More Space

Aw, hell, I been to the edge. It just looked like... more space. —Jayne Cobb, Serenity

About Me

I am a web programmer at the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland College Park. I am currently the technical team lead on the STARTALK project. Before that, I also worked on the LangNet project.

I have a Masters degree in philosophy from the University of Southern California. My philosophical interests center around cognitive science. I have undergrad degrees in both lingustics and philosophy from the University of Maryland. Prior to going to USC, I spent a year working as a web programmer for the UMD College of Arts & Humanities.

I play bass guitar, and I own both an acoustic and an electric bass.

I am the official sponsor of the song “Drown” by ilyAIMY (on their album the fifth circle). My musical tastes run the gamut from rock and metal (including death and doom metal) to folk and traditional music (with a healthy side of Irish punk and gothic Americana) to goth, EBM, and trip-hop, as well as some even stranger stuff.

I also do a bit of acting. I was heavily involved with the Rude Mechanicals while in college, and I have also done shows at the Greenbelt Arts Center and Laurel Mill Playhouse. I was most recently in The Comic Genius Connection: Stoppard and Durang, a pair of one-act plays at GAC in April and May of this year.

In addition to performing on stage, I have also acted in and been part of the crew for several 48 Hour Films, as part of the Cavegirl Productions team. These include APERTURE, FELT: Tearing the Fabric of America (technically, this was for the National Film Challenge, not the 48 Hour Film Project, but it was a very similar set of rules), HATCH, Fickle Fortune, and most recently, MOTIVATION.

Computers and Programming

I have some computer related materials available here. These include a couple handy scripts that I use in my day-to-day work, as well as some web-related tips and tricks that I've developed.

Although I use PHP extensively at work, I still consider myself to be just another Perl hacker at heart. I am a contributer to the FormBuilder project, and I have a couple modules on CPAN. I run Slackware Linux with Dropline GNOME on my desktop, and Ubuntu on my laptop.

Philosophy Papers

These are papers I have written for seminars at USC. All papers are in PDF format unless otherwise noted.

• Identifying Pain
• Looking for Control
• Natural Normativity and Choice
• Morality in the Gaps
• Thoughts as Data, Thoughts as Code: Natural Goodness and a Model of the Will
• Relativistic Challenges to Presentism
• Sex, Blood, and Soul: The Transmission of Form in Aristotle's Biology
• Hume and Fodor on Complex Ideas

My Masters Paper is a slightly expanded version of the above “Thoughts as Data, Thoughts as Code”:

• Thoughts as Data, Thoughts as Code: Natural Goodness and a Model of the Will (Masters Paper version)

Travels with Tybalt the Bat

At this point, I have driven cross-country four times: In August 2005 when I moved from Maryland to California, in May 2006 when I returned home to Maryland to visit for the summer, in July 2006 when I returned to California, and finally in June 2007 when I moved back to Maryland. Tybalt the Bat has been my roadtrip companion on each of these.

In March of 2007, while I was still living in Los Angeles, over my spring break I drove north to Seattle and back again.