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Daniel F. Dickinson

Realizing a passion for life and tech for the common good

A smiling grey-bearded man wearing glasses and a black shirt with a backdrop fo a corner of a darkened room and doors with light from a casement window shining through space between those doors.

A cleanshaven middle-aged man wearing glasses and a dark green sweater

Daniel F. Dickinson1 (he/them) has been using and exploring computer and electronic technologies for over four decades2 while continuing to learn and update his skills. (see Daniel F. Dickinson’s resume). This has included obtaining his CompTIA A+ • ce Certification and cross-skilling on Microsoft’s Power Platform almost two years ago3, re-learning Yocto (Linux) and other embedded Linux options, maintaining websites4 built using Hugo, getting up to speed with current OpenWrt and contributing to the OpenWrt packages feed, and working as the IT Manager / Integration Analyst at Ambient Activity. Daniel also maintained the Node.js package perfectionist-dfd on NPM, and ensures his proficiency with modern Windows as well as various flavours of Linux (for desktop, server, and embedded systems).

This is all layered on top of Daniel’s Bachelor of Computing from the University of Guelph.

Computer code Daniel has written and other technical work is present in various open source and proprietary5 projects. He has also has many of his own repositories on GitHub under the username danielfdickinson, on GitLab, also with the username danielfdickinson, and on his self-hosted Forgejo instance.

Daniel also enjoys sharing his knowledge with others. This included being a critical member of a team of volunteers that created and implemented a successful robotics programme for kids 8-12 (eight to twelve) called Bots and Bytes (offsite PDF) at the Midland Public Library. In the same vein, Daniel has volunteered with the Gateway Centre for Learning in Midland, Ontario. Daniel has also been serving as a board member for the Midland Public Library since appointed for this term of (Town of Midland) council.

On a completely different note, Daniel has occasionally volunteered at the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre for special events where he has greeted and processed admissions for guests. He recently purchased a membership and hopes to spend more time there both as a member and as a volunteer.

  1. Daniel uses his middle initial online because there are a surprising number of people named Daniel Dickinson to be found in online searches, including a historical figure, a character in a TV series, and a pro baseball player ↩︎

  2. Daniel’s interest in tech began in grade school with the Commodore 64 (for which he wrote a hidden TSR6 early in his high school career, not realizing the implications of what he was doing). This interest carried onto PC’s with DOS, then Windows 3.1, and continues with the current generation of desktop, mobile, and embedded (smart) devices and covers multiple operating systems. ↩︎

  3. Daniel has decided not to renew his CompTIA A+ • ce Certification as his futures goals are more development oriented and less of IT department work. ↩︎

  4. Currently only this one, but there have been more. ↩︎

  5. Since the proprietary projects are not owned by Daniel, he can’t show them to you. ↩︎

  6. People will tell you that this is technically impossible. If you have the right documentation (Daniel had the Jim Butterfield books), use the chainable hook (wedge) for the keyboard, and (prevented on modern operating systems and hardware) use self-modifying and self-relocating code (and you don’t know or believe that it’s impossible) you can make magic happen. Of course the technique ends up meaning you have to use special tricks if you cannot avoid using the kernel routines (because part of the secret was that Daniel had to swap out the kernel ROM to access the RAM underneath). Daniel thinks there is even a printout of the code in a relative’s stack of boxes in the house where Daniel lives. ↩︎