Owner, Servology
London, United Kingdom
- Current
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- Consultant and Owner at Servology (Sole Proprietorship)
- Entertainer at Voluntary work
- Past
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- System Administrator at Venus Business Communications
- System Administrator at Red Moon Internet
- Consultant at netproject
- Proprietor at Westway Computers Unlimited (Sole Proprietorship)
- Free Software Engineer at Alcôve
- Contributor at "gimp-print" printer driver project (now known as Gutenprint)
- Consultant at Twin Photographic
- Developer at Debian Project
- Education
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- The University of Kent
- University of Kent
- The University of Kent
- University of Kent
- Connections
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19
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Summary
Consultancy and systems administration positions, plus volunteer Free Software development work. Currently aiming to grow Servology into a useful ISP, combining a high level of automation with personal service when required.
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Specialties:
Free Software, especially Debian GNU/Linux. Internet protocols, routing, services.
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Experience
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Consultant and Owner
Servology (Sole Proprietorship)
(Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Internet industry)
March 2006 — Present (3 years 9 months)
Start-up ISP specialising in colocation and connectivity.
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Entertainer
Voluntary work
(Entertainment industry)
2004 — Present (5 years )
Volunteered as a mascot performer at several charity events: carnivals, bucket collections at supermarkets and on the street, a village show, a sponsored walk. This is ideal voluntary work for me, as it's a hobby too - I've been out several times as a costume character just for fun - for example, at the summer solstice at Stonehenge, when I was even (very briefly) featured on TV news. Events I've helped with have so far been few and far between, but I want to find a few more to do!
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System Administrator
Venus Business Communications
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
July 2005 — January 2006 (7 months)
Looked after Debian, Red Hat and Windows servers, leased lines, FSO (free space optics), MySQL, coldfusion, ASPerl (a special local variant of Perl which was running a number of web sites, not ActiveState Perl), and the million-and-one things a sysadmin at a small ISP has to do.
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System Administrator
Red Moon Internet
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
March 2004 — June 2005 (1 year 4 months)
Looked after Debian, Red Hat, FreeBSD and Windows servers, LAN, leased lines, a couple of datacentre racks and several Mikrotik routers running a WISP access network. Everything from BGP and OSPF to Nominet and Joker to BIND and Postfix.
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Consultant
netproject
(Computer Software industry)
December 2002 — February 2004 (1 year 3 months)
Worked on serveral tasks for netproject: localised and branded Knoppix (a live CD-based version of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution) for distribution as advertising material, some sysadmin work, proofreading and editing of technical reports, web site redesign and templating.
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Proprietor
Westway Computers Unlimited (Sole Proprietorship)
(Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Information Technology and Services industry)
2000 — 2004 (4 years )
A variety of activities have fallen under this trading name, including my work for Twin Photographic and various small consulting jobs for other local clients. WCU has also occasionally supplied PC hardware, and, for a period of time, burned and supplied Debian GNU/Linux CDs by mail order.
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Free Software Engineer
Alcôve
(Information Technology and Services industry)
January 2001 — August 2001 (8 months)
Worked for eight months at Alcove's UK offices at London Bridge. Responsibilities included setting up and maintaining Alcove UK's internal systems and network and performing consulting work for clients. Reason for leaving: Alcove's UK branch closed August 2001.
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Contributor
"gimp-print" printer driver project (now known as Gutenprint)
(Non-Profit; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
2000 — 2001 (1 year )
My most significant contribution is probably the "softweave" code for Epson printers. This replaced the old softweave implementation with a more general (albeit complex) algorithm which I invented. This allows the driver to print as near to the top and bottom of each page as the printer is physically capable. I've also contributed some miscellaneous bug fixes and GUI improvements, and worked on rewriting the internal image API to improve the code's flexibility.
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Consultant
Twin Photographic
(Partnership; 1-10 employees; Photography industry)
2000 — 2001 (1 year )
Converted the business from "wet" photography (based on 35mm film and a KIS minilab) to a system comprising Nikon D1 and D1H cameras, two PCs, Debian GNU/Linux, the Gimp, the "gimp-print" printer drivers and a brace of inkjet photo printers. The new system has been in successful use for several years now, and I make occasional upgrades and add features.
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Developer
Debian Project
(Non-Profit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry)
1997 — 2000 (3 years )
Volunteer Debian developer/package maintainer. I haven't actively worked on Debian for some years, due to (earlier) the demands of my PhD thesis, and (more recently) changed interests. I have in the past maintained at least 20 packages for Debian, have written two packaging "helpers" (a simple debian/rules wrapper and a perl debian/rules generator), and helped standardise Debian's handling of international spell-checker wordlists.
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Education
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The University of Kent
PhD , Computer Science , 1995 — 2000
Thesis title: Behavioural Subtyping in Process Algebra
Thesis archived at <URL:http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2000/1184/> -
University of Kent
1995 — 2000
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The University of Kent
BSc (Hons) , Computer Science , 1992 — 1995
Rotary Prize (distinguished performance) (1995)
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University of Kent
1992 — 1995
Additional Information
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Websites:
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Groups:
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RIPE community -
Debian Developers -
Linux Expert -
Debian Administrator -
OpenStreetMap -
University of Kent Alumni Group -
UKNoT
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Honors:
Industrial/commercial qualifications:
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) (2001)
Red Hat Certified Examiner (RHCX) (2002)
Charles Briscoe-Smith’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
