Please consider all text below for archival purposes - a lot has changed in the last couple years so it might be best to just drop me a line while I work on revising all of this.

A pretty regular guy. I work in IT by day and go to school by night (most recently a masters degree but I've moved on from that). I love photography, cooking, electronics, books and travelling.

Think of this as like real life people - if someone goes to the effort to send you a message, send one back - to do otherwise is rude. And if you aren't interested say so, but don't be a dick about it.

I work in IT for the University of Toronto - it's work that I find fulfilling and rewarding and each time I move from position to position I find new personal challenges to work on.

My masters degree focused on studying universities and colleges as well as systems of same and the legislative, funding and governance bodies that affect them. My own interests tend towards studying the economics of education, how technology has affected institutions organizationally and instructionally, and how open data and open source movements can and are changing scholarship.

I'm an irrepressible nerd who believes that knowing things for their own sake is worthwhile. I love books in all their incarnations and science fiction and adventure fiction join stacks of books on design & typography, cooking, making, education, philosophy, data visualization and photography. I also have a goal to see the entirety of the US and Canada by road before trying to do the same for other parts of the world. Most recently this involved a week and a half in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.

I'm a fast and accurate reader, which I suppose in itself isn't something to be good at, but it does mean that I usually can pick up on topics pretty quickly.

I am a pretty goodcook as long as i'm not expected to cook fish - which seems to be a permanent (and annoying) disability. I bake now and then and have been known to go to some lengths to satisfy a craving. Most recently this manifested by wanting a roasted marshmallow milkshake when I didn't have marshmallows so I made them from scratch.

Books
Tahara Boy King of the Desert by Harold M. Sherman
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Academic Transformation by Clark, Moran, Solnik & Trick
The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombaur
The New Best Recipe by Cook's Illustrated
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
20000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper

Movies
The Hunt for Red October
The Shawshank Redemption
The Untouchables
Citizen Kane
Disney Movies
Empire of the Sun
Moon
Patton
Bridge on the River Kwai
WALL•E
The Maltese Falcon
V for Vendetta
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Music
I don't listen to a lot of music these days with audiobooks taking up most of my "eartime" but here is the music I like:
Barenaked Ladies
Broadway Musicals
Country music
Shiny Toy Guns
Death Cab for Cutie

Food
I have a deep and abiding appreciation for food in all its forms and at all levels. I have been involved in the foodie community at various times, but always seem to drift away towards food that is good, not necessarily expensive. That being said I appreciate food that is fine and food that is humble, food that is local and food that is well-traveled.

Smartphone (currently an iPhone5, but i'm not loyal), a hat that covers my ears (for those Canadian winters eh), the free and open internet, public libraries, my bike, books

How the instant you finally decide you are content with what you have, something comes along and changes everything without warning. It could be graduate school, a guy, a book - but no matter what it defies all the best made plans.

I get really nervous around guys i'm attracted to. I tend to either talk a lot or fall awkwardly silent to cover this up.

You want to chat just as a diversion or meet to see if there is basis for a friendship or chemistry for something more.

Just a pretty regular, geeky guy

If you receive a message and are not interested in even chatting at least have the common courtesy to respond and the balls to be honest (but not a dick) about it rather than slinking off and pretending like the message didn't exist. Lets all make the Internet a more polite and honest place.