EDUCATION
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Graduated B.A. Physics with Honors from
Harvard in June 1987
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Junior year spent at University of California,
Berkeley
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Took Physics 1 at Caltech during senior
year of high school,
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from September 1982 - June 1983
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Graduated from Polytechnic School in Pasadena,
California,
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a top-ranked college preparatory school,
in June 1983
ACADEMIC HONORS
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Cum Laude, Physics Department, Harvard
College 1987
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National Merit Scholar, 1983
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Cum Laude Society, Polytechnic School,
1983
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Telluride Association Summer Program,
Williams College, 1982
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The TASP program attendees are 60 high
school juniors chosen from over 5,000 applicants who themselves must be
in the top 1/2 percent of the high school juniors in the nation.
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Sweepstakes Award, Biology, California
State Science Fair, 1979
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This award was given to the top biology
project from grades 7-12. I was in the 8th grade at the time with an artificial
intelligence
project involving a stochastic genetic algorithm on finite state machines
with the purpose of integer time-sequence pattern recognition
WORK EXPERIENCE
Manager and Lead Software Architect
Ministry of Thought, Los Angeles,
California, January 1996 - Present
My partners and I formed Ministry of Thought for the purpose of developing entertainment software for Internet and CD ROM/DVD markets. I was the team lead on a project we developed for Sony, a 3D multiuser chat world. I recently did most of the digital video editing and production for a
multimedia performance piece, The Swan Tool, by Miranda July, which recently premiered to
critical acclaim at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. For ClickShot, Inc., I have acted as their interim CTO and supervised the development of their Java Minilet technology. I also helped to debug and polish a variety of applets for them. I acted as a senior technical consultant to the new startup, iJapan, Inc., and was the main technical person who put together their development team. For Wilcom (via The Digiratti Companies and
Sylent, Inc.), I was the team lead for a group which designed
and built Java multimedia applications for major league sports fans to
use in a baseball stadium, including a Java-based trivia game (including
3D animation sequences and hundreds of original trivia questions), a baseball
statistics lookup application, and a JDBC-based database access protocol,
all integrated into a three-tier server architecture system. For
Sylent, Inc., I built the main components of a Java-based automated Web
testing suite which did regression and functional tests of Web sites.
The suite includes Java servlet and applet-based tools written in pure
Java, and allows the quality assurance engineer to automatically test and
retest Web pages and forms for correct functioning. This tool was
used to help test a major Web site for Kaiser Permanente, and will be used
with a variety of other clients as well. For USWeb Learning (via
Sylent, Inc.) I wrote most of the material for a full-fledged certification
training course for Web Administrators.
For Twin Sun, Inc., we designed and
implemented a prototype of Club Chat, a multi-user graphical Internet voice
chat and game environment. I was lead programmer, and architected
and built a voice conferencing subsystem which allows an application to
mix multiple compressed voice streams, allowing people to conduct voice
conferences over the Internet (with or without a server reflector).
The subsystem uses any Microsoft ACM codec or the Voxware codecs, and uses
the standard RTP protocol for audio data. I also designed and built
an object-oriented architecture for interprocess communication and distributed
computing. In addition, I designed and implemented a pseudo-multi-threaded
animation architecture.
General Partner
Open Mind, Gardena, California,
July 1989 - Present
In July of 1989 my partners and I started
our own company for advanced software development and research. Our primary
project has been an interactive entertainment product involving sophisticated
artificial intelligence techniques to create realistic human interactions.
Our publisher was initially Walt Disney Computer Software in Burbank, California,
and later we moved the research project to Trilobyte, Inc., where it is
now awaiting completion by them. Also created from scratch an interactive
object-oriented development system complete with a compiler, interpreter,
graphical class browser, instant compilation of interpreted code, and interactive
syntax checking. We use this system, a kind of cross between Smalltalk
and C++, as our primary in-house development tool. Helped to train and
coordinate the work of a team of ten programmers, writers, and artists.
Software Engineer
Electronic Arts, San Mateo, California,
September 1987 - July 1989
Supervisor, Greg Riker, Vice President
of Technology, (now at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington)
I worked with the Compact Disc-Interactive
development group at Electronic Arts on software tools for the development
of advanced interactive entertainment and educational software. In one
year we managed to create software development and multimedia tools for
the CD-I system that were far in advance of the tools available from any
other vendor, though we had far fewer people and not nearly the resources
of our competitors. Unfortunately, hardware delays beyond our control prevented
us from using these tools in production.
Also worked on a prototype of an adventure
game called Thieves' World. This project was put on hiatus due to delays
in getting the script from the writers in finished form, and I left Electronic
Arts to start my own company at that time.
Contract Programmer
Electronic Arts, San Mateo, California,
January 1986 - August 1987
Supervisor, Greg Riker, Head of Technology
(now at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington)
Developed interpreted slideshow program
for the Commodore Amiga computer. A very early version was released in
the form of a utility in the "Deluxe Paint Utility Pack" in 1986. The final
program was never released but included many video special effects. Wrote
some bitmap conversion utilities for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and Amiga,
allowing one to transfer graphic images between these machines, and in
the process became familiar with color reduction and remapping techniques.
Lab Technician
California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, California, June 1984 - September 1984
Reference, Dr. Brad Sturtevant, Head
of Aeronautics Department, Caltech
Worked on low-temperature superfluid
physics experiment, did some simple programming and lab work.
UNIX System Administrator
California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, California, June 1983 - September 1983
Reference, Dr. Brad Sturtevant, Head
of Aeronautics Department, Caltech
Did UNIX system administration for
an old PDP 11 UNIX machine in the Aeronautics Department, including much
systems programming in C, changing a number of UNIX internals to fix a
variety of bugs involving much extended UNIX system programming.
OTHER EXPERIENCE
Languages and Environments
I am very familiar with Windows 95/98
and Windows NT; I am quite comfortable with arcane Unix system commands
and configuration (yes, I've even written sendmail scripts), and I have
some experience with the Macintosh. I am familiar with most major
programming languages, ranging from C++ to Prolog, and I can learn any
new language very quickly. I currently do most of my programming
in my own OOP language described above, a cross between C++ and Smalltalk.
Programming Experience
I've been programming for over twenty
years now, starting with BASIC and programmable calculator in the sixth
grade. I use design patterns, object-oriented software engineering, and iterative technques to improve development speed.
3D Graphics Course
I took a undergraduate/graduate course
in three-dimensional rendering at Harvard University in 1987.
INTERESTS
I am personally interested in philosophy,
cognitive science, meditation, and yoga.
PERSONAL STATEMENT
My primary interest is in multimedia
software, Internet technologies, object-oriented software engineering and
design, design patterns, meta-programming, and artificial intelligence.
I have expertise in a wide variety of technologies, systems, and languages,
including Java, C++, Windows 95 and NT, Unix, and I have some experience
with the Macintosh as well.
I have a particular interest in the
arts, and I find this useful to me in my work, as I enjoy viewing things
from both a design and a technical perspective. I am dedicated to
advancing the state of the art in whatever I work on, utilizing my experience
and knowledge in design and software engineering to
create deep, rich, flexible, reliable, usable, and extensible systems.
EXAMPLES OF WORK
Software design and/or programming:
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