Toshio Kuratomi

27 Rose St Apt A
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 862-3368
toshio@tiki-lounge.com

WANTED: one job as an Internet/intranet web developer and programmer. The ideal job will focus on programming web-based applications to manipulate structured information. This job requires utilizing open source tools in a unix compatible environment.

Educated at the University of California at Santa Cruz where I undertook an independent major in Writing and Design with a particular emphasis on Online Publishing.

The Onion River Coop
May 2001-Present

Since moving to Burlington, Vermont, I have worked for the Onion River Food Coop. For the first six months I worked as a cashier. After that I switched to the Facilities Department where I have helped set up a new, larger retail space in downtown Burlington, taken over ordering of daily supplies, helped set up and implement a new maintenance routine for the new site, and become the main troubleshooter for the Coop's computer systems.

Second hike of the Appalachian Trail.

Grocery Store Stock Boy
Jubilee
November 1999-March 2000

Between my two hikes of the Appalachian Trail I stocked shelves at a grocery store in Coudersport, Pennsylvania

Farm Hand
Otow Orchards
September 1997-March 1999

I worked for two seasons on a fruit orchard. During the day I picked, sorted, sold, packed, and dried peaches, plums, persimmons, and pears. At night I wrote free software programs.

System Administrator
University of California at Santa Cruz
June 1996-September 1997

• As one of the primary participants in switching the IBM PC labs from Linux to NetBSD I was responsible for seeing that software available on our Linux platform was made available for NetBSD and scripting an automated procedure for setting up the lab computers to dual-boot Windows NT and NetBSD.
• Created CGI scripts in Perl that allow students to register for campus computing services (UNIX accounts and private ISP service.)
• Assisted in compiling software for the SunOS platform and the more recent port to Solaris.

Writing Tutor
University of California at Santa Cruz
October 1996-December 1996

I helped first year students to adjust to University expectations for writing.

Programmer
REINAS Project
May-September 1995

Created an X-Windows interface to the REINAS database using C and the Motif toolkit.

Prtr-13, The Porter College Web Server:
While at UCSC, I secured funding for and set up a Redhat-Linux web server for use by students who live in the Porter College Dormitories. I presently help maintain the server in my free time: adding and updating services and writing documentation to familiarize people with the capabilities of the system. If you like, you can read the documents I wrote defining the server's purpose.

Layout for The Fishrap Live!, a UCSC campus newspaper. This is where most of my experience with Pagemaker was gained. I also worked on the online edition, The Fishrap Online!

Web Page Publishing: I have created pages using HTML, php, XML, CGI-scripts, Javascript, server-side includes, and shockwave. In addition to the sites mentioned above, these sites include:

• My Homepage. Everyone has a home page these days and I'm no different. My series of pages highlights my recent adventures in php, the gimp, and experiments in web design. My home page is driven by my need to exhibit its contents so you won't find it to be a flashy site but one that uses technology to ease the work of publishing textual information. I used php extensively on The Arts and The Ramblings subheadings to generate formatted pages from simple text files.
• A photo scrapbook for a local high school. I used php scripts to generate these pages from the available photos and text files containing the captions. I also wrote a perl script to generate a static html version of the scrapbook that was distributed as a CDROM to the families involved.
• A general mailform script for the users of prtr-13. Although there are many CGI scripts that mail forms to users, I consider mine one of the better ones because it cleanly separates system configuration (in the script) from user configuration (via hidden fields in the form.)
• A Perl script that generates diskusage information on the student web server. Rather than generating the page every single time it was accessed (via a CGI script) I chose the less resource intensive method of updating it once a week. Knowing when information must reflect the current status and when it makes sense to update at less frequent intervals is one of my pet peeves with the current crop of dynamic web sites.
• Working as a cashier gave me a new appreciation for the memory required to be fast and efficient at the job. Most items without barcodes have a "Price LookUp number" (PLU) associated with them so cashiers can memorize one number for an item instead of having to learn a new set of prices every day. Unfortunately, there are still hundreds of numbers to recall. I wrote a small, web-based quiz in xml and php to help me memorize these.

