I'm a geek. A bricoleur. Programmer. Writer. Etc. I think microcontrollers are cool. I can cook better than average, and I give a good massage.

I am curious about how things work. I like to create new things, mostly software but also hardware and geeky pursuits. I like to stay up late talking with other people, or just being inside my own head.

I like Dorkbot and Burning Man, and having fun. I run a Dorkbot in Sebastopol.

The world is an exciting and fun place-check it out some time!

I have three kids, they are wonderful and heathenish, they are with me 1/2 time, with my ex-wife the other half. I took the youngest, then 5, to Burning Man in 2005. He loved it. I took the oldest, then 18, to Burning Man 2007. She loved it. We are going back this year.

I like cooking, sometimes a whole lot, other times I am focused on something else and can be happy eating nearly anything. I think Thai Food, pho, and Jack in the Box tacos are comfort food. Sushi is good, and I make a mean pot roast.

I SCUBA dive off the California coast, like photography including taking big panoramas, spin with excitement at random things, read a lot, and mess with technology.

I have not been riding lately, but in 2006 my daughter and I rode our bikes along the Danube, and then from Prague to Vienna. We used our own bikes, and planned our own 'tour' - no sag wagon here! It was great fun. I capped that by camping in Vienna for a week while she went to a friend's house in Germany. I rode all over Vienna. Being a tourist on a bicycle is so much better than being a tourist on foot! I would watch people emerge from a museum, already foot sore, and face an infinite treeless, heartless, searing plane of asphalt. And I would wince, and feel sympathy, and empathy, and spin my legs a time or two, and coast the whole damn ordeal into the shade and a smile.

I am optimistic, enthusiastic, and candid

Playing with my kids, taking gigapixel panoramic photos [gigapan], building public APIs to geographic data, writing code, writing books about mapping, telling stories, loving people.

I'm a freelance computer consultant. Years ago, painfully long years :-) someone told me this joke. "Q. What do you need to become a consultant? A. A watch"

I'm not a very good consultant by this measure.

I program in Python and Perl, and a bit of java for the Android platform , mostly doing web stuff. Mostly database driven stuff, MySQL and PostGIS. I can't imagine you care, but if a I expand my profile essays by 867 characters I jump up to the next level of profile completeness. How many is that in Canadian characters? Oh, wait, that joke isn't funny anymore. It used to be that one Canadian dollar got you 60 or 70 cents. Now a Canadian dollar gets you more than a US dollar. Ooops. I wonder if or when the publishing Industry will change, so that US books cost less in Canadian dollars? Those numbers were always exaggerated beyond the actual exchange rate.

Being excited, getting other people excited-either about my ideas, or their own ideas, or the ideas of another person.

Computers and technical 'stuff.' Programming, databases, web work. Making maps, taking photographs. Building API's. Working on tools to automate photographic workflow. I'm very good at back end web stuff, and almost competent at building the front end of websites.

I don't blame other people for my own issues.

My sexual performance is well received. Oh hell, let's be immodest and say that I like to spend hours being intimate, touching, caressing, massaging, cuddling, and getting more directed.

I bounce with enthusiasm. Seriously. I sort of rock from side to side. I think some people do that when they have to pee.

That is not my issue-no current or past urological issues. And sometimes people do it because they, well, to be honest I have no idea why some people do it. I do it because when I feel 'UP' i feel, to be circular in my reasoning, Up. And up means moving, bouncing, waltzing on my toes.

food: without excluding anything, all the standard bay area specialties, pho, sushi, thai, mexican. I'm not a foodie, but I've started getting really more into cooking. Specialty olive oils have become an infatuation for me of late. Capers and olives are awesome. The other day I was at the market and the cheese guy accosted me with a bit of parmagaggio reggagio...there was this massive block of cheese and he had just opened it up. Have you noticed the SIZE of the freaking knives which the cheese guys have? Check out the wall behind the cheeses next time you go to the market - they tend to have them haning, sort of like hunting trophies, except without that whole vibe that you killed bambies mom.

books: I absolutely adore John Scalzi's books _agent to the stars_ and _the android's dream_ If you have not read those you should :-)

Carl Hiaasen is great fun.

movies: I have a complicated relationship with television and movies. When TV sucks it is just a waste of time. That is sort of obvious. But the answer isn't 'better TV.' We have some pretty good TV, and good movies. But TV and movies are most pernicious when they are 'Good.'

