Developer Profile - HarryBo / Chris Taylor

A few words about me...

Linux, Open Source etc

I've been using Linux, in various guises, for around 6 years. My primary area of expertise is closely related to webservers; I have extensive experience with Apache∞, PHP∞, MySQL∞, Lighttpd∞ and related software. I tend to use Slackware or Gentoo for servers. In general, I don't use Linux on the desktop, but my chosen distribution for that purpose is Ubuntu.

Professionally speaking, I am a PHP programmer, with a strong focus on databases. I tend to be much more interested in the backend side of things than the pretty bits that users look at, which goes a long way to explaining why I tend to subcontract design work out to other people ;) I've been a proponent of OpenSourceSoftware for a long time now; I think it probably started the day I benchmarked Apache 1.3 against IIS 5 on Windows 2000 and was stunned to see how much faster this "free" software could be. Things have just snowballed from there really!

After installing Gentoo a few times, I got a lot more familiar with the internals of Linux. Sometime in late 2005, I stumbled across the LinuxFromScratch site and read some of the basics. The idea intrigued me but I was daunted by the scale of the task, and besides: what would I use an LFS system for?

Car Audio

Around 4 years ago, my friend Woosey had just passed his driving test and was getting into car audio. After some abortive first attempts, we managed to install some audio in his ageing Peugeot 205. Somehow, Woosey stumbled across www.talkaudio.co.uk∞ and signed up. I knew of the website but didn't sign up for months. We found the place to be an invaluable source of information, with some real car audio experts on hand to provide help and advice.

In a sequence of events that still defies explanation, I ended up as a Moderator on TA (initially of a new Computer Forum I had proposed), and after a year or so had passed, I was made an Administrator. Now, I essentially share the responsibility of running TalkAudio with Mike, the owner of the site. Of course, TA runs on a dedicated Linux server (Slackware), all configured by yours truly.

SqueezeBox

Early in 2006, I stumbled across the Slim Devices∞ website and read up on their SqueezeBox. At the time, they were doing a special offer that involved buying two and getting a substantial discount. I mentioned this to Woosey, and a few weeks later, we had new toys to play with. It's very hard to not be impressed by the SqueezeBox (and SqueezeCenter). The sophistication and quality of both the hardware and software is clear and, after only a few hours use, I knew it really was something quite special.

Recent playing with car PCs had led me to look at the problem again in a new light and, one day, the idea of putting a SqueezeBox and a PC running SqueezeCenter popped into my head. The rest, as they say... is history.