My pages:
Home page
Photo gallery
ThinkPad Archive
OmniBook
Community
Other pages:
MIT/GNU Scheme
Project MAC
CSAIL
MIT
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Let's see with our heart
these things our eyes have seen
and know the truth will still lie
somewhere in between
Grateful Dead
There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
It gives us hope when the whole day's done
The Police
Talking a lot about less and less
And forgetting the love we bring
Grateful Dead
I'm a software engineer at Google working on the
Google Search
Appliance. Prior to April 2008 I was a hacker working
in Project MAC and
the Decentralized Information
Group
at MIT CSAIL.
My primary interest is expression in computer programs: when I write a
program, I want it to say what I mean, as simply and directly as
possible. Many problems can be well expressed at present; I love
finding better ways to express those that can't.
Some things I am doing or have done:
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I used to co-teach
6.945 Large-scale Symbolic Systems (formerly 6.891, Adventures in
Advanced Symbolic Programming) with Gerry Sussman.
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Gerry and I co-developed a new programming language that supports
pervasive meta-data annotation and efficient dependency-directed
backtracking. While the design is done and there's a working
prototype, I've since left MIT and
have stopped working on this.
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I used to work on the TAMI
project, developing technology to help organizations track
data usage and its associated policy compliance, with the long-term
goal of improving both privacy and security through accountability.
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I am a member of the
Debian project,
for which I maintain
some software packages.
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I wrote a short essay on
the role of community in free software.
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I maintain the
MIT/GNU Scheme
system and adapt it to the current needs of our research group. I use
Scheme for nearly all my programming, including signal processing and
VLSI design.
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I used to maintain the archive of the ThinkPad mailing list. I still
use a ThinkPad T60p running Ubuntu 8.10, and previously used a
ThinkPad X31, a ThinkPad 600, and a ThinkPad 755c.
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I did some work on the Intelligent Book project. We taught
Intelligent Tutoring Systems in Spring 2005 and an alternative
Circuits class in Spring 2004.
I like a few outdoor activities: bicycling, hiking, camping, and
skiing.
I'm a
ham radio operator
with call sign K8SH; I was active in
NTS
and was the net manager for 1RN/3 and the
EMRI CW net until early 2008.
My favorite musical groups are
The Grateful Dead
and
Phish; lately I've been
downloading live music from
FurthurNET and
etree.org.
My favorite authors are (in alphabetical order):
I especially like the
Canopus in Argos:
Archives
series by
Doris Lessing,
which has had a profound effect on how I view the world:
I was looking down at the continent, in an idle nonfocussed way,
remembering the other guises and transformations I had seen it in,
when the Canopean Crystal floated down and lay in the air in front of
me. It was in its most usual shape, a cone, and as it hung point down
among the charming clouds of that atmosphere, with the blue of the
atmosphere beyond, it was most attractive, and I was admiring it when
it moved off, slowly, and I followed. I did not understand this
lesson, which I assumed it was, but only watched, and enjoyed --- as
always --- the aesthetic bonuses of this planet. The Crystal became a
tetrahedron --- the three facets of it I could see reflecting the
landscape of these blue and white skies --- then a globe. A
glistening ball rolled and danced among the clouds. I was laughing
with the pleasure of it, and even clapping my hands and applauding ...
it elongated and became like a drop of liquid at the moment when it
falls from a point. But it was lying horizontally, the thin end in
front of us. This exquisite drop of crystalline glitter was thus
because of the pressures of the atmosphere, it was adjusting itself to
the flow of the jet stream, we were being sped along by the air
rivers, and the Crystal had become a long transparent streak. My
craft was almost in the end of the streak, and for a few moments we
seemed almost to intermingle, and what delicious thoughts sang through
my mind as we saw the rivers and mountains and deserts of the landmass
beneath through what seemed like liquefied light. My guide was
changing again, was showing how it had to change, and flow, and adapt
itself, for all the movements and alterations of the atmosphere we
were submerged in like liquid moulded this Globe, or Rod, or Streak,
or Fringe.... How many shapes it assumed, this enchanting guide of
mine, as we followed the flowing streams of the upper airs of Rohanda
--- how it evolved and adapted and shone! --- but then dulled, so it
seemed as if a lump of dullish lead lay there, sullen in a chilly and
yellow light, but then lost its grey, and took in a sparkle and a
glisten again, and seemed to frolic and to play, and yet again became
serious and stern, with an edge of hardness in it, all the time a
flowing and an answering, and an astonishment, but then, my mind lost
in contemplation of this Crystal that seemed to have become no more
than a visible expression of the air currents, I saw it had stopped,
and had become the shape of a drop that points down. [...]
[...] But still it hovered there, silent, changing its shape at every
moment, demonstrating the possibilities of a fluid communication ...
and then it was lifting up and away, was a great drop of glittering
water from the black depths of space, and it hung there, this
infinitely various and variable and flowing thing, this creation of
the Canopean mind, it spoke to me, it sang to me, it sent messages of
hope, of the eternal renewal of everything, and then it again
elongated itself, and ebbed up and fled back to its station high above
Rohanda, where it was a mote in sunlight, a memory of itself.
Contact info:
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