Contact Links
Many of these communication channels are hangovers from my time contributing to free software and open source projects.
Still Active
I check these contact links on a daily basis.
Warning: It's fairly straightforward to spoof e-mail headers, so if you receive an unsolicited message from the trechnex.com domain, that may not necessarily be from me! You should ensure that the e-mail you've received passes DKIM and SPF checks. If it does not, the DMARC policy instructs your email provider to quarantine it as junk/spam.
Legacy Hangovers
I rarely use these contact links, but I still use or check in on them periodically.
- Element/Matrix: @TrechNex on tchncs.de
- Internet Relay Chat (IRC): ~trechnex@user/trechnex on Libera.chat
I've published an OpenPGP key for { bob [at] trechnex [dot] com } but I rarely use it and the Tuta desktop client doesn't support that technology, so please allow some time for me to use the command line on my laptop to decrypt your message and produce an encrypted response before sending me any further PGP encrypted messages.
Work-Adjacent
All opinions are my own, and they are not necessarily shared by Oracle Corporation. Please direct any questions about OpenELA to Oracle's official spokespeople.
I also have accounts on the Out In Tech and LGBTQ in Tech Slack servers.
Career Summary
I graduated with a Computer Science degree in , then spent five years working as a software engineer for multinational corporations. I switched gears in , and have since been writing online documentation and interactive tutorials for Oracle Linux and related cloud, virtualization, and enterprise products. My work has also been contributed to OpenELA.
If you recognise my name, it's perhaps from all the Linux Format magazine articles, the "Bob's Tech Site" blog and podcast, or that time when I forked the GNU Image Manipulation Program. (This Mastodon thread confirmed that I'm not bringing Glimpse back, but I'm still proud of what the project was able to achieve under difficult circumstances.)
Fortunately, I have also earned recognition for non-Linux things as well! For example, the Royal Television Society named me their Young Technologist of , and my unpaid volunteer work attracted a Diana Award in .
Social Media
This webpage confirms the authenticity of these public-facing social media accounts:
Previous Social Media
I used Twitter from to . For the final few years I kept deleting and recreating private accounts, and I finally left around the time that Elon Musk tried to back out of buying the company. Given how events later unfolded, I think that was a good call! I also think that the new "X" name is a bit rubbish.
I was one of the first million BlueSky users, and maintained an account until . I liked the developers' early ideas, but they didn't introduce MFA or provide a straightforward way of changing passwords before ending their closed beta in . User-level blocks are also public, every post is public, and there's no mechanism to automatically delete old posts. Given their cavalier attitude to user security, I don't think it's wise for anyone to have a Bluesky account linked to their IRL identity.