Welcome to Tom's Blog

For a long time, I've wanted a place to record random thoughts and observations that I have run across during my explorations of the world of technology.

For anyone reading this who doesn't know me, my background is systems programming (operating systems, network stacks, etc.), management, and consulting. Until recently, I was happily living in that particular bubble.

Over the last two years, my eyes have been opened in a number of ways:

• I have become reacquainted with the world of Lisp and the power that comes from a tight, expressive language.
• I found Anarchaia and started thinking theoretical thoughts again.
• These two led me inexorably to Haskell and the power and beauty of pure functional programming.
• I became interested in web-based platforms, particularly the Facebook platform, as a way to quickly build and deploy applications in the cloud.
• I started to use Rails as a rapid prototyping tool to quickly develop some application concepts.

The initial idea behind this blog (and I'm sure it will change) is that I'll write about what I learn while doing this, mostly at the micro-level concerning development and about the things I'm working on or even rolling out.

I hope you find something interesting here!