Employment

1998- Palm, Inc. Test Programmer. Maintained, debugged, and extended internal test tool for PalmVII server load testing.

1998 Concept Kitchen, Chief Programmer. WindowsCE, PalmPilot, and Perl programming.

1995-1997 Apple Computer, Newton Systems Group Software Quality Assurance. Low-level Quality Lead, MessagePad 2100. API Quality Lead, eMate 300. Maintained and extended internal tool for automated API and user testing. Developed test tools for Mac NBU data integrity. Designed, implemented, revised, and maintained a variety of Newton test tools. As semi-official Usenet representative, handled third-party bug reports, user data collection, rumor management, and spin control.

1993-1994 Pocket Science, San Jose, California. Freelance Newton programmer. Developed KwikMenu; see "Newton Software."

1986-1989 Department of Electrical Engineering, Queen Mary College, The University of London. Research Assistant, Inference under Uncertainty. Miscellaneous writings on Artificial Intelligence, listed below. Co-system managed a SUN-2 running UNIX BSD 4.2. Refereed four papers on non-standard logics for ECAI 88, the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

1982 Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire. Teaching Intern. Helped teach Pre-Calculus and Logic, taught a section of Pre-Algebra.

1981 NASA Lewis Research Center, Structures and Materials Technology Division, Cleveland, Ohio. PDP-11/34a RSX-11M FORTRAN programming.

I have been the publicity director and webmaster of the Stanford Newton User Group since 1994, am president of the Stanford PalmPilot User Group, and was chief judge for the NewtHack III and PalmHack IV programming contests.

Education
  • Balliol College, The University of Oxford. 1982-1986, 1989-1993. I am rewriting my thesis for a doctorate in mathematical logic under the supervision Dr. Alec Wilkie, Reader in Mathematical Logic, and the late Dr. Robin Gandy. The thesis is on Alonzo Church's and Arnold Oberschelp's set theories with a universal set, and is summarized in sections 4.1 and 4.3 of Set Theories with a Universal Set, by T.E. Forster , Oxford Logic Guides 20, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992. The main result is finished and will be published by the University of Chicago Press/CSLI; see "Publications."

  • Yale College. B.A. 1982, Mathematics and Philosophy. Anthony D. Stanley Award for Excellence in Pure and Applied Mathematics.

  • Phillips Exeter Academy. Graduated 1978 cum laude.

    Publications
    "Status Bar Buttons Made Cheap and Easy," accepted for PIE Developers.

    "Generalizing Church's j-Equivalence while Preserving Extensionality," accepted for Alonzo Church's ninetieth birthday Festschrift, to be published by the University of Chicago Press/Stanford Center for the Study of Language and Information, edited by Michael Zeleny.

    "A Survey of Techniques for Inference under Uncertainty," Artificial Intelligence Review, 1991 [5] pp. 89-119.

    Articles in Non-Standard Logics for Automated Reasoning, Academic Press, 1988, edited by Phillipe Smets, E.H. Mamdani, and Didier Dubois, reviewed in The Journal of Symbolic Logic, March 1992, volume 57 #1, pp. 277-281, and in Mathematical Reviews, 91h:68162:

    "Avalon in CLOS: Object-Oriented Representation of Knowledge about Relations," internal report.

    "Ranking Heuristics for the ATMS: Faster Search for a Few Interpretations using the ATMS to Scan Homer," internal report.

    PalmPilot Software
    Pilot Register ( Kagi Engineering, Inc). Port of Newton Register (above) to the Palm Pilot, written in CodeWarrior C. Pre-alpha.

    Small Talk Version 1.02 & Japanese Language Module ( LandWare, Inc. $20). Added support for Japanese OS extension; supervised and implemented translation of phrase database into Japanese.

    Newton Software

    KwikMenu ( LandWare, Inc. $40). Provides immediate, universal menu access to a variety of common tasks which otherwise require multiple steps, e.g., retyping frequently used text or the user's personal information, making a new appointment or to-do item without closing the current application and opening Dates, immediate connection to the user's favored Macintoshes or to email, an uncrippled font/style/size menu, and multiple text clipboards.

    Reviews:

  • Pen Computing June 1996
  • NewtNews May 6, 1997

    Register ( Kagi Engineering, Inc, Berkeley, CA). Allows a user to pay for software with a credit card via electronic mail; includes an API and sample code. Supported by approximately 150 third-party packages.

  • MacWEEK 07-31-96
  • MacAddict 12-97

    URLCop Provides an API to dispatch a URL to the appropriate application. Supported by:

  • Newt's Cape
  • Newt's Paper
  • pURL
  • Shuffler

    MetriGPS (freeware, with Aleksandr Milewski). Estimates the latitude and longitude of a Newton equipped with a Metricom wireless modem.

    NotifyFix (shareware). Fixes a bug in 1.x alarm notification which hides an alarm dialog when the Newton goes to sleep.

    MailFix (freeware). Fixes bugs in 1.x NewtonMail which disable the clipboard and floating keyboards, and ignore the user's font and style preferences.

    ExtraFix (freeware). Fixes an interface flaw in the Extras Drawer which closes (rather than shows) a hidden package when the user clicks on its icon. Written as a supplement to my PDA Developers journal article; see "Publications."

    Burrito Beamer (freeware). Faxes or emails an order to a custom taqueria.

    Disabler (shareware). The first startup manager for Newton OS 1.x. Allows the user to disable all InstallScripts, or just InstallScripts on a card, and heuristically adjusts the Newton's notoriously inaccurate clock on startup. Called "a good hack" by Steve Capps; included on PIE Developers Journal Source Code Disk 2.2.

    Languages
    Latin, Greek, French (fair), Russian (poor), German (poor, reading only).

    Address
    101 Alma Street
    Palo Alto,
    California 94301-1008
    650-462-9203
    flash@pobox.com
    http://pobox.com/~flash
    Born April 8, 1960, Washington D.C.