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Photo by Carlos Seligo
I am a 20th century U.S. historian specializing in environmental, the North American West, and digital and public history. I am a fourth generation westerner and grew up in South Dakota, where I spent a lot of time in the outdoors and reading books. I currently live in San Jose, California, with my wife and our two dogs.
I am the Academic Technology Specialist in the Department of History at Stanford University, where I collaborate with faculty and graduate students on innovations in using technology in their teaching and research. Most of my work focuses on data visualization, design, and digital and spatial history.
Additionally, I am a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln specializing in the North American West, 20th century United States, and digital history. My dissertation research focuses on the urban and environmental history of Silicon Valley and the rise of environmental politics in the postwar era.
I serve as a digital content advisor for The American Yawp, a free, online, collaboratively-written textbook of American history, and as the digital editor for The Middle West Review, a peer-reviewed online journal of Midwestern history.
Prior to joining Stanford, I served as the project manager for the William F. Cody Archive at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities on the campus of UNL. I have contributed to several digital history projects, including The Digital History Project, Railroads and the Making of Modern America, The Buffalo Bill Project, Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the Progressive Image of American Indians, and Framing Red Power. More academic information can be found in my curriculum vitae.
As a bit of a work-related hobby and productive procrastination, I am interested in programming and the history of programming languages. In 2011 I wrote an ebook called The Rubyist Historian that intended to introduce humanities scholars to the basics of the Ruby programming language and its application to their everyday work. In addition to Ruby, I spend my days working with Bash, JavaScript, and Python, and have dabbled with Objective-C and PHP.
I write on a range of topics. Although I generally write on history and technology, my posts range from culture, music, coffee, ideas, and anything else that strikes me. There is no schedule or length that I seek to meet.
The site originally ran on WordPress but moved to Github and Jekyll for static blogging in early 2011. My posts are now version controlled with git. Most of my writing and coding happens in Sublime Text or vim on my MacBook Pro. The design of this site has changed frequently, mainly because I enjoy tinkering.
I am scattered around the Internet:
I also maintain a linkblog at Tumblr and have contributed to Gradhacker, Profhacker, and BlogWest:
Feel free to email me. I can be reached at <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[
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