Experience with applications: I have experience with many applications on UNIX, Macintosh, and Windows platforms. It is best to ask me if you have any questions of my experience with a particular piece of software, but some that I am particularly fond of include:

• Alias, the 3D modeler and computer animation program for the Silicon Graphics platform.
• The GIMP, a raster drawing and photo retouching program for *nix.
• Photoshop, the raster drawing and photo retouching utility for Macintosh and Windows.
• Pagemaker, the other layout program. I would've learned Quark, but UCSC didn't have it. :-(
• Director, the computer animation program from Macromedia. I can do Lingo scripting, but I am a bit put off by Macromedia. Their continual updating of plugins and unavailability of plugins for operating systems other than windows keeps me from using it often for cross-platform development.
• cvs, a revision control system, helps manage collections of files that are being edited by multiple people. By keeping a history of every change made, cvs allows a person to back out changes or more easily integrate their work when it conflicts with what someone else working on the same project is doing. On a project of any significant size, I can't live without it.
• vim: It doesn't seem like much next to these other, high-profile applications but somethings, such as HTML coding and computer programming, are still done best with one of those common beasties, a text editor.

Programming skills: Extensive use of C, Perl, php, Bourne shell scripts, SQL, Pascal, and long outdated Apple BASIC. More limited experience with C++ and Java; I haven't had a chance to use these for real-world applications yet.

My main focus of late has been writing open source software (Please see OpenSource.org or The Free Software Foundation's home pages if you need a quick overview of what open source software is) for Unix-like operating systems. As part of this, I've submitted bug fixes and feature enhancements to rpm, the Redhat Package Manager; GNU libtool; and taken over development of the giflib library for reading and writing gif images. As part of the latter effort, I've been fixing bugs, adding such features as uncompressed gif writing, implementing a new autoconf/libtool build system for portability, setting up mailing lists, and making the development sources available via an anonymous cvs server -- an all-around education into what goes into a real-world software project.

I have also been using php, a server-side scripting language, to create dynamic web pages. In addition to the completed works that are accessed through my home page I have also been learning to use php as a front end to relational databases.

Background in computers: I have been using computers for fourteen years. My experience as an administrator covers Linux, NetBSD, and SunOS while my user experience also includes Irix, Solaris, MacOS, Dos, and Windows(3.11-XP). At this point in my life I am most comfortable doing work on unix-like operating systems but I'm continuously surprised by how many questions I can answer for Windows and Macintosh using friends just by knowing the way software usually works

Hiking:
From March to October of 1999 I hiked the entire 2160.2 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. In addition to all the usual patter about the experience connecting me to the beauty of nature, making me physically fit, and giving me time to think about where I want my life to go, the Trail has redefined my sense of self. Walking twenty miles of mountainous terrain every day carrying a fifty pound backpack, surviving droughts and snowstorms, and finally finishing after seven months of watching other people lose interest and drop out has given me confidence in my ability to press on to attain worthwhile goals.

In 2000, I hiked the Trail again as part of a van supported group led by Warren Doyle. It was a different experience in which I found myself helping others to make the journey by sharing my knowledge, carrying some of their weight, cooking dinner for slower members, and making sure everyone made it safely through some of the more rugged sections of the White Mountains and Maine.

Writing:
I am interested in writing and other methods of communication as both an academic study and as a practical application. I have been known to write poetry, short stories, computer documentation and tutorials, and essays for my enjoyment. Research papers are a whole 'nother matter, though.

Linux:
Linux is a free operating system available over the Internet or for a small fee from various commercial enterprises. I seem to spend most of my waking hours interacting with this remarkable piece of software in some manner. One of the joys of using Linux is that typically both the software and the information to use it effectively are freely available on the internet -- so it is easy to acquire a knowledge of many programs simply by installing some software at home and exploring the different ways that it may be run.

Brian Buhrow was my supervisor in Communications and Technology Services (CATS) at UC Santa Cruz. He proposed the projects that I was to work on and helped me troubleshoot any problems I ran into. buhrow@cats.ucsc.edu

Marti Atkinson Professor at UCSC teaching online publishing. While under her instruction, I learned to pool my talents with others working on large web publishing projects. marti@cse.ucsc.edu.

Other references available upon request.

I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction to my employable potential. I tried to make the information here both interesting and accurate. If you found it so then we should work well together. Why don't you type me up a short email telling me I've been preselected for the perfect job so come on down and we'll sign you on?

Latest versions of this document available at: http://prtr-13.ucsc.edu/~badger/resume/resume.shtml.