Magister Sidney August Cammeresi IV

Of Lilydale, Champaign, and of his other Realms
and Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor

Ruling your world since 1979

E-mail: sac@cheesecake.org
Callsign: AB9BH
GPG fingerprint: 0089 97CC 659E 724D 2ECB 1A57 4F20 2A76 B86A 7299

Curriculum Vitæ (Résumé) [ps pdf] -- GPG Key -- Contact

This web page is available in three languages:
English Version — Versione Italiana — Esperanta Versio

I think Sid must sit at his computer all the time. Sometimes you get as long as
a 20-second lag between sending a mail to him and receiving a response.

Productivity

From August 2007, I have been employed as a Senior R&D Architect at Vizoncore, a company that produces management software for VMware.

From August 2004 to July 2007, I was employed at Telsasoft, a small company in the Minneapolis suburbs, writing alarm and performance monitoring software for mobile phone networks. I was the lead architect and developer in an effort to take some crusty Windows/Access/Oracle software in C++ and reimplement and improve it. TecAlert (alarm monitoring) and OpsAlert (performance reporting) gained some UNIX, and I learnt how to speak to wireless hardware like Nortel switches (CDMA and GSM), Nortel BSMs, Nortel OMCRs, Nortel MDMs and Passport 15000s, Logica SMSCs, Metaswitches, Tekelec switches, and many other things.

My products were so successful that the president of one of my competitors came to the web page you're looking at right now. He was directed here after one of his subordinates sent him an e-mail about his research on our company which included mention of me. (This information was obtained through completely legal, technological means. This should clue you in that you're dealing with the genuine article here.)

From March 2003 to July 2004, I was employed at the University of Illinois doing various things for the Department of Rehabilitation-Education Services. I wrote Word support for an accessible web publishing wizard, built a compiler that takes an XML schema as input and outputs SQL and PHP scripts for editing data in Postgres databases, and built a database for our text conversion office to help them manage their work and deadline data (fully accessible, of course).

From August 1997 to January 2003, I was a student, first as an undergraduate then as a graduate, at UIUC in Computer Science. I received a BS in CS in May 2000, and I received an MCS in May 2003 (Master of Computer Science). I TAed for a while in graduate school, and I spent one semester working in the Parallel Programming Laboratory on various issues in Parallel Object Oriented Programming (POOP).

While in school, I had numerous summer jobs. My last one was in 2002, when I worked for the National Association of REALTORS® designing a better lockbox that employed Java-powered cryptographic iButtons. The winter before that, I also worked for NAR, writing a query language translator and a DTD-based database creator. The summer before that, I worked for Yesmail, writing a database converter and a database replicator. The summer before that, I worked for RIMS (before all of my friends either resigned or were terminated from there two weeks after I left) writing a JDBC database manipulator and an XML repository. I also whipped up a telnet latency calculator in about four hours one day which played a crucial role in sealing a multimillion-dollar contract, for which I was promised a bonus on which RIMS later reneged. Before that, I worked for places like STG, the PPL, Elliott Valve, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

If you are interested in hiring me (and are in a position to do so), please look at my CV (aka résumé) in either PostScript or PDF format.

I must have missed a few chapters.

Wife

My lovely wife Sara and I got married on 29 December 2006 at Edinburgh, Scotland. (Travelblog, trip pictures, wedding pictures.) Before that, we dated for approximately 2.3 years and were then engaged for about 0.4 years. Sara is a supergenius and is a PhD candidate in History of Science at the University of Minnesota. Because she is very important to me and because she is the second coolest person in the world, I decided to make her the second section on my web page.

Your photographs are delightful!

Photography

I am an amateur photographer, so I own an assortment of cameras and photographic accessories. My primary camera is a Wisner 11x14 view camera. (A view camera is a style of camera that has been essentially unchanged for over 150 years, the kind with a bellows that the user focusses with his head under a cloth.) In case you're wondering, film for this camera costs $5 per exposure. I bought the camera used from a guy who bought it new about six months previously, but he said that after using it a few times, it became literally painfully obvious that the ravages of age had caught up with him and that he was too old to carry the camera around and really enjoy it as he hoped he would (the camera weighs about 20 pounds). As for lenses, I use a Nikkor-M 450/9 since it has a tonne of coverage (up to 20x24, I hear, and I may eventually want a 12x20 rear standard for this camera) and a Schneider G-Claron 305/9. I also have a gargantuan Process Nikkor 260/10 which I intend to someday have mounted in a Copal 3 shutter so I can use it with this camera. In the past, I have used my Nikkor-M 300/9 which actually does cover 11x14, but provides essentially no room for movements. I'd like to eventually buy a Fujinon C 600/11.5. The camera came with a custom made soft-sided case, and because the camera system is so heavy, when I want to photograph more than 100 feet from the car, I load the case onto a small a luggage cart to wheel it around.

