"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
-- A.J. Liebling [*]
"English and French are but one Language"
-- Wallace Stevens
"Orthography recapitulates Etymology"
-- W. Ricker
Hobbies: My Hobbies include ham-radio for which I have organized Skywarn training seminars and ARES workshops, and a two-part website; letterpress printing, (not very active lately) for which I used to edit the website of the Museum of Printing; reading and book-collecting, and international band "short-wave" radio listening. Some of my Usenet news articles, edited for posterity, include Letterpress Printing as a Hobby (which has had resource links added) and my opinions on the current amateur radio exam structure (rather dated by the restructuring announced at the turn of the millennium).
Science Humor: (2005-12-04) Four times, my family has organized, with the cooperation of a Boston Public pilot school for Science & Math, the League of Junior Scientists delegation for the IgNobels ceremony, sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research; most other years, we've been in the audience. The event was live-web-cast; you can hear the show on tape delay, usually on the NPR Science Friday program the day after Thanksgiving. In 2000, PBS Scientific American Frontiers was video taping, so keep an eye on PBS too, and check the Igs/AIR homepages for updates. Hear the BBC report on 1996's festivities. (1MB WAV from my intercept tape) (.AU format) (shorter RA format). I recorded this off the SW broadcast the morning after (Newsdesk 961004.1100Z, on the 49m band Americas Stream. Thanks to George Goble, IgNobel Chemistry Laureate for providing space for these files and the Unix translation. (His page also has scanned copies of the winner's list and the program, and a still and video of his prize-winning experiment.)
Volunteerism (2005-12-04): My lead volunteer commitment is to ARRL
ARES planning and Skywarn radio nets; in late 2000, I worked on
a Simulated Emergency Test, and the previous
EMA ARES website. I also still once in a while work the radiogram nets
for ARRL's NTS.
My favorite charity besides that is the Museum of Printing for which I am ex-Secretary,
ex-webmaster (yeah!) and still on the Board and Collections committee. I am tried
giving up have finally suceeded in giving up web-mastering their website to a full-time graphic-designer,
but although it's moved (it used to be ./fomp.html here, since moved to www.museumofprinting.org)
- The Museum is NOW OPEN. Check out the new website.[My version on Wayback]
I once in a very great while still volunteer at the GBC/ACM (Greater Boston Chapter, Association for Computing Machinery) Professional Development Seminar series in Boston, where I was once a mainstay. They continue to have exciting programs; if you are in the software biz locally, check it out: the ACM seminars have very good bang-for-the-buck.
Our other volunteer activities have included the Bryn Mawr Bookstore, a charitable used bookstore at 373 Huron Avenue, Cambridge MA USA. (It's on the #72 bus out of Harvard Square; phone +617-661-1770 for hours or to donate books.) The non-profit goes to scholarships at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, dedicated to women's education. Selling donated books with mostly volunteer labor and relatively low overhead, they have some of the best deals in used books this side of Travelers' Book Restaurant, Union CT. Although we're not currently volunteering there, it's still a great shop and a great charity.
Profession: (2002-08-11) Professionally I'm a software consultant, working in the object-oriented and scripting specialties. I'm now with one of FMR's several software companies here in Boston. From Feb'96-Mar'00, I was with an Internet-related startup, Avicenna Systems which has been bought and renamed twice, CareInsite and which got eatten by Healtheon/WebMD (but although the surviving stock was theirs, it was Synetic's CEO that came out on top ... weird). I do object-oriented & web/internet design and development in C++, Java, Smalltalk, Perl, Html, etc. I also have sometimes (in my copious spare time!) taught C++ and object-oriented design at Northeastern University School of Engineering Technology
Personal: Married, one child, neither has a web-page (yet).
Links: besides what's on the hobby pages and the above, some Other Links that I like, which also collects some (but not all?) of the other links on my pages. Some may be stale.
.
Comments to wdr@world.std.com
Lightly Updated 2005-12-05. Updates in BOLD, timestamps in italics.
This site is best viewed with any browser you like.