Editing User:LeMonkey

[[File:Lemonkey.jpg|300px|right]]

Is it le-monkey or lemon-key?  It's really up to you, but whenever I read it I think le-monkey.  I respond to either in public.

I'm a game developer / Flash, iPhone, .Net and Web 2.0 engineer who has recently relocated to San Francisco from Chicago in June 2009.  I hold a BS degree in Computer Science from the University of Iowa but I'm also 1 semester short of a BS degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (aka Engineering Mechanics) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I was fortunate to have  worked on a variety of cool projects including the X-391 Human Powered Helicopter contest (we built our own kiln to cure carbon fiber spars) and the Beckman Hexapod project (where I helped run stress tests as part of my senior design project) among other things.

My interests are all over the place, but I tend to be most absorbed in all things computing at the moment. I have familiarity with C/ObjC/C++/ActionScript (2.0/3.0)/Java/C#/OpenGL/ML/Prolog/Tcl and am currently doing C# web development as my day job at [http://townhog.com TownHog] in addition to [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/townhog/id349412627?mt=8 iPhone development] and Flash game development on the side (play a few Flash games that I worked on for Orbitz: [http://orbitzgames.com/arcade_bingbing.aspx BingBing], [http://orbitzgames.com/arcade_stacker.aspx Stacker], and [http://orbitzgames.com/arcade_soccer.aspx Soccer]).

Since I recently relocated to the bay area from Chicago in 2009 I'm always up for learning about cool things to go see and do.

My passions in the past and ongoing have included:
 * dwarf fortress (puts hair on your chest!)
 * architecture
 * physics
 * robotics
 * aerodynamics/astrophysics
 * computer history
 * online communities/social networking/IRC
 * experimental music/MIDI/software synthesizers
 * art nouveau
 * underground comix
 * game development
 * cycling

I've also been involved with computers/electronics/BBSes/hacking ever since I can remember (Radio Shack, Edmund Scientific, American Science and Surplus, Forrest M. Mims III, [http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/DELAM/ripusers Ripco], Phrack, TAP, Cdc, 2600, etc.) and have been recently working with microcontrollers (Arduino, XBee, stepper motors, etc.) while reading [http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510510 "Making Things Talk"].

I've been on [http://tinyurl.com/y9r9up2 Usenet] since around 1989 and EFNet since around 1991.  The majority of my BBS exploration was limited to the 708 and 312 area codes during the 1980s.  I feel fortunate to have been at UIUC in the early 90s where I was able to witness the birth of the WWW/Mosaic/etc. with the help of NCSA and the university.

Oh, and one of my letters (not article) to 2600 got published a long long time ago, but it is embarrassing looking back on it now.  Ask me and I can dredge up the issue it was printed in.

Some links:

* [http://aribraginsky.com What's new, Portfolio, etc.]
* [http://twitter.com/lemonkey Twitter]
* [http://www.facebook.com/lemonkey Facebook]
* [http://www.flickr.com/people/simon_lemonkey Flickr]
* [http://last.fm/user/psicom Last.FM]

In the end I hope to become a member of Noisebridge as soon as my finances get under control, hopefully soon.

No, I'm not a troll.