About Visual Core

I originally created VisualCore.com in Feb. 1999 as a project for a web design class. Since then, there have been about seven major graphical overhauls, and has been badly neglected from time to time. Today, it is my personal site where I host my code and various other random bits.

About Me

I am Jeremy Cowles, a programmer and computer science student in the San Francisco bay area. My wife and I moved here in 2007 and I am currently enrolled in the UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) program, with a focus on software.

In addition to my normal coursework, I am working on an independent study to build a community-based volunteer compute system (think SETI@Home where you can actually submit work as well). I am interested in large-scale distributed systems, parallel processing, graphics, games, and general systems-y programming.

How I learned to stop worring and love computers

I started programming when my family first got a Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer II (lovingly, the Trash-80), which ran a crippled version of BASIC. After the TRS-80 came the IBM PS/2 286 and MS/GW BASIC. After the 286 we jumped up to a Packard-Bell 486 DX (33 MHz with a turbo button!). This was my first experience with Windows 3.1, AOL and the Internet. I spent most of my time chatting and writing apps to *automate* AOL, for those long and boring tasks like sending thousands of IMs to a friend.

After the 486 was no longer tollerable, I built my first computer: an Intel Pentium (120 MHz, Cyrix). I proceeded to build all my computers from this point on (with the exception of the one I’m working on now, which my friend built). I worked professionally for 9 years and my first “computer” job was in the DataFlex configuration department, where I swapped countless AST motherboards.

After that, I was co-owner of a small startup that specialized in generating searchable text databases and search scripts in Perl. Later, I started worked for someone else’s startup which turned out to be the prototypical 1999 internet dream company and was subsequently sold for a small fortune. My services were part of the buyout, and spent some time in Omaha writing a software load balancer (in VB 6!) and a library that linked their AS400/VISA network into ASP classic.

I returned from Omaha and spent a year working contracts and then got my first corporate job as a systems engineer for Kewill writing shipping and warehouse management systems. This is where I met my amazing wife, Aimée and the rest, as they say, was history.

Posted in Uncategorized on June 14, 2009 at 8:44 pm