About Me
I am a software developer and general tinkerer living in the city of Chicago. Currently, I am pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Media, Technology & Society at Northwestern University. My research focuses on creating platforms and applications for enabling mainstream context-aware computing. My current research investigates the utility of context-aware functionality in technologies for users with disabilities.
Prior to enrolling in graduate school, I worked as an academic software developer for several years after graduating from Princeton University with Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science.
In my free time, I manage and contribute to a variety of open-source projects in addition to researching esoteric issues concerning H.P. Lovecraft and modern copyright law. In addition to that, I continue to maintain a comic book collection that contains over one thousand X-Men related titles, including a complete twenty-seven year run of The Uncanny X-Men. Chris Bachalo is probably my all-time favorite artist during that period and my favorite arc is Claremont & Cockrum's Acanti storyline (#161 - #167) from the early 1980's.
Recent Updates
Current Projects
Books: I created Books in 2003 for managing collections of books and other printed materials. The application features an extensive plugin architecture and is highly regarded by its users.
Pennyworth: Pennyworth is the central component of my context-awareness research. Pennyworth provides a platform for building adaptive applications by providing a rich set of sensors and machine learning that users train to recognize their activity, location, and social context. I record more general context-aware musings at the Context Blog.
Audacious Software: Audacious Software is commercial venture that I hope to someday grow into a sustainable software product development and consulting business. Until that time, I develop a variety of applications under that banner in order to build my profile within the relevant communities.
H.P. Lovecraft Copyright Research: This is a project that began when I started to investigate the copyright status of Lovecraft's fiction. Since then, it's grown into a larger project researching the history of Lovecraft's colleagues and successors.
Publications & Other Work
July 2005. Free software and digital rights management: Bitter enemies or strange bedfellows? Free Software Magazine, No. 6. Tortola, British Virgin Islands: The Open Company Partners, Inc. Republished in Satish, D. (ed.). Digital Rights Management: An Introduction. Hyderabad, India: The Icfai University Press. 2007. pp. 26-34.
Apr. 2005. Promoting free software on non-free platforms: Why developing free software for proprietary platforms benefits the free software community. Free Software Magazine, No. 3. Tortola, British Virgin Islands: The Open Company Partners, Inc.
Mar. 2005. Poking at iTunes: A developer's guide to the iTunes platform. Free Software Magazine, No. 2. Tortola, British Virgin Islands: The Open Company Partners, Inc.
Feb. 2005. MacOS X: Welcome to the jungle. Free Software Magazine, No. 1. Tortola, British Virgin Islands: The Open Company Partners, Inc.
Retired Projects
Chicagoist: For two years, I worked the interview beat for Chicagoist, a local weblog. During my time, I had the good fortune to chat with a variety of interesting local folk, including Peter Sagal and Mr. T.
Oyez: I was a technical advisor and developer on the Oyez Project, an online multimedia archive of the Supreme Court. During that time, I worked with Jerry Goldman to put these resources online in open and accessible formats.
The House Theatre of Chicago: For several years, I worked with the House to bolster their online presence using weblogs, podcasts, and other online media.
Diversions
World of Warcraft: Adenadar, Cutiepi
Online Services: Facebook, del.icio.us, Flickr, LibraryThing, Comic Book DB
Television: Supernatural, Stargate, X-Files, Frasier, How I Met Your Mother
Film: Guillermo del Toro, Darren Aronofsky, Danny Boyle, Robert Downey Jr.
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