Daniel F. Dickinson1 (he/they) has been using and exploring computer and electronic technologies for over three decades2 while continuing to learn and update his skills. (See Daniel F. Dickinson’s resume). This has included maintaining the Node.js package perfectionist-dfd on NPM and ensuring proficiency with modern Windows as well as various flavours of Linux (for desktop, server, and embedded systems).
Daniel is currently working as the IT Manager / Integration Analyst for Ambient Activity and cross-skilling on Microsoft’s Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, etc). Daniel will eventually be taking exams for related Microsoft certifications, and has achieved CompTIA A+ · ce certification. These certifications are in addition to 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 proprietary3 projects. He has also has many of his own repositories on GitHub under the username danielfdickinson as well as on Gitlab, also with the username danielfdickinson.
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 volunteers 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 occasionally volunteers at the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre for special events where he greets and processes admissions for guests. He hopes to be a Trail Ambassador at the Wye Marsh, but so far has had too many other commitments to do so. He believes it would be good for him, enjoyable, and be service to the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre and its guests.
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, and a character in a TV series. ↩︎
Daniel’s interest in tech began in grade school with the Commodore 64 (for which he wrote a hidden TSR4 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. ↩︎
Since the proprietary projects are not owned by Daniel, he can’t show them to you. ↩︎
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. ↩︎