About Me
I enjoy thinking about interfaces, web applications, and how people use technology. I feel that science and technology are being attenuated by their own complexities and work is needed to bridge different disciplines. Thus the design and engineering of projects interests me greatly, as well as other meta-level thoughts on what makes systems tick.
Some things I dabble in: multi-agent systems; robotics and embedded programming; financial markets and trading systems; interactive art; and shareware development.
Finance
In 2007-2008 I worked as a quant/analyst for an energy commodities hedge fund. I have many thoughts on the market, but generally subscribe to the hypothesis of weak-form efficiency. I strongly feel that beating the market requires predicting market psychology, and that those seeking excess returns should start by understanding their own cognitive biases.
I’ve programmed automated trading systems in the commodity futures market, the forex market, and the Intrade prediction markets. In the Summer of 2008 I worked briefly as a market maker for Intrade, offering quotes on the daily Dow Jones Index binary contracts.
Web Development
I’ve been building sites for almost thirteen years now, but these days I really find myself doing a lot of work on the web: marking-up pages, designing interfaces, programming web crawlers, wasting time on Hacker News, etc.
Perl had been my language of choice for web applications until 2004, when Ruby on Rails took the stage. I haven’t looked back since. This blog is one of the several Rails apps that I’ve built. Some of my favorite tools are Heroku, TextMate, Haml/Sass, nested-layouts, and Lance Ivy’s presenting. A taste of my open source contributions can be found on my GitHub profile.
Please contact me if you have questions, comments, or ideas on the next killer app.
Sailing
In March 2009, after reading The Dystopians and a Slashdot story on cargo sailing, I became interested in wind technology. The notion that simple sails or kites may present itself a disruptive technology for waterborne freight intrigues me.
While reading about cargo sails it occurred to me that I didn’t understand even the basic principles of sailing, and so I began research that soon led to the purchase of a 16ft beach cat called the Mystere 5.0XL. Here are some pictures. Despite my best googling, I’ve found very little information about this boat. Please let me know if you have any information on tuning, parts, or repairs.
Apart from my beach cat, I’ve also sailed on a Sunfish, a J-80, and a Bavaria 46. If you have a boat near Houston and need crew for whatever reason, I’d love to help.