Hi, welcome to my blog.
The box above is my hCard. I also have a LinkedIn profile and a few friends on facebook.
I’m a software developer based in Northern California. I work on a variety of early-stage and contracted software projects and am available for contract software development. Most of my commercial experience has been in electronic design automation (EDA); In the past, I’ve worked both in a large semiconductor and electronics company and in small EDA startups.
In January 2005, I set up Neon Design Technology, Inc. to help introduce a “new eon” of software tools for design.
In 2007, I created and released an open-source programming language called Nu.
What is neontology?
neontology.com is the domain name I chose for my company. It has a few interesting connotations:
- Neos is a Greek word meaning “new”. It is the root of the English prefix neo-, which also means “new”.
- In philosophy, ontology is the discussion of “being”, basically considering the question of what it means to say that something exists. In computer science, an ontology is a structured collection of knowledge about objects and the relationships among them. In a sense, you could consider it a very ambitious database. In practice, it’s so difficult that it can only be done in specific domains, such as genetics or wine. But lately, it’s become a popular term among people who anticipate a semantic web.
- In biology, neontology is the study of currently living organisms. This is in contrast to paleontology, the study of fossils and extinct organisms. In this sense, neontology is the study of those who have successfully evolved.
But what’s in a name? Have you learned something new today?
In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world which no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition
