my interests
I love working in tech, but I’m also into plenty of other things. A few:
[1] I love visual culture, and always have. I shoot 35mm film for fun. I mainline great movies, new and old. I dig for good design work, good ad creative, interesting fashion design, compelling art. My visual sensibility really informs my work.
Here’s a pic I shot on my vintage Olympus XA on Ilford HP5 film at Versailles:
[2] I’m very interested in AI, and AI safety in particular. I enjoy learning about deep technical concepts. I code little projects and read whitepapers for fun.
[3] I love engineering, especially in the aerospace, aviation, and automotive domains. At one point, I was ready to begin studies overseas in high performance automotive engineering. But the crushing debt scared me off, so I chose instead to focus on software and learning stuff myself for free. I still love all these fields and sometimes like to think I’d make a good (and very passionate) addition to the NTSB accident investigation team.
[4] I’m a lifelong dancer. I grew up doing competitive highland dancing. These days I do a lot of heels dance.
[5] I’ve always loved perfume, and after a recent trip to Paris really re-ignited that obsession for me, I gave in and started indulging it more. I collect perfume, I love to learn about it (it’s really quite complex, artistic, and creative – you can go as deep on perfume as you can on wine!), and I write about it occasionally on a little on a perfume blog I have. I’m also tinkering with a perfume app for collectors. I’ll share more on that soon.
[6] I’m passionate about animal rescue. I have two beloved FeLV+ cats who I adopted from The Meow Foundation in Calgary. Prior to this I had an FIV+ cat with kidney disease named Flash, who was an older guy. I adopted him through the Cat Rescue and Therapy Society in Vancouver. And before him, I had an older cat named Booboo from the Calgary Humane Society. I warmly encourage anyone who’s inclined to adopt an animal to consider senior animals, and/or those with manageable special needs. They’re so often overlooked, needlessly. My current cats are bonded brothers, they’re super happy and healthy, and they waited over a year for adoption. If you have any questions about adopting and caring for seniors and/or special needs cats, by all means please reach out to me.
[7] Lastly, I really love Formula 1. I’m pretty good at F1 Fantasy. Like, in the top ~0.5% of people who play globally. This fact is embarrassing but true and I’m always delighted to nerd out with other people who are also into it.