About Justine Smithies

Who is this nerd?

I’m Justine I’m a marine electronics engineer to trade which basically means I install / repair anything on fishing / oil vessels from satellite internet and sat TV to autopilots, radars, VHFs and navigational equipment.

I’ve been a Linux user since around 2000. Redhat was my first ever distribution followed by Mandrake, I then progressed to the dev team on the distro LRs Linux that basically compiled from scratch according to the users hardware and was LFS based. An old copy of what’s left of the original website can be found using Wayback Machine here.

I’m now an avid Void Linux user who previously daily drove Arch Linux for years.

Other hobbies include retro 8 bit computers of which I’ve owned a fair few. Among them were an Apple II Europlus, ZX80 and 81, Sinclair Spectrum 48 and 128 +3, Acorn Electron, TRS80 CoCo, Amstrad CPC464 and 6128. I’ve also had the ZX Evolution a Russian made Sinclair Spectrum clone with added modern peripherals. I’m also hoping to build an RC2014 Z80 based computer or build my own from scratch too.

I love good food and wines too, especially when I get time to cook myself. I’m quite varied in tastes food wise as I like pretty much anything but I’d have to say food from the Mediteranean region is my all time favourite. Although I’m open to people opening my eyes to dishes I’ve never tried before too.