Interests

November 6th, 2009

I have worked in the fields of computational linguistics, video games and general web development. My resume is here.

Computing

These are some of the personal software projects I’ve worked on:

  • IronMeta: a programming language and application for generating pattern matchers on arbitrary streams of objects. It is an implementation of Alessandro Warth’s OMeta system for C# on .NET.
  • Periapsis: The beginnings of a spaceflight simulator, mostly to learn about physics and 3D graphics. Not much is being done with this project.
  • Narwhal Compiler Suite: The goal of Narwhal was to explore compiler-writing. I got as far as implementing a Packrat parser generator for C, and a C99 preprocessor using it.
    I may go back to this now that IronMeta is working.

Linguistics

I have a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Exegesis. I’m a fan of Sydney Lamb’s relational network theory of neurocognitive linguistics.

In my copious free time I’m working on implementing my own network activation modeler, a la Colin Harrison’s PureNet.

Languages

I like to study languages as a hobby. A list of those I’ve studied in the past is here (adjust the fluency levels downward for five years of marriage and parenthood :-)

I’m currently improving my Attic Greek at lunchtime at work by going through the absolutely wonderful Reading Greek. It’s a graded course in Attic Greek that starts out with a story, so you actually look forward to the next episode.

I have a number of Esperanto blogs in my RSS reader, and try to at least keep up my passive fluency in that language.

Aviation and Space

I’m a huge aviation and spaceflight geek. I was working on a pilot’s licence for a while some years ago, but Real Life (TM) intervened.

I still spend time in Flight Simulator.

I’m a big fan of the NewSpace companies that, unlike NASA, are actually making steps towards a permanent and expanding human presence in space: Virgin Galactic (I drove to California to watch the first SpaceShipOne flight into space in 2004), SpaceX, Xcor, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space, Unreasonable Rocket, and others.

Martial Arts

I practiced Tai Chi, Aikido and Taekwondo in my twenties; health problems and then a social life intervened. I’m currently endeavouring to get back in shape using exercises from Matt Furey’s book.

Choral Singing

I sang in Trinity Western University’s Chamber Choir in school, and have sung in various community choirs since then.

Ancient Near Eastern Chronology

I am a fan of revisionist chronology of the ancient near east, in particular the theories of David Rohl and Peter James.

Although there is no love lost between them personally, their approaches are similar in that they both would shorten the Third Intermediate Period and challenge the conventionally-accepted sychronism between the biblical Shishak and the Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq I. A large archive of scholarship on this topic is available at the archives of ISIS. An active mailing list is available via Yahoo Groups.

In Centuries of Darkness Peter James focuses on the Greek Dark Age, which he regards as an artifact of an erroneous chronology.

Rohl introduces his theory in the context of Egypt and Palestine in A Test of Time. He addresses Greek history and its interaction with the model in his recent book The Lords of Avaris.

Bernard Newgrosh, in his Chronology at the Crossroads, and Pierce Furlong in his dissertation have shown that this model synchronizes well with the chronology of Assyria.

I have some ideas of a software system for organizing chronological data and hypotheses, but have not as yet done any work on it.

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