Hello, I'm Yvan, a kinda techie guy with a variety of interests and experience. I'm originally from Dunsborough in the south west of Western Australia, I went to school in Bunbury and Perth and to university in Sydney (USyd, mainly Computer Science). I worked in "Software Engineer" type roles for a decade, always on Linux and other Unix-type systems, and generally in networking and infosec areas - mostly cutting code in C++ and C, plus a bit of Python and Perl alongside. My early software career moved me from Sydney to the UK in 2006, which is where I remain. In 2014 I left the tech industry to start a craft beer wholesale business (Jolly Good Beer) - I also extensively rennovated a pub (the Radegund in Cambridge). COVID and general economic factors put an end to that phase of my life and at present I'm looking to find a new path, ideally in the software and technology world.
I've had a "presence" on the web since some time in the 90s (Geocities at first), and have had my own domain sites since 2002, always hosting my own sites. I've had blogs in various formats and levels of angst (some of which is still on record), from my first hand-crafted HTML efforts, to writing my own CMS (didn't we all once? maybe twice even…), to running some platforms like blosxom, then like many people ending up with WordPress "by default", and now I'm working to move on from WordPress with mild embrasment I ever used it… to something simple, clean, and low-resource. So here we are full-circle, this web page is hand-crafted in vim. My old wordpress beer and personal "blogs" are still up, and I'm hoping to work out a way to convert those to a static HTML archive.
You will find me on the Fediverse, I run my own Mastodon instance. I gave up Twitter on a personal basis years ago, and never really got into FaceBook, Instagram, or the other platforms. I still miss IRC, and I know it's still a thing, but have never really got back into it.
I have been a Linux user since my first Debian install in 1998, and it became my primary desktop operating system from University onwards, I switched to mainly Ubuntu for desktop in the mid-2000s but Debian remains my server OS of choice and I'm considering moving to it for desktop too. I've run my own Linux servers since the early 2000s and almost all my software development experience is Linux based.
My main side-project is probably our allotment, which I have started a fairly lo-fi "vlog" about. I come from a restaurant background and have had a lifelong interest in food and drink as a result of that, which obviosuly ties in nicely with the allotmenting. I'm also especially interested in fermentation of both food and drinks — the latter leading to my decade-long dalliance in the beer industry, turning a hobby into a business. The allotment does for now help scratch the itch I have for construction, and alongside that I also tinker with both 3D printing and desktop CNC. I also enjoy playing with microcontroler systems and I'm working on ideas about remote monitoring and control of the allotment using the Raspberry Pi Pico platform.
I like to solve problems and build things, ideally both at once. My primary skillset revolves around technology and I have a solid foundation in general computer science principals that applies to picking up whatever programming languages or tools best suit the task at hand.
My CV goes into more detauls, though it is in need of updating for my post-2014 activities, but my key relevant tech experience is right here: Yvan Seth's CV