About Me

Quick Bio

I’m a small town, earthy crunchy, hacker who thinks too much about too many things. If there is one thing I love most in life, it is learning new things!

I began making my mark on the internet around 2010 when I began writing apps in Visual Basic, writing programs for jailbroken iPhoneOS, and writing blogging software in PHP. Over the past several years and my thousands of hours making and breaking many forms of software, my deeply curious nature drove me to play in many different domains of computing which have contributed to many of the causes I support.

Nearly everything I’ve tinkered with, hacked, coded, and worked on has been a labor of love and passion and a deep expression of my endless curiosity. At this point I believe it’s safe to say that programming has been, and hopefully will remain, my life-long passion.

Causes I Am Passionate About

Over time, the causes that I have personally found important, and that I believe that I may be able to make an impact, on have ebbed and flowed. My current passions you may find me rambling about to friends, occasionally on social media, and maybe in a blog post of mine (if I ever publish some of my many 95%-done draft posts).

The most notable causes on my mind are (in a non-exhaustive and unordered list):

• Sustainable computing
  • Permacomputing
  • Sustainable open-source software (perhaps we should think more about “free as in freedom” as opposed to “as in beer”…)
  • My “Anti-AI AI Researcher Club” mentality (also see my Research Interests below)
• Fostering the ideal of an accessible, people-focused, “indie” web
• Sustainable living (perhaps some form of Solarpunk?)
  • Pubic Libraries & Libraries of Things
  • Support community aid & services
• Universal and accessible education, information, and research
  • I love to teach and tutor too! Hopefully I can make time for more of that in the future.

Research Interests

Since leaving my undergraduate university and working as a Machine Learning Scientist, my research interests in Applied Mathematics have crystallized over time from my more naive days as an undergraduate researcher.

I am generally interested in pursuing Applied Mathematics for its versatile applications, an alignment with how my (mathematical?) thoughts operate, and such pursuits would support my diverse scientific interests. However, the primary application at this given time, especially given my narrow research experience, is in Machine Learning Theory (aka “AI”). Below are some of the topics that I am interested in, but there are many others I can speak on.

Interests in ML Theory

The research that I find most compelling in machine learning and AI theory is that which is mathematically rigorous, dataset independent and heavy utilizes algebraic constructions and analysis. I can be convinced of properties like “intelligence” in a system if you can prove to me in the math that this behaviour emerges. Some specific topics I am interested in are:

• Aligned & Equivariant ML (e.g. how can we align our models with our scientific knowledge?)
• Efficient AI/ML (compute and data efficient)
• Constructive AI/ML (e.g. how can we intentionally construct models for specific behaviour?)
• Sparse Autoencoders and Neural Information Theory
• Neural Collapse, Grokking, and Neural Circuits
• Chain of Thought, Neural Computations, and Formal Languages
• Interpretable and “provably intelligent” AI

Broader Research Interests

• Kolmogorov complexity (my favorite topic!)
• Algorithmic and non-algorithmic information theory
• Graph theory, random walks, Markov chains
• Among other things, I would really love to learn more theoretical Physics!!

Random Things I’ve Worked On Recently

The list of projects I’ve recently been working on constantly shifts, but here are some things I’ve been toying with recently:

• Constant, never-ending, tinkering with my Emacs
  • At this point, Emacs may be the only reason I am functional as a human being. I use it to organize close to every aspect of my life.
  • Although this phrase is a Vim-saying of the era of Editor wars, Emacs is a “a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor”. I honestly rarely use it for coding. I really do think the comparison of Emacs-versus-Vim is unfounded – they truly are two separate beasts with two separate use cases.
• Finally (!!) finishing some of the draft blog posts I have in a queue.
• Writing a “MOO”-style game
• Getting a Ham Radio License
• Learning Rust
  • I really should learn it eventually…

I also have a bin of ideas that you are free to use or collaborate with me on! You can also schedule some time to chat with me to pitch your ideas, ask for advice, or ask to collaborate.