Ian Osgood

I am a SoftwareEngineer at The TOVA Company in PortlandOregon, mostly WorkingFromHome porting an MsDos program to JavaLanguage. Their business is a Continuous Performance Test (CPT) for AttentionDeficitDisorder. It is accurate enough to titrate dosage of medications such as RitalinDrug, avoiding the all-too-common problem of overmedication. Our company uses and helps develop IkiWiki for both our internal documentation wiki and our public web site. It was chosen for its integration with GitVersionControl.

As of 2014, migrating bugs into TracProject and specs into TracWiki. IkiWiki gets overloaded when you have five years of bug history. A compiled website just isn't going to perform like a bug database.

I bookmarked NewRecentChanges, and use this great place to learn about AgileProcesses.

Once upon a time, I hacked Unix at ReedCollege along with BillTrost. BartMassey? was my Physics TA, and I now work on rockets with him. Small world!

I also have personal experience of one of the ScheduleStories. <shudder>

My avocations are:

GameOfChess (including tournament directing for a state scholastic chess organization, http://www.chessforsuccess.org/, and coaching at my local grade school)
GameOfGo (10 kyu) (a great learning resource is SenseisLibrary)
- GnuGo: although FreeSoftware, it was comparable in strength with commercial Go programs, having won the 2003 and 2006 Computer Olympiads
- Fuego: a free program incorporating the recent advances in MonteCarloTreeSearch?
- 2014's best is Zen from Japan, nearly 6-dan amateur strength!
writing programs to play chess and Go
- I wrote the first implementation of Bughouse chess on the Free Internet Chess Server (http://freechess.org/)
- A chess program written in Forth (http://www.quirkster.com/forth/FCP.html)
- A Go program written in Forth (http://www.quirkster.com/forth/fgp.html)
- Since DeepBlue beat Kasparov in 1997, more and more top chess programs on commodity multi-core systems have surpassed World Champion level strength. First came Fruit and Rybka in 2005. Then Houdini surpassed Rybka in 2010. In 2014 the lists are topped by Komodo, Stockfish, and Houdini. Stockfish is even OpenSource, both the program itself and its distributed testing framework Fishtest. The official WCCC hasn't kept up; the defacto world championship is Thoreson's Chess Engine Competition: http://tcec.chessdom.com/
ForthLanguage and the ForthValues it embodies (http://wiki.forthfreak.net/, SleeplessNightWiki)
- I've contributed Forth implementations on the various language comparison pages (CategoryInManyProgrammingLanguages)
- I've also contributed to the GreatComputerLanguageShootout. I'd encourage other disenfranchised ProgrammingLanguage advocates to do the same.
I like learning other ProgrammingLanguages, currently dinking with LogoLanguage, JavaScript, PythonLanguage, HaskellLanguage, IoLanguage, and FactorLanguage.
- I contribute to many ProgrammingChrestomathy sites, such as RosettaCode
- At one time I'd become obsessed with SnuspLanguage and FalseLanguage. Puzzling procrastination possibilities!
- And then I combined the two interests: JavaScript interpreters for EsotericProgrammingLanguages! (http://www.quirkster.com/js/)
building guided rockets, and learning about JavaLanguage and Linux DeviceDrivers along the way (http://psas.pdx.edu)
- I guess that makes me a RocketScientist!
- LV2 2001-2005 R.I.P. literally :( http://psas.pdx.edu/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=lv2_launch_08-20-2005&id=lv2_postmortem_with_labels
- We will rebuild it... stronger... faster... does anyone have any experience with FunctionalProgramming on PowerPc EmbeddedSystems?
- May 31, 2009: Finally saw a successful launch! Onward to new avionics...
- In 2010 we flew active roll control! But high speed aerodynamics are tricky; it actually rolled the opposite direction from how we turned the canard fins!
- 2014: Fins work great, payload is 5xGoPro cameras for 360-degree video! Looks fabulous when seen with an OculusRift?!
other OpenSource work with my rocket teammates:
- XCB, a light-weight replacement for Xlib (http://xcb.freedesktop.org/)
- cairo, a drawing library (http://cairographics.org/)
- revamping the Linux USB infrastructure
math and logic puzzles (curse you, MathQuizOne! :) ...but I did get PetalsAroundTheRose quickly (probably because I've been playing too much DungeonsAndDragons).
- My wife recently got me hooked on SuDoku. I also like SlitherLink? puzzles.
Gnomin', gnomin', gnomin'... Ignore the WikiTrolling... Keep them words a-flowin'... elide!
- I'm doing this gnoming on WikiPedia these days, awaiting some technical resolution of the AnonIsStillBanned ZeroTolerance debacle.

I have also worked at at Extensis, working in downtown PortlandOregon. I coded in CeePlusPlus, ObjectiveCee, and JavaLanguage, mainly working on a consumer Mac/Win image database called Portfolio. I was especially interested in TestDrivenDevelopment, UnitTestingLegacyCode, and LargeScaleCppSoftwareDesign. Our project had at least three TestingFrameworks all devoid of tests. :( Make that four, and we're finally getting tests written. :)

The company's first use of IterativeDevelopment was a great success. Both of our major product lines produced featureful and robust product revisions on the scheduled release dates. We even did away with our BetaTesting phase. I attribute this as much to ManagingExpectations as improved engineering.

Like my father before me, I BikeToWork and feel much better for it.

I participated in an XpCodeSprint held in Portland in April 2005. What a blast! It was my first experience with all the XP practices together at once. I learned PythonLanguage and many ExtremeProgrammingCorePractices (TestFirst, PlanningGame, ProjectVelocity, OnsiteCustomer, PairProgramming, PairPromiscuously, SmallReleases, CollectiveCodeOwnership).

It didn't hurt that the challenge, LineOfSightChess, was one of my hobbies. Having WardCunningham as the coach didn't hurt, either. :)

Just got back from a demo of HarryPortersRelayComputer. Amazing! Makes me nostalgic for the days of programming the IMSAI-8080 from the front panel switches.

TheyMightBeGiants. Yum.

I've been salivating over the aerodynamic Aptera vehicle (http://www.aptera.com). I'm hoping they start selling it in Oregon before my Prius wears out. I put a deposit down on the home-grown Arcimoto SRK (http://arcimoto.com/).

Aptera went under (poor mgmt), I gave my Prius to my sister (now CarFree!), bought an electric bike for my wife, and Arcimoto is working on the 7th of seven planned prototypes before production (fingers crossed!)

In the meantime, I have been following the Automotive X Prize (http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/) with great interest. Almost a dozen of the entrants achieved 100 MPGe or better under the EPA test cycle!

I swoon over ElonMusk? and his many brave ventures: PayPal, SolarCity?, TeslaMotors?, and SpaceExplorationTechnologies?. His friend and investor SteveJurvetson? got Tesla Model S #1. (He has the most fascinating Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/)

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