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  <title>chad P. brown - Computer Weenie</title>
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<div align="center"><h1>`Thoughts in Mirror May Be Closer Than They
Appear'</h1></div>

<hr>

<p>I'm taking <a href="http://www.ai.mit.edu/courses/6.034/">6.034</a>
this fall.  I had been taking <a
href="http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/classes/6.042/">6.042</a>, but I
decided to take a programming class instead.</p>

<p>I work at an MIT/LCS/Internet startup company called <a
href="http://www.akamai.com/">Akamai Technologies</a>, doing some
interesting web-related work.  ``No Comment''.</p>

<p>I share a nice <a href="home-map.jpeg">house</a> out near Union
Square, (on Prospect Hill, about 40 seconds walk from the site of the
first gathering of the first continental army) with three guys named
Joe, <a href="http://www.mit.edu/people/yoav/">Yoav</a>,and <a
href="http://www.mit.edu/people/rshah/homeone.html">Raj</a>.  When
it's not broken, we have network service from <a
href="http://www.rcn.com/">RCN</a>.</p>

<hr>

<p>In my spare spare time, I've been reading some, playing with random
software, and playing twinkie games with various groups of
friends.</p>

<b>reading:</b>
<ul>

  <li> Carrol's <em>From the Teeth of Angels</em>

  <li> Neil Gaiman and company, various stuff (most lately: <em>A Game
       of You</em>; an old sample: <a href="nada.html">Nada's
       Story</a>)

  <li> A bunch of technical stuff, including <a
       href="http://tpop.awl.com/">The Practice of Programming</a>,
       <em>Programming Pearls</em>, and <em>Programming with
       pthreads</em>.  I've also been looking through <em>Programming
       with Perl/Tk</em>.

  <li> Still haven't read yet: Saul's <em>Voltair'e Bastards</em> or
       Karl Popper's <em>The Logic of Scientific Discovery</em>.
       Opinions are welcome. :-)
</ul>

<b>software:</b>
<ul>
  <li> playing with some new stuff for the <a
       href="http://www.mit.edu/~sipb/">sipb locker</a>.  If you're
       bored and would like to help, let me know.

  <li> keeping up with (and sometimes getting ahead of) Emacs.  FSF
       Emacs 20.4 should be coming out soon.

  <li> Along with most of the other developers in the world, I'm
       playing with the <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</a>
       source.

  <li> I was trying to revitalize the <a
       href="http://www.mit.edu/~databases/">databases locker</a>.
       Working on <a href="http://www.postgresql.org">PostgreSQL</a>
       now; should be looking into <a
       href="http://www.mysql.org/">mysql</a> and <a
       href="http://www.msql.org/">msql</a> also.

  <li> playing with <a
       href="http://www.javasoft.com/">Java</a>.

  <li> <a href="http://www.imap.org/">IMAP</a> software explorations.
       I have a particular idea that I'd like to explore, but I've
       become distracted, and I'm still looking for the best starting
       base in terms of an IMAP4 server.  Looks like I might be able
       to use <a href="http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/cyrus/">Cyrus</a>.

  <li> Playing around with older mail clients again...  Have been
       using <a href="http://www.gnus.org/">Gnus</a> for a while;
       thinking of convrting over to <a
       href="http://www.math.gatech.edu/nmh/">MH</a> again, and seeing
       if I can `fix it up a little' while I'm there.  I <em>do</em>
       like gnus, but it has some compliation that I'd like to avoid
       (doesn't require emacs, multi-site merging is annoying).

  <li> Poking around at <a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a>
       and the <a href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/DOM/">Document Object
       Model</a>.  With this in widespread use, the world would truly
       be a Very Cool Place.

  <li> I'm a longstanding follower and quiet worker on the <a
       href="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</a> web server.  Having
       tried most of the other available software as part of my job, I
       can tell you <em>without fear of exaggeration</em> that Apache
       is a <strong>million</strong> times better than all of the
       others, put together.
</ul>

<b>Twinkie Games:</b>
<ul>
  <li><a href="http://www.tsr.com/ADND/Welcome.html">AD&D</a> in a
      couple ways, including a mostly-dead campaign set in the <a
      href="http://www.tsr.com/ForgottenRealms/Welcome.html">Forgotten
      Realms</a> with some side trips through <a
      href="http://www.tsr.com/Ravenloft/Welcome.html">Ravenloft</a>
      and <a
      href="http://www.tsr.com/Planescape/Welcome.html">PlaneScape</a>.

  <li><a
      href="http://www.white-wolf.com/Games/Games.html">Vampire</a>,
      with a little <a
      href="http://www.white-wolf.com/trinity/trinity.html">Trinity</a>
      mixed in.  This isn't standard Gothic angst-ridden Vampire,
      though..  The group is mostly made up of recent police-academy
      grads in an alternative-history British Empire colony on Mars.
      None of the characters are actually kindred...  most of the
      time.  (although this seems to change on a weekly basis. :-)

  <li>I'm currently running a campaign based on <a
      href="http://www.tsr.com/">TSR</a>'s 2nd edition rules along
      with all of the <em>Player's Option</em> books, called
      <strong>optiverse</strong>.  I choose that name because I wanted
      the players to come up with a better one, and I figured that
      optiverse was so cheesy that they'd have to give in and come up
      with a better name.  Unfortunately, they seem to have outsmarted
      me (or maybe I outsmarted myself?).  I'm considering putting up
      some stuff about it when I get some free time. (ha!)

  <li><a
      href="http://www.mit.edu/activities/assassin/patrol.html">Patrol!</a>
      now with non-explanitory <a href="graphics/patrol.gif">funny
      graphic</a>.  (<em>yes, the file really is there.  There's a bug
      with the SIPB webserver that causes it to look like it's not
      some of the time.  Just try again.</em>)

  <li>After a while with in a conversion from AD&D, I'm playing in a
      pure <a href="http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/">Gurps</a> based
      campaign now.  So far, I'm enjoying the system...

</ul>

<hr>

<p>The weather is turning cool again, and it's been pretty bad for
frisbee lately, but we're still out there playing <a
href="http://www.upa.org/">Ultimate</a> whenver we can.  If you're
interested, come by Killian Court at 1730 on any Friday.  The game is
open, friendly, pick-up of all levels (beginners welcome).</p>

<hr>

<p>I used to say that I was trying to get some things that I'd collected
more `on the web', in order to share and all of that, but it's mostly
a waste of time..  Collections are interesting if they're maintained,
and I wasn't maintaining mine.  There are still some things that you
may find interesting, so I've <a href="collections.html">left them
around</a>, but for the most part, they're personal-interest
only...</p>

<p>I miss my cat...  I haven't seen her in <strong>Too Long</strong>. <img
src="graphics/smilie_frown.gif" ALT=":-("></p>

<hr>
  <a href="mailto:y@mit.edu">chad brown</a> |
  <font size=-2>$Id: index.html,v 1.13 1999/04/01 02:51:45 yandros Exp yandros $</font><p>

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