| |
|
|
|
|
What Can I do for you today? Imagine the following scenario: You are working on several critically important projects that are all running behind. A timeline that looked relaxed and realistic a week ago is now looking impossible. Eventually, checkpoint after checkpoint has passed and it has become clear that the process that you have used to separate the merely important from the absolutely critical has failed. One project in particular appears to be failing, and yet everything in your life is getting in the way of getting it finished. In the classic manner ... for want of a nail a shoe was lost ... this project's problems are now threatening the others. Question: How can you change the direction and save the day? Answer: Have me finish one of the projects for you. Multiply your span of control with a temporary infusion of senior-level talent. I will apply a level of skill, insight and perseverance comparable to your own. Just send me the project files and I will wrap it up for you. |
|
Core Services Offered
|
Relevant Skills include:
|
|
|
PRICING: My basic premise is simple - everyone's time is precious and there is not nearly enough of it to go around. Therefore, my time is worth EXACTLY the same as yours - no more, no less. So it comes out to your advantage to pay me to do those things that I do faster or better than you, or even things that I only do about as fast as you do them, but that you can't find time to do AND simultaneously do the things that you do faster than I can. Pretty simple, no? |
||
|
RECENT AND ONGOING PROJECTS:
Last month I did a fascinating hardware installation project for a local business that involved design and construction of a large vacuum-clamped cutting table for a high-speed computer controlled cutting machine. The cutter manufacturer required that the table be (and remain) level and flat within about ± ½ mm across a surface that is nearly 6' wide and 36' long. I assure you, this is NOT the standard specification that high-end builders work to in Port Townsend. Not when it's sitting on a wooden floor on the second floor of an old building that was built on fill. Then came debugging the machine and getting the computer systems bulletproof. Last fall I started working for a startup company 123phase, Inc. with my former business partner Otto JA Smith on his patented three-phase motor enablers, microprocessor controlled devices that allow three phase motors to run better, with lower starting current on single phase power than they do on three phase power. I did the hardware design that integrates the components into a pair of small manufacturable devices. These enablers allow electric motor driven pumps running on renewable energy to replace diesel powered pumps in many areas of the western US and elsewhere - anywhere three phase power is not available or not reliable This substitution will reduce power consumption and reduce air pollution that has been an accepted part of crop irrigation since WWII. Next step: set up a manufacturing system/production line. After the EDC unraveled and the Affordable Housing Task Force got co-opted, I swore to my friends that I would NOT go to meetings anymore But last summer I started to get quite concerned about what was happening at our local Food Coop, and the growing gulf between the warm fuzzy feel of the Coop's advertized policies that were informing the members and the complex legalistic maze of actual policies that were informing the management decisions at the store. So I got involved with the newly elected Board and we set up a committee to revise and harmonize and integrate the two disconnected sets of policies. So I built us a website that is pretty darned interesting, if you have any interest at all in the politics and economics of the organic food distribution business. In February of last year I was hired to develop a regional planning document,
called the Community Economic Development Strategy. Almost immediately, the NGO that hired me: The Economic Development Council of Jefferson County, was hijacked.
A useful metaphor is that the hijackers got into the cockpit, convinced the pilot to fly into the enemy's territory and land there.
But the pilot bailed out and parachuted to safety (landing, ironically, in the
Green Zone in Iraq to do economic planning there - really!). But by that time the
plane was
seriously off-course and I was hired to try to get the plane (which was in
danger of running out of fuel with a lot of important stuff on board) onto a safe runway with the landing
gear down, or to get the ground crew ready with foam deployed. Well, w got the plane down in more-or-less friendly territory and much to my
personal amazement the passengers decided to take off again, immedaitely. Which is the
"Just So Stories" version of how I came to be at or near the controls
(Interim Director) of a rather amazing 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that seems to have enormous potential to improve the conditions of almost everyone I know. In fact, figuring out how it works - which was triggered by actually paying attention to what was right under my nose, literally right in front of me on the screen - was followed by about a week of concerted experiments. Which has led to a fascinating dilemma: an ethical dilemma. Obviously, this has value to other people, people with "commercial websites." I know this cuz people want me to do it for their sites, naturally. But how can I update their sites to rank high w/o demonstrating to their imbecile webmasters (who have taken their money promising "search engine optimization or search engine friendly" but who clearly still believe everything the read on the web, including metatags, the fundamental generosity of Google and the route that will be taken by Santa Claus ...) exactly how it works? It is not supposed to be a problem, but somehow it irks me that these people will then proceed to charge the rest of their customers to implement solutions they would otherwise have remained too lazy to discover for themselves. Tell me it
should not bother me but it does. Anyway, I am still looking for interesting projects, projects that are really
worth doing.
