Hi, I'm Jashank!
I'm a programmer, full time student and part-time sysadmin. I dabble in typesetting, font design, vector and 3D graphics, occasionally doing print and graphic design. I also encourage the use of free and open source software.
Programmer/Sysadmin
I’ve spent most of my life around computers — I first started using computers when I was about 8 months old — and I spend my days as a sysadmin. I use Mac OS X (10.7.memory-leaks-galore) and FreeBSD primarily (from 4.5 onwards), but I’ve also used OpenBSD (2.9 and 4.3), NetBSD (1.6), DragonFly BSD (1.0), Sun/Oracle Solaris (10 and 11), Fedora Linux (from 7 onwards), AmigaDOS and, sadly, Windows.
I program, too, in a wide variety of languages. Perl, Java, Zsh, Lisp and Ruby are my most used and comfortable programming languages, but I have a working knowledge of, in no particular order, C, C++, Objective C, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Scheme, XQuery, SQL93 (MySQL and SQLite), PHP 5, TeX/LaTeX, troff, XSLT, XSL-FO, and DocBook XML.
Designer
Graphic design and typography has long been one of my major hobbies. I have been focussed on typography since 2006 when I first started working with LyX, and my interest in graphic design grew from there.
I’m a competent TeX (yes, plain TeX) and proficient LaTeX user. I’ve had experience with Adobe’s graphics and page design tools — notably InDesign and Illustrator — as well as free solutions like Scribus and Inkscape. I’ve also used, in the past, troff and XSL-FO, but I’m much less proficient with them.
Human
I enjoy Doctor Who, Castle, Firefly, Bones, Chuck, Fringe and The IT Crowd. I read prolifically, notably Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and far too much science fiction (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury, Niven, Van Vogt, etc.) to be healthy.
When I’m not at my workstation, I also experiment with photography, cooking, writing (usually science fiction) and music production (usually hopeless). I’m also an amateur stage and voice actor as well as a production technician and stage manager.