Portfolio

Updated: 2021-06-09

This page lists some examples of my work.

NXLog User Guide

The NXLog User Guide is a comprehensive document about the NXLog log processor and related software, containing a main user guide portion as well as a Reference Manual, documentation for the NXLog Manager dashboard, and a part about NXLog add-ons. The NXLog User Guide is built using content from multiple Git repositories and contains automatically generated data. Continuous integration (CI) is used for website publishing, bundling documentation with product builds, and validating configuration examples.

I led a team of writers to facilitate the development of new content, improvements to existing content, layout planning, and maintenance of the generation system. I supported and mentored team members, both as a group and individually, through direct messages, team chat, style and training documentation, video meetings, and GitLab reviews. I was responsible for accepting and merging changes to the source and coordinating work with the product development, website, sales, and marketing teams.

Here is a small selection of topics that I wrote:

The official location for the NXLog User Guide is https://nxlog.co/documentation/nxlog-user-guide.

Asciidoctor multipage extension

Asciidoctor is an open source text processor that can be used to generate HTML and other formats from AsciiDoc content. However, Asciidoctor’s HTML output is of limited use for very large documents because Asciidoctor does not currently support any kind of HTML output chunking. Instead, the entire document is generated on a single page.

To address this limitation, I wrote the asciidoctor-multipage extension. It adds support to Asciidoctor for HTML output chunking. This extension provides a variety of features that are particularly useful for very large documents. For more information, see the source repository on GitHub—where there is a detailed README—and the announcement on Asciidoctor issue #626.

For an example of this extension in use, see the NXLog User Guide. For an example of normal Asciidoctor HTML output without the extension, see the Asciidoctor User Manual.

Sound system documentation

I have experience with using and designing sound systems for speech reinforcement, and have written a variety of documents on this topic:

  • I wrote a detailed Sound System User Manual (PDF) to accompany a semi-portable sound system that I designed. This manual was written using LyX, a front-end for LaTeX. More information about the corresponding sound system can be found on the Design 1 page.

  • Later I designed another sound system and wrote three documents for it: an introductory page with general information, a Building Guide, and a User Guide.

  • There is a large in-progress series of articles under Speech Reinforcement about designing professional audio systems for speech applications.

DNS Logging white paper

The Importance of DNS Logging in Enterprise Security is a white paper that provides detailed information about how the Domain Name System works, related security concerns, and DNS audit logging. The white paper includes references to publications by a variety of reputable organizations, such as the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that have researched these new threats.

The official location for this white paper is https://nxlog.co/whitepapers/dns-logging.

Security Auditing white paper

The Security Auditing on Modern Operating Systems white paper gives an overview of six different auditing systems that are natively available on operating systems in common use today. Information is also provided about using NXLog to collect auditing events from these systems.

The official location for this white paper is http://nxlog.co/whitepapers/operating-systems-security-auditing.

Other portfolio items

  • I wrote a Procedures Policy Flowchart (PDF) for collections research agents to use, and maintained it as company policy evolved. This document was written as an accessible flow-chart-style reference for agents who were already familiar with the basic underlying procedures.

  • addbooktool is a syntax specification and application for validating and exporting contact information stored in a proprietary database.