I am a software engineer by day, or at least by morning. I studied planetary science at MIT but never went into the field.
I work for a startup in the Boston suburbs. We're making a new signal processing chip. I have worked for a variety of tech companies that don't exist any more, and a few that do. My previous job was at Intel via an acquisition of a startup. I wrote an explanation of what went wrong with the acquisition and why I left.
(I'm not John M. Carr the campus police officer, or Joe Connolly at RLE who is jfc@rle.mit.edu. The MIT database may give you one of those two when you ask for me.)
Previous software jobs included networking, operating systems, and drivers for a variety of companies that don't exist any more (mostly because they were acquired). I have contributed to GCC, being one of the early members of the EGCS project. I was a gcc hacker at my previous startup, Cilk Arts, adding parallel extensions to C++. See my PDF or plain text resume for more details.
Given the choice I program in OCaml, a functional language in the ML family. I have some old patches to the compiler to generate 64 bit code for SPARC (3.08.3 and 3.09.0) but have not been keeping that up to date.
I am a member of the National Motorists Association, the only national group supporting motorists rights and the use of engineering standards instead of politics for traffic control.
My interest in traffic law and policy led me to compile a page of State Traffic Laws related to speed limits.
I have an (incomplete) set of online speed regulations for many Massachusetts cities and towns, and state highways. These are the legal documents authorizing posting of speed limit signs. Towns aren't allowed to just make up numbers because that way lies speed traps. Of course, many ignore the law.
Map (and maps) of Massachusetts speed limits.
``The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.'' -- Repo Man.
Radar trailers can slow down cars, or make them speed up.
Tale Of the Troika by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky has a discussion of thinking and driving.
I used to be into wargames but haven't made much time for that in recent years. Most of what I play these days is Birds Of Prey a paper-based simulation of close-in air combat gaming. Computer flight simulators will test your reflexes; Birds of Prey will test your thinking. I made some Aircraft Data Cards for JD Webster's "Fighting Wings" series of air combat games.
I read science fiction. I have a list of science fiction book recommendations. I am starting a collection of reviews and brief comments on books I have read.
If you like math puzzles, check out this test from George Alec Effinger's novel Death in Florence.
Some book jackets are inspiring. Others are not.
I like to get outside, weather permitting. I like to take pictures of squirrels. See my Flickr page for evidence of this. Some older pictures are on this MIT page.
I have a list of Massachusetts newspapers known to me (daily to weekly newspapers on matters of general interest; not specialist newsletters or magazines).
This page is simple. Because I like it that way. I used to proudly proclaim it not "Netscape Enhanced", meaning I hadn't tried to make it break if you used the then-new Netscape browser. Likewise I avoid javascript, flash, and flashy graphics. I prefer content to presentation. Please support open standards for the internet.
Comments to John Carr.
