After we had both graduated from college we got married on June 6th, 1992. Lynn
is a very complex and wonderful person and I'll make her write her own home
page sometime soon, so I don't have to write everything about her.Big John's Home Page
My name is John Robert Welch. I was born December 18th, 1967 in Lincoln Park Michigan. As far back as I can remember I have loved reading. At first I was an indiscriminate reader, basically reading everything in the house and as much of the local library as I could carry home. Gradually I settled on Science Fiction as my favorite reading matter. I believe that I read every science fiction book in the library. Well, I don't have free time now like I did then, but I still read as much as I can.
In high school I met Lynn Meyer, the great love of my life. I fell in love
and eventually convinced her that she loved me.
After we had both graduated from college we got married on June 6th, 1992. Lynn
is a very complex and wonderful person and I'll make her write her own home
page sometime soon, so I don't have to write everything about her.
After high school I went off to college. I went to Michigan State and studied computer programming and learned to cook.
After graduating from Michigan State in 1991 I got a programming job at the Institute for the Learning Sciences, which was a department of Northwestern University. So I moved to Evanston and worked for ILS for 7+ years writing multimedia tools, training, and educational software. I learned a lot working there and met a lot of really cool people. Unfortunately the Institute pretty much died, so I moved on. In January of 1999 I changed jobs and worked at DARC for 2 1/2 years developing "enterprise" software. Currently I am working full time for Redshift Software on internal projects and contract work.You can check out my resume if you are interested. I like design work and can do a lot of different things from relational databases to multimedia.
The image above is the Japanese kanji for atom, spelled out in individual atoms.
I think it is nicely self referential
I learned of nanotechnology in 1990 when I read K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation. Since then I have tried to see if we are heading to the amazing developments Drexler discussed. Although we are probably a long away from seeing it commercially, there is good reason to suspect that we will. For example, funding for nanotechnology is growing yearly and is over a half billion annually in the U.S. The lure of stronger materials, better medicines and faster computers is certainly enough to keep research and development happening. To track what is happening I follow the science press and read enthusiast sites such as Nanodot , and Nanotech News. I think the most exciting company that is working on nanotechnology is Zyvex. They are a longshot, but they are trying to create the future that Drexler imagined.
I am like a lot of technical people in that I really like science fiction. I recommend Babylon 5 highly, but not much else on TV. I am picky and like the "hard stuff" that strives for technical accuracy, so if your tastes are at all like mine you will probably like Steven Baxter, Greg Egan, and Neal Stephenson. I will cover more of my interests in SF as time permits (i.e. probably years from now...)
I really enjoy cooking. One reason is that I really enjoy eating and could not stand the idea of eating Ramen noodles for five years straight. I started cooking to save money in college and found that I could be really creative with food. When I have a little more time I'll explain more about what I like to cook and include a few of my favorite recipies.