RECENT STUFF My history with the web goes back to the days when there was no graphical user interface, and the web was not yet commercial, but in the beginning I usually did the system design and had others do the coding. in 1999 I decided to get fluent in the world of Browser-independant code. For the past 4 or 5 years I have assumed that client-side apps that shared data but ran either peer-to-peer or client-server architectures (and client-side applications) were the future. Lately, I have begun to wonder how much can be accomplished with pure HTML. Some of my experiments are online. Right now (2005) I am now returning to a client-server model and delving into php. | ||
|
For Example:
The Salmon Site was developed for WSU-CE in late 1998 - early 1999 as a test-bed for getting three CE campuses to adopt a common data organization metaphor into which county-specific local content related to salmon and salmon habitat could be loaded. The idea behind this was that the recognition that state's land-grant universities, through their Cooperative Extension Offices, are well positioned to provide information that will help communities improve the effectiveness of their efforts to help endangered fish. The version I have online on their site was intended to demonstrate HOW some simple HTML tools might be used to organize data in a quasi-geographic hierarchical system with a pure HTML interface. The most interesting ideas I have implemented on this site are the purely graphical interface to a collection of aerial photos of a recent flood in the Chimacum Valley. Another related idea is the nearly self-explanatory user interface that uses the legend icons to filter the clutter from . a map-based interface. A similar strategy was used to mate the keys with the maps on the old DOE Coastal Zone Atlas also on the Salmon Site. | ||
|
Other Innovative Solutions:
I have a developed some simple tricks for getting large amounts of complex data onto the web. The best of these can be seen at customer's sites, such as:
the pin-map I developed for D & A Instruments Company. Unfortunately the page has been changed recently and is not as effective as it was. The trick provided an effective way to "graphically" normalize data, using the ratio of calculated volume of "sphere" that is observed by the viewer to the actual area (pixel-count) of the sphere's on-screen representation to provide a scale-compression. Current version of the page does not use the spheres and hence, loses the compression factor. Another page I developed for this client implements a product selection matrix with clickable GIFs. | ||
|
Less Immediate Projects
During the winter of 1994-1995 I wrote a book about what I had learned in the past two careers, putting it into a text-book intended to teach Design Engineering to Secondary Wood Products manufacturers in a community college course. The book defined the information management requirements of a scalable organizational model, and identified many of the obstacles to success in a small-to-medium scale manufacturing operation. More importantly, it offered paths around many of them. The model provided in this book was used to scale Foresight Science & Technology into a highly effective team-based operation - basically a market research factory. Sponsored Research
A reasonably complete listing of research reports and publications (through April 1998) accompanies the resume that can be found elsewhere on this website. Terms and Conditions:It is understood that the customer is entitled to want to know how much it will cost, how long it will take and how good it will be. It is also understood that no-one can ever know all three of these AND have the cost be low, AND the time be soon AND the quality be excellent. This creates a fundamental tension that is best resolved through clear product deliverable specifications and accurately defined project milestones and deadlines. It is useful to understand that EnviroSearch is not necessarily your best choice for product development if fast and cheap are more important than good or lasting, or if the characteristics of the desired final product are not well understood. Unless you are willing to revisit the basic assumptions and involve me in the design process as well.
| ||
 click image for a readable full screen scan - a 40 KB jpg |
JOE BRESKIN'S FIRST GRADE REPORT CARD Here is what this says, or at least this is what I see in it that I still find highly predictive: it cuts right to the fundamental problem of my life: that my talents and my traits are caught in a battle to the death and that it will be difficult to change the path I am on. There is already evidence of unusual talent: "he masters vocabulary easily" "he shows unusual interest and a background of meaningful experiences" and even the ability to process these interests and meaningful experiences into language: "his contributions to discussions are worthwhile" but this is contrasted with my destructive behavior traits "he interrupts others" "he doesn't consider the rights of others well enough to work and play well in a group" and so the summary - which might best be listed in a separate a category labeled "Charisma" concludes (to paraphrase only slightly) that in spite of his arrogant behavior and destructive attitude other children like to play with him anyway. | |
|
ACTIVITIES OTHER THAN WORK
|
EDUCATION 1965 - 1973: University of Washington, Seattle Extensive course-work in fields of:
| |
