http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)Since I don't use a 20K background GIF, I'm not going to bother to break the page up into shorter files; it'll still load faster than most of the monstrosities currently being perpetrated as WWW pages.
Which segues nicely into the first section...
Of course, I have to actually write things and/or convert them to HTML in order to fill this section up. That's sort of the flip side of my emphasis on content; it's harder to create real content than it is to just toss together an ugly background, garish green links, and a few <blink> tags for good measure.
Right now the only thing here is a document with some of my thoughts on World Wide Web design.
I'm also very concerned about the Communications Decency
Act and its effects on the Internet; while I haven't had time to write up
a full-blown rant on the subject (other things have been taking up most of
my time), I can at least add a mention of it here until then, and join the
Blue Ribbon Campaign and
the VTW "black pages" protest.
The Boston University library system's online catalog is in violation of the so-called "Communications Decency Act" for containing scholarly writings on Vietnam and Henry Miller, each of which contains the word "fuck" somewhere in a chapter or paper title. Snippings from the catalog are included for your perusal. Note that even before there was Internet access to that catalog, minors were (and are) students at Boston University and the BU Academy.
During the Fall 1995 semester I was a TA at MIT for 4.207, a Software Design Studio. I may wind up doing something similar again in Fall 1996.
As a system administrator at a small site, I have to be a jack-of-all-trades. I have to keep mail, news, and WWW running; manage Mac and PC integration with the network; fact-check articles on technical topics; answer questions on topics from HTML to DOS to "what kind of computer to buy"; take care of VCR programming when there's a show that needs taping for the library... I get to do all kinds of things, half of them apparently impossible. It keeps things interesting. Eric Pearce has written a very good article on this phenomenon, which I happen to agree with.
My boss even has a homepage of his very own, now that he's hooked on the Web.
Some older projects include the CyberTV Online web server and most of the Technology Access for Boston web pages.
I was one of the authors of RFC 1876, specifying a way to put location information (latitude, longitude, etc) in the DNS. (This is not the same scheme as RFC 1712.) It's already in BIND 4.9.3, which I've also worked on (mostly on the SunOS 4.1.x shared library support).
I'm trying to learn Japanese, and in my copious free time I'm also taking a fencing class over at MIT.
I read quite a bit of science fiction, and some fantasy; as the name of my workstation implies, I'm a particular fan of Steven Brust's work. My interests (and collection), however, range all over the map; some authors I like who also have WWW pages about (or even by) them (what's the fun of listing the authors that don't, after all?) are listed below. (I have a soft spot for authors who are on the net; a bunch of them are in my scorefile for rec.arts.sf.written, a group that I (sadly) can't always keep up with even with a good scoring newsreader (namely Gnus 5).
My taste in music runs mostly to "classic rock", as well as the early-80s music I grew up with (one-hit wonders and all). I'm a reasonably avid player of INWO as well as the Mayfair "crayon" rail games. I still sometimes hang out on Internet Relay Chat, despite the fact that it's overloaded, overrun with annoying warbots, and generally going downhill fast. However, #perl, #www, and even #Twilight_Zone are occasionally useful.
I read (and post) to a reasonably wide selection of USENET groups, mostly job-related (the security groups, comp.mail.*, news.software.*, comp.infosystems.www.providers) and a few not (rec.arts.sf.written, comp.sys.mac.games).
I'm on a number of mailing lists, some of which get dumped to local newsgroups and some of which get auto-filed by procmail.
I haven't been into MUD/MUSH/MOO/whatever stuff for years.
I wander the web, of course, and you might want to look at my sadly unmaintained cool links page (as if there aren't enough of those on the Net already). Many moons ago I wrote up a document called "A Short, Semi-Guided Tour of the Internet" which is an extremely outdated list of links that were cool well over a year ago. However, people still have HREFs to it, and people still look at it, so I still have it on the server.
What with USENIX conferences, years working for EFF, hanging out on IRC, and all, I've met a number of people, some of them even in person. A partial list of links (in alphabetical order) to their home pages is included below. If they're really lucky, I'll add the reasons for their infamy to the list someday. (For ease of reference, I'm now also including the folks listed above in this list.)
My work phone number is +1 617 576 4532.
My snail-mail address (if you must):
Christopher Davis
Kapor Enterprises, Inc.
238 Main Street, Suite 400
Cambridge, MA 02142