Undead Labs

If the zombie apocalypse struck tomorrow, who would you take with you? That’s a question we’ve asked before. The answers were very sensible. There was a lot of talk about survival experts, people with military experience, and people with practical, hands-on jobs.

It’s not a surprise that no one listed “computer programmer” as a requirement for their survival dream team. But before you rule out someone like me, consider this — your profession is just one part of your identity. There are a lot of traits that make us unique and experiences that could come in handy in a crisis. There’s a reason I became a programmer, and it’s the same reason you’d want me around after the apocalypse:

I’m obsessed with building stuff.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with electronics — I’d build everything from radios to motion alarms. When I was 8, I rigged my bedroom door to open and close remotely, and when I was 10, I actually designed my own jet pack. Unfortunately, I never got the resources to build it, but I didn’t give up. In an effort to test some of my flight theories, I designed and built model rockets instead. I never quite got their navigational systems right, so some launches might have strayed a little bit from their intended flight paths, but I was still inspired by these experiments. I took what I learned, created a science fair project that tested a variety of aerodynamic wing shapes and ended up winning an award for my research.

Electronics weren’t the only things I liked to build — I’d also help my dad in his woodworking shop.  When I was 11, he challenged me to design a desk. I did, and it sits in my parent’s house to this day. At 14, I started making my own beds from scratch. And when I say “scratch”, I mean it — I’d often start with rough lumber and cut it into the boards I needed. Since then, I’ve constructed tables, dressers, and all sorts of odds and ends. Most recently, I transformed an old bed into a work bench.

When I was 16, I landed a job with the Interfacial Geochemistry Group at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. I’d help conduct ground water contamination research in the morning, then head back to high school in the afternoon. My job had me dealing with hazardous materials, so I had to wear protection, and some areas were off limits due to contamination. So as a teenager, I had to get my RAD worker 2 certification for handling nuclear material. That was interesting.

In college, though, I wanted to set myself up for a career where I could create things. I got a degree in computer science with an emphasis in artificial intelligence. That’s allowed me to explore a wide range of interesting projects. Long before things like Win95, Java, Netscape, Google Maps, and instant messaging broke into the scene, I had the opportunity to work with cool new technologies like XWindows, HotJava, lynx, USGS Maps. During this time, I also wrote programs to detect cancer in mammogram images and worked on other medical devices.

I was also lucky enough to work at Intel while technologies like DDR, SSE and accelerated 3d video cards first started to enter the market. The guys making the hardware are a great resource to understand exactly how something works and how it should be used. I did a stint working on PCI Express (before it had a name, it was called 3GIO) and very high speed analog signaling.

I spent a lot of time in research fields, but one of my biggest passions has always been games.

I grew up in a large family with six brothers and sisters, so there was always someone to play with. We had a Tandy, which I’d use to type out games, and save them to cassette tapes. When we got our AtariST, I was blown away by games like Ultima 4 and Dungeon Master, which may have been my first true addiction. By the time the Nintendo and Super Nintendo came along, I was completely hooked. My brother James and I would play for hours, holding mini Street Fighter and Doctor Mario tournaments. When we’d break our controllers from playing so much, we’d take them apart, repair them, and get back to gaming.

For my senior project in college, I built a Simon Says game. The computer would issue a command, optionally prepending the ‘Simon Says’ phrase, and an avatar would act out the command.  A vision system would then evaluate if you did the command correctly. A group at Intel liked what I’d built and offered me a full-time job in the “Video As Input” and “New Ways To Play” groups at the Intel Architecture Labs. During my time there, I focused on leveraging the CPU to create new and exciting games that utlized a web camera — 11 years before the Kinect came out. I still own several computer vision patents.

In 2003, I made the leap from research and began creating games full-time. My first job was at ArenaNet – still a tiny company at the time. I put my knowledge of microprocessors to work and helped develop the engine and tools used for the Guild Wars series. Since then, I’ve built technology for games like Pirates of the Burning Sea and worked on several web-based MMOs written in ActionScript. Some people think there are more glamorous or flashy jobs in the industry, but to me, there’s nothing better than architecting the core systems for a game and putting together all the nuts-and-bolts that really make it work.

One day, my old boss Jeff wanted to get a beer and talk about life. He told me about the new company he was starting and about the Class3 and Class4 projects and then he asked me to join the team. I jumped at the opportunity to work with my friends on an awesome project and do what I do best.

It’s time to build something.

Zip

PS: If you just can’t get enough John and would like to know more about him, be sure to check out Jeff’s introduction.