
Software Consultant and Ludologist
Greater Boston Area

Software Consultant and Ludologist
Greater Boston Area
I am the founder and lead consultant of Appleseed Software Consulting (http://appleseed-sc.com), specializing in creating robust and maintainable web-based applications. I am always happy to hear from prospective clients.
I am also the president of Volity Games (http://volity.com), a startup I run with a few colleagues. Through various experimental web-based projects, as well as a blog and occasional TV show we produce, we study games as a communication medium, and seek innovative new ways for people to come together through play.
As a technical writer, my published works include "Mac OS X in a Nutshell" and "Perl & XML", both published by O'Reilly Media, as well as a number of articles, and quite a lot of programmer and user documentation.
Web application programming, protocol design, user interface design, user documentation, programmer documentation, software project management, Perl, AJAX, JavaScript, HTML::Mason, SQL, MySQL, LAMP
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
October 2006 — Present (3 years 2 months)
Specializing in database-backed web application development, with Perl running server-side and JavaScript / AJAX on the client.
(Computer Games industry)
August 2005 — Present (4 years 4 months)
Volity Games is a startup I founded with a few colleagues in 2005. Through various experimental web-based projects, as well as a blog and occasional TV show we produce, we study games as a communication medium, and seek innovative new ways for people to come together through play.
As president, my principal roles involve leading and managing our projects' technological development, as well as overseeing the operation of the company and its employees. My technical tasks include maintaining the Perl-based code that runs all of our public services, including all the various applications found on the volity.net website, which variously use AJAX and simple JavaScript.
(Self-Employed; Myself Only; Writing and Editing industry)
June 2001 — Present (8 years 6 months)
Co-author of two technical books, "Perl & XML" (with Erik Ray) and "Mac OS X in a Nusthell" (with Chuck Toporek and Matt Stone), published by O'Reilly & Associates.
Occasional author of technical articles and weblog entries on the O'Reilly Network.
(Educational Institution; Research industry)
July 2002 — September 2005 (3 years 3 months)
I played a key role in the development of ChemBank, a web-based application that allowed chemists and biologists to store, review, and analyze the results of high-throughput screening experiments.
(Privately Held; Publishing industry)
November 2000 — October 2001 (1 year )
I maintained and created software that helped the company publish its books, both in print and in its more recent strides to publish online, with XML as the vehicle of choice in all cases. My work environment was primarily Perl on Unix.
My largest project was a bundle of Perl modules and programs that converted DocBook XML documents to Adobe FrameMaker files and back again. In fact, just about all my projects involved folding, spindling and mutilating DocBook documents in one way or another - much of my other interesting work involved working on the software that prepares O'Reilly book files for Safari, a service that makes book content available on the Web.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
1998 — 2000 (2 years )
I helped develop and maintain a variety of software, largely web-based applications, for use both in house and by MINT's customers. Tools used for all projects were almost exclusively the Perl programming language and the SQL database standard as implemented by MySQL.
I was responsible for the development of MINT's first attempts at online commerce, as well as a web-based application server using the Apache web server and its mod_perl module.
(Computer Software industry)
1991 — 1994 (3 years )
BA , English, Journalism , 1991 — 1996
I got swept up in the dot-com bubble upon graduation. After a few years of turbulence, I managed to find ways to put my degrees to practical use.
video production, podcasting, science fiction, board and card games, interactive fiction
The Gameshelf