2025 - What I'm Doing Now1

  • Continued work for IceCube: embedded systems programming and communications testing for the IceCube Upgrade;
  • Fairly regular drawing and painting practice;
  • Playing with Common Lisp once again: working on three Lisp games;
  • Reading various computing books:

    • Marvin Minsky, Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines (fantastic fundamental textbook).
    • Lisp books

      • Siebel, Practical Common Lisp
      • Graham, On Lisp
      • Graham, ANSI Common Lisp
      • Barsky, Land of Lisp
      • Weitz, Common Lisp Recipes
      • Norvig, PAIP

2024 Projects

2023 Projects

Worked on my painting and drawing practice, including a series of self portraits. Worked as an independent software developer for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

2022 - Sabbatical

Prior to September, 2022, I took a five month sabbatical from paid work. Here are some of the things I worked on:

2022 - Prior to Sabbatical

  • Implemented a Lisp in Go, with detours into Crafting Interpreters and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
  • Learned the Go programming language. I've written a few modestly useful things and am really enjoying the experience after years of focusing primarily on Lisps and functional programming. Go emphasizes a different kind of simplicity than Clojure does, and it seems to occupy a sweet spot on the speed vs. power spectrum. I'm regularly impressed by how fast Go programs are, including the program used to build this site.
  • Learned some Mandarin (reading, mostly). I got my vocabulary up to about four hundred words. It's a beautiful language, and a slog to learn, but thanks to technology it is definitely possible!
  • Until late April, 2022 I was a staff software engineer at OppFi, where I wrote software (mostly in Clojure), mentored and taught other engineers, and tried to improve process, code quality, and architecture wherever I could. I spent nearly four years at OppFi, learned a lot, helped a lot of people, and am happy to move onto other things.

Prior Decades

2010-2020

Lived in Chicago. Finished last few South Pole trips. Stopped contracting for IceCube and worked in industry. Invested more heavily in art practice.

2000-2009

Lived in San Francisco Bay Area, then left LBNL at moved to Chicago, working for IceCube. Ran a few marathons and half marathons, went to the Pole several more times.

1990-1999

Graduated, worked at CERN for a year, then spent a few years in art school, then grad school in art and physics at UW-Madison. Finished Ph.D. 1996, then moved to Bay Area. First two trips to the South Pole.


1

For more about Now Pages, see this link.