Summary
I started out as a self-taught coder on an Apple II+ in high school, obtained CS degrees from MIT and Johns Hopkins, then professionally wandered through the semiconductor, government/defense, internet, and game industries before setting up shop as Technicat LLC, providing contract development and consulting services while self-publishing apps and games. It’s all in my podcast interview.
Career
Technicat
2002- Las Vegas, Nevada
Currently on the App Store, a licensed Unity reimplementation of the HyperBowl arcade/attraction game, and the Talk Dim Sum food and language app written in Swift. Other self-published apps and games are on itch.io and Steam.
Collaborated on projects for clients, including:
Cinefex iPad Edition, the digital version of the Cinefex visual effects magazine
The iOS app for WordsEye, a text-to-3D natural language graphics generation system, on the App Store for two years
App prototyping and and consulting for Next Digital, working with teams in California, Hong Kong, and Budapest
Prototyping a telemedicine app for a California startup
RC Rally and Emo-Ray vs. the Intergalactic Teddy Bears on Playstation Home by Heavy Water
The Blue Mars virtual world by Avatar Reality built with CryEngine
The Genesys call center management software for Magnasync
An early version of the Elect BILAT training simulation by Realtime Associates built with Unreal
Nendo, a 3D modeling tool by Izware
Darkwatch, a vampire western shooter PS2/Xbox game by High Moon Studios
The Tech Deck: Bare Knuckle Grind skateboarding PC games by Visionscape built with Renderware
Consulting for Crave Entertainment, visiting developers in Boston and San Francisco
Wrote Learn Unity 4 for iOS Game Development, published by Apress.
Hyper Entertainment
2001 Burbank, California
Taking over for the original lead programmer, continued maintenance and development of the HyperBowl arcade and attraction 3D bowling game (now reimplemented and republished by me under license by Absolute Certainty). Optimized rendering, added performance analysis tools, an experimental XML format, updated the data importer to work with newer content creation tools, modified the DirectX renderer to work with newer graphics cards, localized the game for French installations, tweaked the audio code, and added support for arcade machines and new gameplay features.
Neomar
1999 - 2000 San Francisco, California
Technical Lead for the web proxy portion of a WAP gateway supporting Neomar’s wireless browser on Blackberry and Palm devices. Implemented HTTP, transcoding, and SSL support all in Java. Design to release in five months, between the Series A and Series B funding rounds. All I got was this lousy stock certificate.
Interval Logic
1998 — 1999 Redwood City, Califonia
Principal Senior Software Engineer, optimized Interval Logic’s fab automation planning system (Leverage for Planning) using Tcl Pro, then became a team lead responsible for various scheduling system (Leverage for Scheduling) clients, implemented with Visual Basic, Java Swing and XML.
Digital Chameleon
1997 — 1998 Los Angeles, California
Vice President of Technology at a three-person startup developing 3D computer graphics tools using Java and OpenGL on Silicon Graphics workstations and Windows PCs.
Nichimen Graphics
1995 — 1997 Los Angeles, California
Ported the 3D content creation software NWorld (later Mirai) from IrisGL to OpenGL on Silicon Graphics workstations, then promoted to Manager of Core Software and led a team porting NWorld onto Windows NT. Responsible for “core” libraries of the system, including OpenGL, audio, licensing, user interface, video.
BBN Technologies
1994 — 1995 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Principal coder on the ARGUS data management system using Common Lisp and the Common Lisp Interface Manager and helped maintain the PRISM acoustical analysis software. Started using this new thing called HTML and the World Wide Web for project documentation.
Science Applications International Corporation
1993 — 1994 Columbia, Maryland
Implemented and integrated the networking code for Distributed Integrated Simulation at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, connecting rule-based and manually operated submarine simulations to, essentially, networked video games. Received several letters of commendation from SAIC and APL management.
Space Telescope Science Institute
1990 - 1992 Baltimore, Maryland
Proposal preparation software for the Hubble Space Telescope, used by astronomers to submit requests for HST usage. Created an Emacs mode for editing proposals, popular enough that one person in the proposal support group requested continued support of the product after I left (but was denied). Got this cool poster, flown on the repair mission!
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1989-1990 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Developed simulators and sample applications for content-addressable memory, the Database Accelerator and Content Addressable Parallel Processor, at the Microsystems Technology Laboratory, running on Macintoshes and Unix workstations.
Texas Instruments
1988 — 1989 Dallas, Texas
Worked on DROID, a VLSI CAD synthesis tool running on TI Explorer Lisp Machines. Implemented technology libraries and optimized the automated routing system.
Education
The Johns Hopkins University
M.S. Computer Science 1993 Baltimore, Maryland
Teaching assistant for Computer Literacy 101.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
S.B. Computer Science and Engineering 1988 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thesis: Exploiting Parallelisism in Game-Playing Programs. Implemented a Multilisp reversi program on Concert, a 33-processor Multilisp machine.
Concentration in Political Philosophy.
Research assistant in the MIT AI Lab, developing machine vision and natural language displays on Symbolics Lisp machines. Tech support for the campus microcomputer store and a Mac lab. Word processor (typist). Wrote technical press releases for a public relations firm.
West Senior High School
1984 Iowa City, Iowa
Winner of the local soil conservation essay contest.
Drawing from Berkely Breathed when he visited the art class.
The first computers I programmed.
