Stuart Hacking

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Welcome to my blog, this is the obligatory about page. My name is Stuart Hacking. I graduated in 2009 from Queen’s University, Belfast with an MEng in Computer Science. I started a PhD in January  2009 relating to virtualization technology. This quickly bombed and I got out. Currently I am working as a Software Engineer in A Belfast based company.

This site is intended to store a collection of musings, tutorials, reminders and other such posts. The opinions and statements contained within are solely my own and do not reflect the opinions of anyone else including my past, current or future employers.

I enjoy things relating to technology particularly on the software side. Learning new languages is a lot of fun. I am proficient in Java and Python. I have fair experience in C/C++, Lisp and Unix shell programming and enjoy continuing to learn other (perhaps obscure) languages such as Haskell and Befunge. Although I don’t consider the following ‘languages’ but rather markups and/or containers, I have some experience with xHtml, CSS, XML. I am an avid user of Emacs. I use Apple computers almost exclusively.

I am, once again, an associate member of the Free Software Foundation. When we talk about free software, we aren’t simply self-described freeloaders. The freedom we desire is the freedom that large corporations aren’t willing to give:

• The freedom to use the software for any purpose
• The freedom to share a piece of software that we love
• The freedom to read the source code of the software.
• The freedom to modify a piece of software to better suit our needs

Each of these is excluded from your rights when buying software. You don’t buy the software you buy a license to use it, which can be revoked at the company’s whim. There are alternatives that allow you to claim back your computer. The GNU operating system is a free alternative to Microsoft Windows. Moreover, many popular applications can be replace with free alternatives such as: OpenOffice.org, GNU Image Manipulation Program, Ardour Recording Software, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. By choosing these applications you are no longer shackled by the restrictions of proprietary software vendors. I would encourage everyone to try these programs- most of which are available for Windows. If you decide you would like to try a free operating system then I highly recommend Ubuntu.

I also enjoy Table tennis, Cycling, Reading Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, watching movies and tv, listening to music (anything from classical -> Heavy metal), drawing (very occasionally), playing guitar, reading comics.