Jennifer Vesperman

I'm one of those people the female 'geek stereotype' was based on - you can see people like me in characters like Evelyn from "The Mummy" and Jo from "Twister". Like them, I can be so immersed in what I'm studying that I ignore what's happening around me, in favour of what I'm learning.

My mother constantly tells the story of the time I got locked in the school library because I was so quiet the librarian didn't notice me.

At other times, I multiprocess. As I write this, I'm sending emails to my editor about the second edition of 'Essential CVS', communicating online to friends, and cooking a big batch of soup.

My field of expertise is computing in general, Unix/Linux in specific, and within that I'm more eclectic - I'm one of those computer people who generalises more than specialises.

My secondary field of expertise, and one which is rapidly overtaking my primary field, is translating from 'geek' into a more ordinary English.

My other interests include practical geeking: home repair and furniture making, garden design and development, sewing, cooking, and developing solutions to problems I encounter in my everyday life.

A minor ambition in my life is to develop a better bra. It's a really interesting engineering problem, actually.