will be made printable by using Base64 encoding. So a string like password would become unreadable and with base64 readable again and can be used. It is useful because unlike you can control what the password will be and it is still packed and then obfuscated. Even if someone decoded the base64 string, your password would still not be readable. This was really a small mental exercise for an old-school programmer!

$ ./bitp p password
Base64 encoding of password is 4YefPvv5ZA==

$ ./bitp u 4YefPvv5ZA==
base64 Decoded packed password is: password

makesbld is a shell program to create Slackware Build files. Similar to Gentoo ebuilds, it uses a library of shell functions to systemetize package automation.

Kernel-Install is a shell script to automate upgrading and installing kernels.

lrzip-fe is a shell script using Dialog to launch lrzip-next with all options menu-selectable (although this project is a little behind right now).

Other projects are also available for perusal but are not as actively maintained. ps2lrz is an intereting one because it has the capability to rewrite lrzip and lrzip-next headers or just decode them. Interesting stuff!

I majored in Piano Performance and minored in Music Theory at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Earned a Masters in Cable Communications at New York University. I enjoy travel. A lot.

I may be reached through the Issues and Discussions tabs on any repo or by email: Send Email