About Me

My first trip I had which presented a real cultural challenge was in 1999. A bunch of us from Microsoft Research Graphics went to Beijing to teach a week long graphics course when MSR Beijing was having its coming out party. My advisor and boss, Michael Cohen, was busy, so as a newly minted Ph.D. I went as the resident animation expert. It was no small opportunity; this was during the final years of the internet boom. We flew business class, were wined and dined, had side trips to Xian and Hong Kong, and were basically treated like royalty. It was on this trip that Andrew Glassner and I hung out alot and he was transformed in my mind from nice but scary famous graphics god to good friend. He said one of the nicest things that was ever said to me: "you have a sense of ironic detachment".

More than any one small sentence, that probably sums up the essence of my character. I tend to see things in an odd light and often poke fun at convention. In general, I'm not cruel or nasty about how I see things. I just see them differently. I'm detached from the problem and fairly unrespectful (as opposed to disrespectful) of convention on a whole host of issues. I know ultimately that I'm not really detached from things, that I'm in the meat grinder as much as the rest of us, but I take as a working assumption that I live in a slightly different reality, what a few of my friends used to refer to as "Chuckworld". One nice thing about my missives from Chuckworld is that while they can be angry rants against the way things are, they are more often amused ironic twists on the way things are with a dark edge to make them nontrivial. :-)

I don't take belief seriously. The idiotic and purile nonsense that folks profess to believe I find frankly astonishing. Bible literalists believe all sorts of silly wonky stuff despite all kinds of good evidence. Earth firsters would have us all kill ourselves for the good of the fluffy bunny rabbits and would have the bunny rabits put down were they to develop real culture. I must conclude that the end times are fun. Why else would folks yearn for them? Progressives would have us believe that you cannot make cultural judgements-- tell that to the gay folk in Iran or the untouchables in India. Libertarians would have us living in armed camps-- privately funded of course. If I've learned one thing over the years it is that believing things deeply is a sure way to believe stupid things.

I take belief very seriously. It's clear to me that most of the stuff folks believe is tripe. I'm not wired to believe these things, but it's obvious that many if not most people are. I take belief very seriously and by that I mean I take very seriously the mechanism of belief and the manner in which crafty folk will use the belief of others to create of them tools. The credulity of mankind is proably important-- otherwise it probably would not have survived intact-- but it sure scares me. I could rail endlessly against this or I could slip between the cracks of belief. Humor is better than terror and helps with the getting to sleep at night bit. Hence, ironic detachment.

Ok, so that's my best available roadmap for you right now. Or at least the one I'm willing to put here, so what about the more surface area stuff....

I have three great loves and a bunch of smaller loves.

My first love, which is occasionally a master, is my obsessions. For most of my life, my obsession has been writing software. I would probably do it if there was a poet's sallary attached, but thankfully people like to pay good money for me to write software. I discovered programming when I was 13 and it replaced my former obsession pretty much overnight. If you're curious, I was really into drawing big maps of fantasy cities and once drew one that covered an entire wall of a classroom for a class project. My cities were really martial. At the time, I didn't realize how martial they were. How many outposts of the magic malitia does one town need? I'd draw kindler, gentler cities now. Or at least cities where the rulers wouldn't have quite the same immediate leverage over their citizens. Back to programming....

I found over the years that I'm pretty good at it and have found that there are few aspects of software that I don't enjoy, but I'm most comfortable when the software I write has something to do with graphics or language. Currently I work on a compiler for an image processing language for hybrid GPU/CPU execution at Adobe. Graphics + language.

Paired with a work obsession, I typically have an artistic obsession. I used to illustrate, but these days I've been giving the hands a rest and have been working on becoming a better photographer. Please see my "photography" page.

My second great love is my network of friends. I spend alot of time with them. <long pause> It's odd, but I'm having trouble writing something about friendship here. We're probably not a particularly out of the ordinary group of folks. We hang out, we sometimes drink too much, we travel around the world together, etc. The oddest thing I suppose is that only a few of us have kids. But is it really odd for folks without kids to spend more time together than typical? I suppose something like the anthropic prinicple must apply here.

My last great love is travel, something I do by myself and also in the company of friends. Please click on the "travel" link at the top of this page too see more about where I've been.

My smaller loves, like film, diving, cycling and reading, flesh out my life. Oh yeah, I love campy British TV like Dr. Who, The Prisoner, Avengers, and Blake's 7.