After an extended time offline, I finally have a new blog and personal web site. If you want to know what I have been up to professionally, check my LinkedIn page. I'll be describing my ongoing activities in my new blog.

I'm currently focusing on two main activities:

1. Social Community Site/Service for Conferences - this project evolves out of my recent experience helping run major technical conferences, and it will solve a major pain point experienced by any group that runs a large conference. The site is being developed using ASP.NET/MVC3, and it's the first site/service I'll be deploying exclusively in the cloud (running on the Windows Azure platform). I'll be releasing more details soon in my blog as I prep for the initial release of the site.
2. Noninvasive Medical Devices for Smart Phones/Tablets - it's fascinating how many things seem to move in cycles. I started my career in the 1980’s focusing on medical devices and then switched in the late 1990’s to Internet technologies in part because of frustration with the extended FDA process needed to commercialize medical devices. I much prefer the freedom that Internet businesses offer. For the first time in many years, I recently started looping back towards medical devices. My main expertise focuses on medical device transducers that convert biomedical signals to something that can be processed by electronic instruments. The smart phones/devices that nearly everyone is carrying around these days are like supercomputers compared to many of the specialized microcontrollers/microcomputers that I previously developed for processing biomedical signals. Given the broad popularity of rich apps on smart devices together with the processing power the devices offer, it could be an ideal time to build biomedical transducers and apps for use with smart phones/devices. In addition to the local processing power offered by smart apps/devices, access to cloud services creates opportunities for extending apps in very interesting and useful ways. I recently started working with iPhone/iPod/iPad apps to determine if the platform can actually be used for creating medical devices. I’ll be describing my experiences in my new blog.

In addition to the above activities, I also keep busy with a lot of other things including:

• Homemade Boiled Bagels - I love fresh, hot bagels, and I eat them often for breakfast. Unfortunately, all the bagels I can get here in Seattle range from mediocre to terrible. As a result, I taught myself how to make NY style boiled bagels at home. I’ve tried lots of fresh bagels from lots of stores all over the country, and my bagels are far better than anything I’ve bought. Everyone that tried them has said they are amazing. If you know me and want some amazing fresh, hot bagels, you should contact me (I make batches of bagels all the time).
• Burning Man - there are no words or pictures that can adequately describe Burning Man. It’s something that needs to be experienced. I’ve gone to Burning Man a few times, and I also actively participate in local/regional Burning Man activities. Recently, I’ve been running the Castle Anomalous theme camp that includes a large mutant vehicle
• Green Technologies - I recently started turning my home into a big, ongoing experiment for testing green products, services and technologies. This evolved out of my experiences running a theme camp at Burning Man, which clearly demonstrated to me how hard it is to supply over a week of infrastructure and energy for a large group of people while leaving no trace. Based on my experiences, I believe there could be a better way to balance energy generation, energy distribution, consumption, waste, etc. than is currently be done in most homes/communities. I'll be blogging about the experiments I plan to do at home in this area.
• Art - I don’t consider myself a very good artist, but I enjoy doing a variety of forms of art. I find it’s a good balance for all the deep technical work I do professionally. I currently focus on two things:
  1. Chainmail Jewelry - this is very detailed and repetitive small scale artwork. I enjoy the combination of look and function that chainmail offers.
  2. Mutant Vehicle - the school bus I’ve been converting to a mutant vehicle for Burning Man has been a fascinating multiyear, large-scale art project. I have lots of info and photos that I plan to add to my blog soon.
• "Craps from the Dark Side" – I recently started writing my first book.

If anyone has any questions or wants to contact me, you can use the Contact Me page.