From The Weblog: Kindle Books
I ordered the Amazon Kindle at the end of February and had the device by the first of March. In that time, I've read the following books:
The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad (Michael Cusumano)
Death Masks (The Dresden Files, Book 5) (Jim Butcher)
Eric Sink on the Business of Software (Eric Sink)
Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur (Pamela Slim)
Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2) (Jim Butcher)
Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, Book 3) (Jim Butcher)
iPhone SDK Development (Adamson & Dudney)
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Dan Ariely)
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (Bo Burlingham)
Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, Book 4) (Jim Butcher)
Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid (Denis Leary)
If we use March 1 as the Kindle start date, roughly fourteen weeks have elapsed since I acquired it. In that time, I've read eleven books, averaging 78% of a book read per week.
And this doesn't count the books that I've been reading in print or via Audible. If we factored those in, I'm probably averaging over a book a week in total.
Wow.
About Me
I am a software developer and general tinkerer living in the city of Chicago. Currently, I am completing a Masters degree in Media, Technology & Society at Northwestern University. My research project focuses on creating platforms and applications for enabling mainstream context-aware computing. My current project investigates the utility of context-aware functionality in technologies for users with disabilities.
In addition to graduate school, I am also in the process of launching a new software development firm called Audacious Software. My company focuses on creating gestalt applications: programs that can be combined in novel and interesting ways to produce an aggregate system that is greater than the sum of its parts.
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 and conduct research on a variety of esoteric issues concerning H.P. Lovecraft and modern copyright law. In addition to that, I have assembled 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. Currently, I am focusing on completing the Len Wein and Chris Claremont runs of the 1970's and 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 plug-in 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 am growing into a sustainable software development and technology consulting business.
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
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
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