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Software Engineering
I've been working as a professional programmer
since the early 90's.
- My work with the longest-term impact is probably
Subversion,
an extremely popular tool to help programmers
collaborate. (Winner of a 2005 JOLT Award.) I was
a co-designer and co-founder of that project, and
though I'm now retired from it, I managed to
co-author the
main manual for the software; the complete book
is online.
- I joined Google in 2005, ported Subversion to
their scalable Bigtable technology, then helped
launch Project
Hosting on Google Code, which now hosts hundreds
of thousands of open-source projects.
- In slowly going bald, I grew pointy hair at some
point and transitioned into engineering management.
I managed Google Code for a while, and now manage a
team of ~20 engineers on a display advertising
product called
the Google
Affiliate Network.
- People are way harder than computers.
My
buddy Fitz
and I have spent the last 5+ years giving conference
talks on the social challenges of software
development. You can see many of our
talks here
on youtube, or you can wait for our new O'Reilly
book to come out on this subject. ("Programming
Well with Others: A Geek's Guide to Social
Skills")
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Music
I love to play and compose music. I've been
playing piano since age 6, and was trained as a
improvisational fakebook reader. In college I was
obsessed with
organizing barbershop
quartets, and in my 30's I seriously took up
playing bluegrass
banjo. I like to play in a
local jam
session now and then.
I also have a long-standing career as a composer
for Chicago theaters. With my collaborator Andre
Pluess, we've won multiple awards for composition,
sound design, and new musical theater works over the
last 15 years.
Our most successful original musical was probably
Winesburg, Ohio, an adapation of Sherwood
Anderson's novel. It premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre
in Chicago, then played at a new-works festival in
NYC, then at the Arden Theater (Philadelphia) and at
KC Repertory (Kansas City). It won a both a Jeff
Award (Chicago) and an Ovation Award (LA).
We're currently working on the score for a new
musical at Lookinggglass Theatre
called Eastland,
opening in June 2012.
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Photography
Ever since my kids were born, my teenage love of
photography was re-kindled. I started shooting on a
35mm SLR in junior high school, learning to develop
B&W in my basement darkroom. Now that I have a
digital SLR, I've had to learn Adobe products in my
basement instead! My main photographic interest is
portraiture.
If you're just getting into photography and
wondering which camera to buy (or what the controls on
your camera mean), please take a gander at
my Intro to Photography
Page, which is particularly aimed at newbies with
a technical bent.
- I shoot with a Canon 5D mkII, and mainly use
Canon's 24-70 f/2.8L lens. I also sometimes use a
Sigma 85mm f/1.4 lens for portraits.
- There's a saying that the "best camera is the
one you have with you". Smartphone cameras don't
cut it for me, so while I don't always have the SLR
with me, I always keep a small micro-4/3rds camera
in my bag -- an Olympus E-P3 PEN with either an
effective 34mm f/2.8 pancake lens (makes it
coat-pocketable!) or an effective 28-84mm f/3.5-5.6
zoom. The quality isn't as good as an SLR, but it's
significantly better than a point-n-shoot.
- You can read about my photography adventures in
the photography
category on my blog.
- I post a lot of photos
to my
Google Plus account and to
my Flickr
stream.
- I should really put up a portfolio of my
favorites, but haven't found time to do it yet.
A tip: Google Plus seems to be a haven for
photographers networking and discovering each other.
I highly recommend you jump in there and build a huge
'photographer circle'.
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Interactive Fiction
Interactive Fiction is a computer-based
storytelling medium. It started with Infocom games
in the 80's, but has since evolved into something
wondrous over the last 30 years, with an extremely
active indie-developer community.
If you're totally new to this world, read
my Intro to Interactive Fiction
page.
- As a writer, I've co-authored two successful
games:
Rover's
Day Out, which won the big Interactive Fiction
Competition of 2009,
and Hoosegow,
which won the Jay is Games One-Room Escape
competition.
- As a programmer, I've been trying to write a
good Android application to play these games on your
phone or tablet. It's an open-source project called
Twisty,
but we still have a long way to go. You can
download it from Android Market, but it's still
pretty primitive. We'd love volunteers to help us
finish it!
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Amateur Radio
In 2009, I got sucked into the 'maker movement'.
It seems that my generation skipped over electronics
and started right with home computers. So I went a
bit crazy learning how to solder circuits, but then
got bored building blinky lights. I then stumbled
into amateur
radio, and suddenly had a totally new outlet for
electronics hacking! Instead of building random
gadgets, you build equipment that actually lets you
chat over thousands of miles.
You're probably wondering why -- in this age of
internet and smartphones -- one would put up a wire in
the backyard to talk to people over morse code. My
reply is simple: why is fishing such a popular sport,
when we all live next to supermarkets? The point is
to be close to the metal, down in the dirt,
appreciating the basics, making stuff with your own
hands. And the reward is social: you get to talk to
other geeks about it over the airwaves!
I love carrying tiny radio stations (with
erector-set antennas) onto airplanes when I go on
business trips. When I get a free moment, I find a
local hilltop, set up the station on picnic bench, and
start chatting with other hams around the country.
It's like a secret society of geekdom.
You can read about my
latest ham
radio adventures on my blog, and see more info on
my QRZ.com
profile (sort of like Facebook for radio
hams).
I have a strong interest in low-power gadgets
("QRP") it's called. (It's fun to make cross-ocean
contacts using only a 9V battery!) I'm also a member
of the Chicago
FM Club, a local ham club that has a repeater
network spanning the whole Chicago area.
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Roleplaying Games
Yes, D&D, that kind of thing. I don't have much
time for it anymore, but I've run weekly campaigns,
participated in them too. I'm involved in an indie
group -- NASCRAG
-- that writes their own competitive scenarios and
runs them as a tournament at GENCON each year. I also
participate in a yearly weekend game
called Rileycon.
As a rule, I enjoy RPGs on the computer -- but only
if they're social, i.e. I'm actually playing with my
friends (like World of Warcraft). Games where I'm the
only human around (like Elder Scrolls) tend to bore
me. I need the social element.
I'm a board
game geek as well, playing all the geeky board
games you think I would.
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