I like using a view camera because it allows a much greater degree of control of perspective through the use of camera movements, and the design of a view camera is more amicable to a much slower, thoughtful style of photographing, as it is very slow to operate and as the image you see on the ground glass is inverted and laterally reversed. Also, because my negatives are so huge, I make only contact prints, and I can trivially crush users of smaller cameras in terms of raw image quality. (Size matters.)

I would say that I sometimes use my Sinar F2 4x5 view camera when it's too inconvenient to use my 11x14, but that would be false because I've shot very little 4x5 since getting my 11x14 system fully operational, although I'm considering maybe one day getting a 5x7 or 5x12 camera so that I can have a smaller camera but still get a decent sized print, as I do not enlarge my large format negatives.

On days when my large format cameras are too cumbersome to use, I pull out my Nikon N80 35mm SLR system or my Mamiya C330 6x6 TLR system. I do have a medium format enlarger (as I use the bathroom in my apartment as a darkroom), but I have to admit that I've considered the prospect of contact printing medium format negatives.

These days, I use almost exclusively Bergger film and graded paper. Their film is an older style of emulsion which responds very well when developed in pyro developers. (I use PMK Pyro.) Speaking of developing film and other darkroom work, I do that all myself, of course.

If all of this photo stuff sounds exciting to you, you might want to read up on how to build a 35mm SLR system and then go buy some of your own equipment. If you already have some reasonable equipment and you want to get more of it, you might want to read about how to choose a medium format system or how to choose a large format system (highly recommended).

One day, I should like to have a proper display of some of my photographs online, but until then, you shall have to content yourself with some photographs I took of my sister's wedding and of a fireworks display. I also very seldom post photographs in my blog.

Have you signed up for yoga yet? Flute lessons?

Piano

In August 2005, I decided to learn to play the piano. I am studying under Miss Diana McMillan. My studies to date have been of Bach, Chopin, inter alia. I am progressing rapidly and am helped by my past seven years' trumpet experience as well as the ease with which I am able to memorise. I presently practice on a Yamaha P120 digital piano. It's a neat instrument, and when I get bored, it's fun to switch voices to harpsichord or organ or something, and hear what I'm playing a little more like Bach would have heard it.

You are a nerd, but you explain yourself well, and execution is everything.

Technology

I am `one of those UNIX users,' as most of my computers run Mac OS X, OpenBSD, or Linux. I run my own mail server, web server, DNS server, database server, etc. I used to have my own IRC server (connected to Cognet) and a closet colocation facility that was connected to an SDSL.

One thing I like to do is write software. Once upon a time, I was a member of the OpenBLT Project, an effort to develop a free, microkernel-based operating system under a BSD licence, but my OS hacking days are in the past now. We were not aiming for anything like POSIX compliance; rather we prefered to do something new and innovative. OpenBLT turned out to be useful for the RHODOS distributed operating system research group at Deakin University in Australia, who were using OpenBLT as the basis of a port to Intel machines. Some of the other assorted code that I've written is on the web as well.

One day, I was reading some blogs on the web, and I got jealous and wanted to start my own blog, but I then decided that I was much too high and mighty to use any existing blog software to accomplish this. I proceeded to write my own blog software with comment system, I called it Nublog, and now my blog is on the web. It started out small as just a Python script generating a static web page, but it has since evolved into a bunch of Python, PHP, and XSL talking to a Postgres database and generating dynamic pages.

Once upon a time, I wrote Writing an Operating System for SPARC-Based Computers and Bringing SMP to Your UP Operating System, while I was part of ACM@UIUC.

[Party] Mvoetof: "have an insta up Jo?"
[Party] Jotoo: "group yes"
[Party] Mvoetof: "Ail will prob need one when those little guys go [bonkers] on him"
...
You cast a Disenchanting Eruption Spell!
...
Ailnobh was just killed by an undeveloped burrowing monstrosity!

