Edgar D'Souza - Virtual Assistant
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Edgar D'Souza - Virtual Assistant

Goa
in India

Edgar D'Souza

Member Since: October 2008

Short Description:

Experienced technical editor/writer, software domain, U.S. English.
Knowledge/experience with Visual Basic 6, ASP, PHP, Python programming, SQL; system administration (Windows, Linux).

Long Description:

I've been doing technical writing and editing part-time from 2004 to Jan 2006, and full-time after that. Before getting into technical writing, I've done system administration (Linux servers, Windows clients). Before that, I've also been a programmer full-time for several years, using different technologies. I've also used these skills at my TW job, for automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, and for administering our little LAN with a Linux gateway/firewall/DNS/caching proxy/nameserver. I've mentored a small team of people, besides assisting them with work-related technical problems.

Along the way, I've acquired knowledge and experience in the following:

• DITA (beginner level, but have done sample projects and done an evaluation of editors, finally setting on XMetal, as well as have poked around the DITA Open Toolkit for processing)
  
• MS Office 2000 and 2003 (in particular, Word) including VBA macros and automation from VB6
  
• Adobe FrameMaker 5.5, 6.0, 7.1 (unstructured only)
  
• RoboHelp X5, DocToHelp, and Help and Manual - though my use of these products has largely been limited to solving problems encountered by the writers that were using them on projects
  
• Visual Basic (started with version 3, and stayed with it all the way up to 6 - but didn't make the move to .NET). I worked with GUI design, n-tier application structuring/development, DCOM/Remote Automation, OLE Automation, and Win32 API calls.
  
• Active Server Pages 3.0 (VBScript) and PHP 4.x (for database-centric apps for intranet use, not websites on the WWW). Naturally, this also means I acquired more than a passing familiarity with HTML 3.2 and 4.0, JavaScript, and even a smattering of CSS.
  
• Python 2.4 and 2.5 (haven't yet made the move to 2.6 in preparation for Python3K). I've used Python at work to automate image path fixes in FrameMaker MIF files, to do similar fixes to DITA topics (set height and width attributes) and more. In my spare time, I've even cobbled together a small Python plugin for the GIMP, which applies a tear-off jagged-edge effect to the image - something that tech writers use frequently, but was missing in the GIMP. I plan to code a couple more such plugins, time permitting, and release those as open-source software too.
  
• MS Access, MS SQL Server 6.5/7.0/2000, PostgreSQL 7.x and MySQL 3.x, 4.x and 5.x databases - including T-SQL and plpgsql stored procedures/functions, views, indexing, and query optimization.
  
• RedHat Linux 8 and 9; Mandriva 10.x, 2006 and 2007; Fedora 9; Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04 (for desktop installations). In fact, I use Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop; for the few times I need Windows, I use VMware Player to fire up a Windows VM.
  

Services and Skills offered by this Virtual Assistant

Secretarial/Administration

• Editor
• Proof Reading
• Word Processing

Computing

• Computer Programming
• Database Design
• Internet Consultancy
• Office Automation
• Software Testing

Specialist

• Technical Writing

Contact Details

Name:
Edgar D'Souza