(April 2025) It’s about time to reorder this – back in May 2023, my career as a full-time programmer came to an end when I was laid off from ZipRecruiter after 4 years there, so this bio now reflects what’s important to me now.
Photography
I am a strong believer in “the best camera is the one that’s with you”, so I’ve been working over the past couple years to really learn to use my iPhone as my primary camera. I find the quirkiness of the sensor response interesting, especially in low-light situations. I’ve been using the built-in Camera app for most of my shooting, but I’m considering upgrading to Halide to get more control. I like the option to shoot whenever I like, since I’m always carrying my phone.
I prefer landscape and macro work, though candids are fun; I just do less of those, mostly because it doesn’t feel polite to take pictures of strangers without their permission.
I’ve stopped posting on Instagram; there’s just too much noise there to make it worth trying. I do sometimes post on my Facebook page (I’m old, so that’s where my friends are), and occasionally on Bluesky and Mastodon. Most of my social networking is on Reddit nowadays, and I just don’t feel like posting photos there for whatever reason.
Music
The interview I did with Marc Weidenbaum is probably the best way to understand my musical personality. I f you don’t want to read that, here’s a capsule summary.
I write, record and perform music deriving from many forms – jazz, “classical” electronic music, ambient music, and Indonesian gamelan, with influences from a wide variety of artists: Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Wendy Carlos, Pat Metheny, Brian Eno, John Cage – lyrical pieces with unique timbres and harmonies, and quirky approaches that are serious but that don’t take themselves seriously.
My esthetic could be best summarized as “exploring the fractal edge of planning and coincidence”. I like to assemble a situation in which I’ve got the basic outline of things under control, but then either improvise inside them, or allow the situation to unfold on its own, letting the uncontrolled and unplanned portions inspire and surprise me. Also, “what happens if I turn this all the way up?”.
After the demise of the old Earth Mantra archive on archive.org, I moved all my releases from there and my more recent music over to Bandcamp.
Programming/system administration
I have a long history – 44 years – as a programmer (see my Programming page for a more detailed overview). Last position was as a senior software engineer at ZipRecruiter, laid off in RIF 3.0 on May 31,2023, despite the tech blog post on the Zip Engineering Blog just a few months earlier.
As of now, I’m still programming and helping keep things running at RadioSpiral, but it’s for things that matter to me personally.
- An automated Tor login blocker
- A script to turn an iTunes/Music playlist into CSV
- The RadioSpiral iOS streaming audio app
- Our station’s now-playing Discord bot
I’m keeping my hand in, working on a few projects that are currently of personal interest that aren’t fully baked yet.