Gaming

Historically, I have gone through phases of liking and disliking games, but in January 2002, I discovered the genre of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Games), and I played them pretty hard until March 2004. Specifically, I got into Dark Age of Camelot, playing the game initially for about 15 months or so. I've also played PlanetSide a little bit as well as Star Wars: Galaxies, but that game had way, way too many technical problems and was released way, way too early to really entertain me. After a nine-month or so break from DAoC, we started playing again a month after the release of ToA, so my L50, ML9, RR6 Enchanter/Stormlord got pulled out of the attic and exercised a bit more. I played PlanetSide for a while when we weren't playing DAoC and got my NC character up to BR20/CR2. When I played multiplayer games, I played with the guild Divine Vengeance.

I wasn't much of a photographer in DAoC, so I don't have many good screenshots, but here is one of a bunch of people (including yours truely) after getting roasted by a dragon.

These days, I do not play many games, but I enjoy playing in sealed-deck leagues in Magic Online.

Your vision for society is a recipe for disaster. [Pot. Kettle. Black.]

Philosophy

My philosophy is Objectivism, the philosophy which Ayn Rand created during the course of her life. I first encountered her writing by way of Atlas Shrugged, which I began reading in 1994 at age 15, although I didn't finish reading it until four years later. Both during and after that time, I read some of her non-fiction, and in college, I started digging into the real stuff like OPAR. In 1998, I was one of the founding members of the Illinois Objectivist Club. The Objective Standard and The Harry Binswanger List provide my everyday intellectual ammunition.

-- What the hell is that? -- Sid's way of saying he is better than you.

Eccentricity

I am an Amateur Radio operator with callsign AB9BH, and I hold an Extra Class licence. I have found that I enjoy DXing and contesting, and I even have a whole page dedicated to Amateur Radio. My friend HRH The Duke of Champaign The Doctor Koenig and I used to run the Synton Amateur Radio Club on campus. For a time, our station manager was The Right Honourable Earl Kuester. A while ago, I was tuning around the HF bands, and I heard some numbers stations, so I of course documented my monitorings in the form of a web page.

In 2001, I decided to buy a slide rule after having wanted one for about three years. I now have a small collection (totalling three) of them and have decided that slide rules are incredibly neat. I hope to have some photographs of mine up soon.

I enjoy drinking tea with my favourites being Earl Grey, Assam, and Russian Caravan teas, with a green tea thrown in now and then for a change of pace. These days, I buy most of my tea from Grace Tea Company Ltd. Hopefully, you have some scones handy to take with your tea. If you don't, I recommend chocolate. I also enjoy serving tea, and no one to whom I have served tea failed to be impressed by the experience.

I'm so comfortable with my masculinity that when at home, I watch movies whilst curled up under an afghan that I crocheted myself, and when I'm outside in the cold, I wear a scarf that I knitted myself. When it's cold, I also like to wear hats, most often my English driving cap (aka a five-point hat).

I do not believe in using integrated development environments, word processors, or spelling checking software; I instead opt for shell windows, a text editor, and a compiler to write software; LaTeX for my typesetting; and accurate hands and a keen eye to catch misspelt words.

In 2000, I decided to honour the best of the best of the best of instructors under whom I had studied during my undergraduate career. On 19 April of that year, I admitted four University faculty to the Cammeresi Arbitrium Magistrōrum (Cammeresi Teachers' Award). The CAM was awarded for only the second time some four years later, on 19 April 2004, at which time one additional faculty member was admitted. The award is presently closed to further admissions. To date, four of the five recipients are still extant.

I've had two different people threaten to sue me. Neither actually did.

I learnt to speak Esperanto in 1994, and I dust off my skills occasionally to read some web pages or something. Unfortunately, I don't get to use it very often, although I have been meaning to subscribe to an Esperanto magazine or two for quite some time. I have the smallest Esperanto page on the web.

I have had a web page since 1996, and I enjoy working on it, which some people might find kind of strange. This is the 2½-th version. Some of my relatives are also on the web. These include:

Direct Ascendants:

Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor
Alfred the Great, King of England
Henry I, King of France
Sir Roger de Kirkpatrick of Closeburn
Saint Arnulf of Metz

Cousins:

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom
Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain
Charles Felix, King of Sardinia
Louis-Philippe, King of France
Umberto II, King of Italy

These relationships are not facetious assertions.

The End.