From crispyneurons

[edit] About Jason Wells

...known to many as Gecko. I can be reached at jason@wells.me.

If you've visited this page, you probably want to know who I am... Besides the creator and maintainer of this site, of course... I'll try to keep this succinct.

[edit] Biographic Details

On 27 November 1974, I was born a bit south of where the Missouri enters the Mississippi. I am 1.9m tall and I weigh about 84kg. I grew up at Stillhouse. As a child I was taught physics, philosophy, classical Latin and Greek. I began to teach myself how to write code when I was eight years old. I dropped out of college to help start a software company when I was 19. I have traveled the world as much as I can spare the time to, mostly wearing a backpack. I moved to Oregon when I was 21, then on to San Diego a little over three years later. The fastest I have ever traveled, so far as I know, is 526mph.

[edit] Personality

No one should be entirely trusted to evaluate their own personality. For what it's worth, I'll touch on a few things. I can be very witty, but I can't tell a good joke. I can dazzle people with words and ideas. I've danced on the stage and drummed for belly dancers, but other than that, don't ask me to do any performances. People tend to trust me. I like to be as fair and even as I can. I'm a lover, not a fighter. I can argue all too well.

Of course, then there's the tests. Understanding people's personalities is not easy, and I tend to be suspicious of the results of tests claiming to characterize them. For what it's worth, if you care about Myers-Briggs personality types, I test as a Knowledge Seeking ENTJ (a type that is unfortunately given absurd labels such as Executive or even Fieldmarshal). My results from the more complex IPIP-NEO personality test can be found here.

[edit] Career

For the past decade or so I have focused on creating software for fun and profit. These days I'm the VP, Natural Language Products for a software company in Point Loma called Semantic Research Inc. In addition to traditional software engineering and product development, I do a considerable amount of research in the areas of semiotics, knowledge representation, and semantic networking. I have invented a variety of software technologies leading to 8 patent filings so far. I think I would probably get out of software altogether if I were denied the freedom to invent.

[edit] Interests

Here's an abridged list of things that interest me, social networking style, in case you're off your Ritalin and can't be bothered to explore crispy:

adventure, anarchism, art, artificial intelligence, artificial life, atheism, backpacking, beaches, biking, burning man, coffee, complexity, computers, crazy chicks, cubism, dumbek, ecstasy, ecology, emergent behavior, engineering, entj, environment, epistemology, erotica, evolution, fetish modeling, film, free software, freedom, game theory, guns germs and steel, happiness, health, hedonism, hot tubs, intelligence, java, jazz, juggling, knowledge, knowledge representation, liberty, linux, literature, love, lust, money, mountain biking, mst3k, music, nanotechnology, nudity, open relationships, open source, os x, openness, philosophy, photography, pleasure, power, rationality, richard dawkins, robotics, salsa, san diego, science, scotch, search engine ranking optimization, semiotics, sex, sexuality, ska, smart chicks, snowboarding, software, spanish, spicy food, sun, surrealism, surfing, sushi, symbolic logic, tango, technology, thinking, travel, tribalism, unix, writing, women, zen...

...and more. I also write articles for Wikipedia. My contributions reflect many of my interests.

My woman, my wife, my love is Heather.

[edit] Pages to Start

Artificial Life, Go, Natural Epistemology, The Ring, Tango, Guatemala, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Ensenada, California Coast, UK, Thomas Jefferson School, Static Cling, Live Wire, Xara Dulzura 2006, The Jason Directory, Kristie Poi Spinning, San Diego Wildfire 2003, 9/11 Media Aftermath, The Room, Absolute Clock, Propaganda Picture Book, Semantic Research, Mandelbrot Explorer