Paul Abbott

I am an engineer who has been lucky enough to be involved in some software development. My training is actually in metallurgy, but I got involved in development while designing undersea fiber optic cable routes. I worked with a very talented VB jock by the name of Grayson Ferrante. Man was that guy ever in to documentation, very thorough. I did a lot of testing for the engineering function automation features I instigated. I also helped in specifying data structures and interaction. Once while brainstorming with Grayson a colleague remarked that I would be dangerous if I could program. Well...

I'm teaching myself some Python while I get a feel for open source projects I might want to get involved in. And I am utterly fascinated with the XP and Pattern Language foci on WardsWiki. Much to learn, of course, but I've been chewing on some far-reaching system design projects for a few years now which my current investigations are framing for their maturity to involve others.

Also, and I'm quite unsure if this will be deemed appropriate, but another project I've been working on for some time is a functional definition of humanity, which I think might relate to pattern languages in an aspect of proposing to decompile the source code of humanity. Of course, there are other forums.

Ok well, what will have to count for an update at this point is: MoinMoin rules! Or it's proving very useful on my local machine for getting together a lot of stuff I've been working on for a while.

PaulAbbott 20040415 0051CDT

Well, all the above still applies, except I'm going to be working in Iraq, Baghdad actually, for a while. Better, it looks like I will be little occupied on the night shift for a while, the better to work on my own projects. Blah blah blah, sigh.

PaulAbbott 20041114 0149GMT+3

Hmm, wiki initiative bogs down in large organization IT structure. I'm about finished with my year contract in Iraq and I'm getting some decompression time. Attempting to leave things in a better state on my departure, I hit upon setting up a simple wiki for a dynamic knowledge base. NO GO, at least so far. Well, I’ll have to see what a little persistence and/or subversive activity can do.