OTOH...I love _Priscilla Queen of the Desert_, I went through a recent spate of rewatching 'classics,' including _Heather's_ and _Pump Up the volume_. _Get Shorty_ is amusing in large part for the book, and how obvious it was that Leonard was writing the novel to be filmed.

I just saw _The Chumscrubber_, and was amused. Very amused.

It is fun to watch movies and TV and be sucked into the characters on the screen (to be honest, I'm not sure that this argument should ignore the addictive properties of certain books!).

But for all of that fun, does TV actually have a positive impact on your life? I mean, a true positive impact? Or does it just feel fun at the time? OTOOH, so what? Isn't that all we have going for us? Have fun, grab the ring!

1. Sex. There, I've said it honestly. Not necessarily having sex, but I think about it a lot. I love looking at happy young couples and reflecting that I am part of a world which contains that joy. And if we are all instances of the god head, then those happy couples are me, and vice versa.

2. Engaged conversation. In spite of item 1, I have frequently had sex acts paused because one or the other of us mentioned something interesting.

3. Friends, and a community. When I have a partner there is a risk of my forgetting balance and not seeing my friends and community as much because I focus so much on my partner.

4. A grand passion - I generate those as needed. I tend to cycle around them, advancing each a bit as it comes around. Things like details of photographic lighting, or making electronic circuits, or programming. I move from one to the other, and back around.

5. Community events: conferences, parties, burning man. Both work related and pure pleasure.

6. I already mentioned sex, right? Then I'll give billing to my pretty nifty kids 12, 14, and 22 as of jul 2011

And all of these things are done at some level of extreme.

==
These are my priorities perhaps more than needs.
It turns out that, experimentally, I have determined that I can function at some level without most of these. But why?

When you look deep into the abyss remember that the abyss looks back into you.

Making very high resolution explorable photographs, including portraits of people, and of people's work spaces.

I think I now know enough people who are doing this next work, some who used ideas I also had, some using new and cool ways, that I don't need to think too much about it, but
I still think a lot about How to make the world better through creating systems which remind us of who we are. I have started to allow myself to simply stop and stare into space. Mostly in 'safe' spaces. ie, I don't do it while jay walking. This allows me to somehow connect with the primal me, or at least, it lets me listen to my body and get a read on what I am doing.

Oh yeah, I also think about sex a lot. I love being in sex positive and/or clothing optional spaces. People who are naked, or have dressed to impress, are so fun to look at. I have a light preference for looking at women, but when people make an effort to be who they want to be, to appear how they want to appear, it is so damned awesome. It is beautiful, and it is playful, and loving, and sexy, and the primal power of sexual energy makes me smile.

It might not be a Friday. My weekends and weekdays are irretrievably confused...I'm likely to be messing with stuff, or . . .

I'm happy to go to a bar or club, and enjoy that, but I'm less likely to originate the plan.

I love intense conversations with small groups of people.

If you were in my life I most likely would spend my free time making you shiver in antici........pation.

A past lover told me never to underestimate my skill at providing 'intense pleasure' that caused her to 'lose herself' using my...

Well, that isn't private, that is just advertising :-)

I have liked the word teledildonics since I first heard it shortly after it was coined in the 90's. I've designed and made a pretty cool sex toy.

You want to get together to: -have a coffee -explore Sonoma county and the bay are -go do something geeky or dorky -go out and take pictures -do some welding -make cool shit out of just about anything -have hot sex

Not necessarily all of those, and not necessarily in that order.