| Name: | Jay Bedsole |
| Date of birth: |
October 19, 1959 (A fitting link, since a couple of my favorite classics are: Mack The Knife and Sleep Walk) |
| Place of birth: | Groves, Texas (note: they have no groves in Groves) |
| Formidable years: | Bridgeport, Illinois (note: they have no bridges nor ports in Bridgeport) |
| High school: | Red Hill No. Red Hill is not the name of some famous war hero or the site of a famous Civil War battle. It is the name of a nearby state park that resides between Bridgeport and the neighboring town of Sumner. When the two school districts were consolidated, they took on the name of Red Hill. For the record, there is a hill (of sorts) but it's not red... |
| Mascot: | Saluki
(an effeminate, wimpy Arabian dog - fitting... trust me)
This just goes to show how the urge to be clever can overwhelm the ability to exercise good judgment... You see, the Bridgeport mascot was the Bulldog and Sumner were the Arabs, so naturally... |
| High school sport: | Wrestling (OK, I played football, too...) |
| Current home: | Austin, Texas |
| Major adventure: | Lived for three years with my family in Strathaven, a small village in Scotland. |
| University: | "The" University of Texas, Austin |
| Degree: | BSEE (Computer Engineering focus) |
| Employer: | Freescale (spin-off from Motorola) (20 years with Motorola and "still" counting... with Freescale) |
| Job: | Test Engineer (Test Different) |
| Platform preference: | Macintosh (Think Different) |
| Hobbies: | All things music |
| Guitars: |
Parker P44, Ibanez ST50, Alvarez Dove (acoustic) Here are some pictures of my guitars... |
| Guitar gizmo: | Korg ToneWorks Pandora PX4 |
| Favorite guitarists: (Top 10) |
Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci, Blues Saraceno, Vinnie Moore, Eric Johnson, Eddie Van Halen, Jason Becker, Dweezil Zappa, Neil Zaza (in approximate order of preference... today...) |
| Favorite album: |
Dream Theater: Scenes From A Memory
Never mind that John Petrucci is one of my favorite guitarists... Never mind that the band is THE greatest progressive rock band around... Scenes From A Memory is a concept album that stands apart from any concept album that I've ever heard. The music is incredible, but the story line is even more incredible. A sophisticated web of plot twists on top of plot twists; it almost has to be studied to be appreciated, though the music can certainly appeal to casual listeners, as well. As an added treat, there's a DVD version that intermixes live concert footage and a sort of passion play. In a one second flash in the final scene, an added twist is introduced that puts a new spin on the entire concept. Guaranteed to make you think and once you figure it out... well, it's an experience... First runner up is Steve Vai's Alive In A Ultra World. This 2 CD live album contains only original material. Most live albums rehash the standard hits of the artist and may throw in one or two new tunes. Every tune on these two CDs is new and written specifically for each stop on the international tour. The only exception is "Devil's Food", which is really "Angel Food", except that Steve breaks a string in the middle and proceeds to ad lib through the rest of the song having fun with the audience and the band! Second runner up is Linkin' Park's Reanimator. This album is a combination tribute / remix of their first album Hybrid Theory. The cool thing is that every song has a guest artist doing the remix. The harmonies, rhythms, and more are changed in very creative ways. Linkin' Park contributes, but almost as if they are the guests on their own songs. Everything is different enough to make it interesting, but familiar enough to connect the two albums in your mind. I cannot listen to Hybrid Theory without hearing harmonies from Reanimator in my head (and visa versa). When I'm alone in my car, I'll add the alternate harmonies to create yet a different musical complexity that I find very enjoyable. |
| Favorite book: | Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
- Douglas Hofstadter (Hofstadter and his colleagues destroy the facade of contemporary strong Artificial Intelligence proponents and get to the meat of the way the mind works.) |
| Least favorite book: | The Blind Watchmaker
- Richard Dawkins (Dawkins is very confused about what constitutes good science. I mention this only because this book often makes it onto lists of top ten science books.) |
| Least favorite book: (runner up... err... down?) |
God's Debris
- Scott Adams Yeah, the Dilbert guy. The book is available for free download. This book does not contain any of the usual humorous cartoons, typical of Adams' writings. My assessment: Scott should focus on developing humorous cartoons. I could provide a detailed analysis of what's wrong with the book and why I don't like it, but (as Adams points out) that would be pointless and here's why... |
| Favorite quote: | "Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact." - Thomas Henry Huxley |
| Favorite geek quote: (from a TV series) |
Uttered from Major Samantha Carter (Actress Amanda Tapping), on the TV series
Stargate SG1, upon finding an ancient dialing device for the Stargate."Amazing. This is what was missing from the dig at Giza. It took us 15 years and 3 supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the gate on Earth."Note: Colonel Jack O'Neill (actor Richard Dean Anderson who played MacGyver on the 80's TV show) was standing right next to her at the time. |
| Favorite wild theory: | Roger Penrose's Quantum Theory of Consciousness |
| Favorite tee-shirt: | Binary People ("There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't") |
| Perl Geek: | I admit it. I'm a bit of a geek. Red Green calls duct tape the handy man's secret
weapon. Well, perl is the geek's secret weapon. That being said, here is one of my
favorite perl scripts.
It really doesn't do anything useful, but that's part of it's charm. In case you're
wondering... the camel
is the O'Reilly mascot for perl and yes, that's a real script.
If you're perl savvy, I suggest you run it...
If you're not perl savvy or you're just too lazy, here's the output of this script... Cool, eh!? |
| Vital signs: | Mind the gap |
| Pet peeves: | Pretentious people who build self-serving web sites about all their favorite stuff as if anyone else were really interested... |