From The Weblog: GOP Primary Day 2012
I did my civic duty today and cast my ballot in 2012’s primary election. Like the last go-around, I went with a Republican ballot, mainly because the presidential race is the one that I’ve been following and that’s about the only race where I feel sufficiently educated to vote. I reviewed and printed out the Chicago Tribune’s endorsements for the rest of the races.
When I got to my polling place, I asked the poll workers how turnout had been. I arrived at around 12:30pm and was informed that I was the 26th (!) voter there that day. The poll workers declined to share any specific information about the relative turnout by party, but I was told that the precinct was (unsurprisingly) a largely Democratic area.
About Me
July 2009. I am a software developer and small business owner in Chicago. I founded Audacious Software in late 2008, and I continue to operate the business by creating new software products and providing general IT consulting services.
Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, I worked as a software developer for Northwestern University's Academic Technologies (2002-2006). After leaving Academic Technologies, I completed a master's degree in Media, Technology & Society at Northwestern University's School of Communication (2006-2009). While completing that degree, I was a member of the Collabolab, where I designed and implemented context-aware software and assistive technologies.
Prior to my employment (and later education at Northwestern), I received a bachelor of arts degree in computer science at Princeton University (1998-2002). My senior thesis research produced a decentralized system for storing, sharing, and aggregating geographic data (not unlike Google Earth).
When I am not busy writing software, I enjoy practicing piano, reading books, and expanding my collection of X-Men comic books. I've been known to play the occasional video game, and I am a fan of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. I am also an amateur scholar of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I am particularly interested in the history of the ownership and rights to his fiction and mythos.
Recent Updates
Current Projects
Audacious Software: Audacious Software is commercial venture that I am building into a software development and technology consulting business.
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.
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 endeavor 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. Mac OS X: Welcome to the jungle. Free Software Magazine, No. 1. Tortola, British Virgin Islands: The Open Company Partners, Inc.
Retired Projects
Books: I created Books in 2003 for managing collections of books and other printed materials. The application featured an extensive plug-in architecture and was highly regarded by its users.
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.
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
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