Career Experience

My LinkedIn profile. My resume.

I started my work career in 2003 at Maptuit, a Toronto-based company specializing in location-based services and navigation solutions for the North American long-haul trucking industry. Maptuit was acquired in 2012 by Telogis, and Telogis was acquired in 2016 by Verizon and merged with Verizon Telematics, Fleetmatics, and Networkfleet into Verizon Connect

During my tenure at Maptuit/Telogis/Verizon Connect, I worked on all aspects of the back-end systems and web services that powered NaviGo, our vehicle routing platform for long-haul trucks. I contributed to six US patents for various novel features of NaviGo.

Since mid-2021, I've worked a Qualio as a software development manager.

About Me

I like building things that make a difference.

I enjoy working in an environment that values the free exchange of ideas and information.

I'm an avid Linux user and proponent of open-source software. I've used Linux since 1996, and have run Linux as my daily computing environment since 2005. My distribution of choice is Fedora.

When I'm not working or hacking on computers, I enjoy playing Ultimate Frisbee, practicing Yoga, birdwatching, playing video or table-top games, studying maps, and word puzzles;

I was lucky to start learning about computers at a very young age. I first cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model 1. Later, it was PCs and many hours spent dialing BBSes, playing games, and learning about DOS batch files, LOGO, TurboBASIC, and how to assemble and repair PCs.

I attended high school at University of Toronto Schools. While I was there, the school built its first computer lab using the University of Toronto's campus network, and setup its first student-only online discussion groups. I was a key member of the group of students that helped administer and maintain both. When the school managed to acquire some SGI workstations, I was first exposed to the power of UN*X-like operating systems. Then I learned about Linux and was hooked from then on.

After high school I attended the University of Guelph in the Computer Science program. I graduated with a Bachelor of Computing in 2002. My other studies were mostly concentrated in philosophy. I was active in student government and the Computer Science Club, serving as its president for a year.

Side Projects

In 2021, I built a network of air quality sensors around my home. Each node is based on an ESP8266 NodeMCU board, and a Bosch BME680 air quality sensor. Some of the nodes have particulate matter and accurate CO₂ sensors as well. Each node uses MQTT to publish data every minute to my home server, which logs the data in an SQLite database. Two web pages provide the data: one dashboard with simple graphs, and a set of detailed charts.

From 1998 until 2005, I was very active in the Apple Newton user community. I was responsible for:

• Administering the Newtontalk mailing list, the main focal point for the community
• Creating the most comprehensive Newton software archive, UNNA
• Contributing to the NPDS project, a web server for the Newton
• Collaborating with other members of the community on the Newton FAQ, and was an early alpha tester of the ATA Storage driver

I still subscribe to Newtontalk and occasionally work on Newton-related things. I've contributed to Einstein, a Newton emulator, and have investigated the Newton's boot code extensively.