self portrait of me at home (2008-07-28)
Hello everyone!
My name is Pedro, I was born in Portugal some years ago and I am living in Oxford, United Kingdom. I am an information security consultant.
I have a professional and personal interest in computer architectures, information security, UNIX-like operating systems and opensource software. I'm also a graduated Engineer and very curious in the fields of mechanics, aerodynamics, electronics, architecture and other engineering areas. A fine example of a geek.
- Name
- Pedro Lourenço Venda
- Age
- 29 (according to php calculations)
- Country of birth
- Portugal
- Residence
- Oxford, United Kingdom
- Academics
- I am an Electrotechnical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico which belongs to the Technical University of Lisbon (UTL)
Major: Computers
Minor: Electronics
My 1993 Yamaha Virago XV535.
Bought it 28th February 2009.
(2009-03-01)
- Personal Interests - Good ways to spend time
-
- Motorcycles
- In 2009 I bought my first cruiser: A 1993 Yamaha Virago XV535
- Computers
- Hardware
- Large scale, high availability computing. And all the problems that surround it: optimisation, scalability, robustness, redundancy, segmentation/partitioning, information caching, databases, etc.
- Virtualization systems like XEN, UML or vserver...
- System administration and server maintenance
- Security research
- Linux
- Operating system architecture: the kernel (scheduling, locking, device drivers, etc), filesystems, process communication, network programming, ...
- Automotive engineering - sports cars, professional driving
- Aeronautics - Gas turbine technology, aerodynamics, navigation and practical airliner technology (Microsoft Flight Simulator)
- Small time Microsoft Flight Simulator simmer
- Avid fan and user of PMDG aircraft models: 737NG (for FS9), 747-400X (for FSX) and MD-11X (for FSX). I would love to fly them as well as a real pilot, but life tends to get in the way of this kind of thing...
- Rubik's Cube: I'm not a speedcuber... I've just recently discovered the challenge that the world famous puzzle poses, and really enjoyed studying something about it.
- Electronics (DIY)
me at Madeira
-
- Travelling
- Prague - Czech Republic - March / 2009
- Peak District - England - February / 2009
- (a tiny bit of) Wales - February / 2009
- London, Windsor, Bath, Cambridge, Oxford - England - September / 2008
- All around Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - August / 2008
- Las Vegas, NV - USA - August / 2008
- Krakow and Warsaw - Poland - June / 2008
- Winchester, the Cotswolds, Portsmouth and around - England - May / 2008
- Berlin - Germany - March / 2008
- Brighton - England - February 2008
- Paris - France - November / 2007
- Stonehenge and Bath - England - October / 2007
- Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Sorrento and Pompei - Italy - August / 2007
- London and Oxford - England - February / 2007
- Genève - Switzerland - December / 2006
- Madeira - Portugal - September / 2006
- Natal/Pipa, RN - Brazil - April / 2004
- Cinema
- Time with friends, of course
- Music - Old school and more modern heavy metal. Did I mention that I like statistics as well? Take a look at my last.fm profile. There is also a widget on the right side of this page with my Top Artists (from last.fm). Some of my favourite bands (in no particular order, after Iron Maiden):
- Iron Maiden
- Manowar
- Dream Theater / Liquid Tension
- Metallica
- Rammstein
- AC / DC
- Megadeth
- Time with my
girlfriendwife
 me |
 she |
- Professional Interests
-
- Computer/network/information security
- embedded systems and linux
- linux kernel programming
- linux distro management/system administration
- distributed operating systems
| 
