I've known Devin literally for years. We probably met in Mt. Vernon, a tiny little town in Iowa. This would have been in the early 1990s. We both moved around over the course of more than a decade until we both ended up in the San Francisco area. He doesn't blog but he's always interesting to talk with so I asked him if he'd let me interview him in the simplest form imaginable. He agreed and here's the result. His responses have only been edited slightly for clarity.
Who's the least influential musician or band which you still enjoy listening to and why?
Probably The Bloodhound Gang. They're sexist, juvenile, rap-rock, so I really ought to kinda hate them, but they're also a lot of fun and funny as hell, so. yeah. I still listen to them and enjoy it.
I asked him this because Devin has turned me onto a lot of great music I wouldn't otherwise know about, such as Steel Pole Bath Tub, Replicator and Billy Bragg.
You study a martial art. What is it? Why do you study a martial art and why this one?
I'm currently studying Shaolin kung fu at the Wen Wu school in El Cerrito. Originally I started going to a kick boxing studio with a co-worker when I decided I needed to do something exercise like to compensate for my sitting in front of a computer all the time lifestyle. I quit that when our schedules didn't match up. In the beginning I really needed a buddy to get me to go regularly. After that I went to the now defunct Kung Fu USA in El Cerrito with R when she was recovered enough from her car crash to return to the quan she'd been studying at before and needed a ride. When the owner closed the quan, some of my fellow students had moved on, ending up at the Wen Wu school after trying a few other places out. I joined them there. I think I chose martial arts over joining a gym because I get bored easily and gyms seem incredibly boring to me. I'd rather be learning how to do strange things with my body while working out.
And this is why you do not want to mess with him. If you antagonize him, he will do strange things to your and or his body.
What bug or new feature request for an open source software most desperately needs to be dealt with?
I haven't checked the status of this for a while, but it is the first thing to come to mind: 64-bit Linux support in general, flash specifically. It seems like a little thing, but it's the main thing that drove me back to running i386 based builds on my AMD64 system.
We spend a lot of time comparing different open source applications, running them, playing with them, breaking them and daydreaming about having the time to develop them. We actually have a dormant project on sourceforge called bbc.
What have you been thinking about lately?
Finals? I dunno. Nothing particularly interesting. Convergence and divergence of improper integrals, sequences and series. Plotting graphs and charts in perl without using GD, which goes back to the 64bit Linux support again. Can't use GD-based anything on this one server because GD + mod_perl = crashing and we think it's 64bit related.
The reference to finals and the mathy bits here are from the college class he's enrolled in, in his copious free time. I think he may be understanding the interestingness of the thinking here as that sounds like a thorny set of problems. I stole this question from Aaron Swartz.
What game do you wish you could spend more time playing?
All of them? I've been cycling through the games I have recently. Aside from WoW and the new LotR MMO, I've been putting some time in Oblivion, NWN2, and Dawn of War on the PC, and GuitarHero2 on the PS2.
I asked this because Devin's a multiple platform gamer, as you can see from his response.
OK, that's the end of this brief peek into his life. Thanks to Devin for taking the time to respond!
posted at 16:16 PDT (-0700) (comments disabled) permanent link Technorati tagged as: california, el cerrito, games, interview, kung fu, people i know
