This is my personal blog, meant mostly for me to journal my life, and secondarily for anyone else who might glean something useful from my experiences. I know I’ve learned a ton from other people’s blogs whose interests intersected with mine, so this will be a way to give back to the community.
I was born in 1963, which makes me middle aged; going along with that is graying hair and 50 extra pounds. Most of my career has been first as a geek (software development) then as a management geek (VP of Engineering, Chief Technology Officer). I’m now co-owner of a management consulting company.
My interests, which will form the bulk of this blog, are:
Music
Visual arts
Martial arts
Music — I was sort of a music major in college (self-designed degree in “Music, Music Technology, and the Business of Music”). I went to the University of Michigan and studied with Jane Heirich, as well as Judith Becker (Gamelan), William Malm (ethnomusicology) and William Bolcom (composition). Although I played a lot of guitar (blues, jazz, fusion) my main squeeze is composition. I’m heavily influenced by my gamelan and ethnomusicology studies, with a style that tends to minimalism, odd time signatures, polymetricicism, synthetic scales, and quartal harmony.
Visual arts — Three separate areas that have an odd convergence: fractals, nature photography, and wallpaper videos. I got into fractals back in 1989 with fractint. This changed the way I look at the world. I’m back into it now with UltraFractal and Apophysis. Nature has a ton of fractal-like structures, and my photography tends to lean heavily to patterns. Finally, I want to produce videos with slowly changing images and my music as background — maybe appropriate for a VJ in a chillout room, and I’m sure there are at least 5 other people on the planet that might like them.
Martial arts — I’m getting close to a black belt in Tae Kwon Do (six years! — I’ve got a tough master…) and am middling good at Hapkido. I’ve now become a business partner with my teacher to help him expand his school.
Technology for me is an irritating means to an end, not something of interest in and of itself. Thus, a lot of this blog will be details of how I wrangled the technology to do what I wanted and this is likely to be the areas of greatest interest for outside readers.
