About
Me
Howdy.
I was born in a small house in Idyllwild, California (shadowed by a demon haunted peak), and currently live in Bozeman, MT. I work at Montana State University for the Research Computing Group as the Associate Director of Cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure (it’s usually the first question after I tell people what I do) is the infrastructure required to do computational things. In my case, it’s the hardware and software required for scientific research. Since (arguably) none of that stuff is useful without personnel, I also manage the people that manage the infrastructure (while spending a good deal of time getting to know it myself). Since the software that supports research is often itself research, I do a bit of software engineering also. So, I’m kind of a collision of director, systems administrator, software engineer, and project manager. It’s pretty awesome.
Data Management
As it happens, research cyberinfrastructure really comes down to one thing: scientific data management. I can ruin a perfectly nice social dinner party if you bring up scientific data management. It is a huge problem and I am quite passionate about it. You have been warned.
Site Technology
This site is built with Octopress because it is the damned bees knees. I plan on messing with the template heavily, I would be surprised if it loaded at all in any version of IE. If it does, then I would praise imathis, since I did my darndest to not care.
The fonts are from the google open font directory, so they are free to re-use. I wanted the site to look unique, and haven’t noticed many people using the open fonts.
I am hosting the site at github because 1) it just works and 2) free bandwidth and 3) git changed my life. I am a huge git evangelist. This ties into my passion for data management, git fits right into my niche. And oh what a nice fit. The distributed revision control model that is possible with git is unheard of with regard to scientific data. It gives me goosebumps to think of what might be possible if git were to get deeply integrated with scientific data management… there I go again. See? Anyway.
Feel free to browse my commits if you want; the source for the site and posts and everything is, of course, on github available for perusal for the curious.
Atheism
It is worth noting that I am an Atheist. Part of my job is to build bridges between groups that may disagree, so this is something that I strive to avoid talking about in my professional life. However, this blog is not only professional, it is personal. Personally, I care a great deal about theism and the wrongs that are done it its purview. As a person who is convinced that the scientific method is the best way to find truth, the notion of “faith” (defined here as belief without evidence) is the antithesis of the reasoned search for truth.
The Logo
The site logo deserves some bit of explanation. When I was a young free-range dork, tromping about the wilds of Montana, I (naturally) got myself involved in tabletop RPGs. Though my group never did get around to playing it, I was enthralled most by Ars Magica. I liked everything about it (and still hold out hope that a video game will pop up to bring Mythic Europe to life). Anyway, one of the details in Ars Magica is that each mage has a Sigil. A symbol that represents their citizenship in the society of Wizards. I spent many classtime hours doodling potential sigils for myself. Usually I ended up borrowing symbols that appeared in my weekly tabletop adventures. Symbols from the Warhammer universe were common.
Sometime in the midst of high school I doodled a stylized infinity symbol inside of a ships wheel/compass rose. I became very attached to this symbol for reasons that I cannot explain. I used it to represent myself while I fumbled my way through adolescence, trying to figure out who I was and where I fit into my future.
As I stumbled through college bouncing from engineering to philosophy (and anything that struck my fancy), I found myself particularly enjoying Religious Studies (irony!). I think it was mostly the excellent professor (Linda Sexon), but also I was in the throes of my personal existential “what does it all mean” phase. It was during this time that I fixated on dualism, and on a whim registered this domain. As part of my coursework I was required to study the books of Elaine Pagels (the world’s foremost Gnostic scholar). You might imagine my shock at leafing through the first few pages of The Gnostic Gospels and finding the very symbol that I had been doodling for years (Amazon deep link, Amazon Book Link). At the time (and given my background reading farmboy-saves-the-world fantasy novels) I interpreted this to mean all manner of things. Perhaps I was a (the) Gnostic? Was this my mysterious and hidden calling? Would an estranged aunt mysteriously appear bearing dire news of my imminent fate?
I did some waiting and some hunting, and came up with nothing. As I grew older, fewer and fewer of the spiritual beliefs of my youth held up to rational scrutiny. Now, I live my life as a convinced Atheist (see above); I don’t believe in fate or the supernatural. How then do I explain the coincidence? I explain it as just that, a coincidence. It is a simple symbol, and it’s not that surprising that someone also decided that it had merit. I still have no idea why that symbol is used in the title of the Gnostic Gospels, if anyone does, please send me an email. My best guess is that it represents the eight Aeons of Gnosticism (though that is little more than a hunch based on similar symbols I have found related to Gnosticism).
The upshot of this story is twofold. First, the reason for the logo is that it is part of my history. Second, the particular shape of the logo is borrowed from the book. I don’t know who owns it, I am hoping that it is buried in some Gnostic text and as such is not copyrightable. Heck, I don’t know if symbols can even be copyrighted. Certainly logos can be trademarked, but… Anyway, I am going to keep using it until someone tells me I can’t. I like the symbol, and I like the symbolism. I like how it represents the dualism of my life (youth and adulthood), the dualism of my loves (rationality and fantasy), and the oft-misinterpreted religious experience of coincidence which has caused so much trouble throughout history.