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Homepage for John Thomas

Personal Interests

My favorite recreation is playing 2-person beach volleyball on the beaches of Santa Cruz. Here is a photo of 4th Avenue volleyball courts where we play on weekends.

Santa Cruz is on the border of the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary which is a great place to go Sea Kayaking.

Although I prefer participating in sports, I do enjoy watching the San Francisco 49ers on TV.

We have 2 fuel efficient automobiles. A 2008 Prius that Audrey uses to comute and for vacations and ski trips. My car for zipping around town is a 2008 Smart car. This cute little red mini car is a blast to drive and park and gets great gas milage.

We also have a 1984 VW Westfalia Camper that we keep at our 2nd home in Missoula, Montana. See photo

I also enjoy eating and sometimes even cooking. I have posted some of my favorite potluck recipes:

• Jalapeno-Cranberry Relish.
• Shanghai Salmon.
• Green Corn Tamale Casserole.
• Moussaka.

I have also included my current favorite joke.

Professional Interests

From August 2002 to December 2007, I was back working for the IBM Almaden Research Center doing Java programming, Initially I worked on a Grid Computing project. However that transitioned into working on the Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM) project. STEM is designed to help scientists and public health officials create and use spatial and temporal models of emerging infectious diseases. These models could aid in understanding, and potentially preventing, the spread such diseases. STEM is now an Eclipse Open Source project and the entire codebase is available for general use.
STEM is now an OpenSource component in the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) Project.

From February 97 to January 2002, I worked for the Web Technology Department at the IBM Almaden Research Center doing Java programming. During much of that time I was the lead Java programmer for the TSpaces project which has been made available for evaluation on the IBM AlphaWorks site.

From February 96 to February 97, I left IBM(voluntarily) and took a year sabbatical to relax and have fun.

Some of my projects during that time were:

• MailFaces

MailFaces is a Java application that watches a users inbox on a Mail Server and displays a unique icon when mail arrives from a known user or organization. It interfaces to the PIcon database that contains thousands of icons for individuals and organizations. For example, if mail arrives from gates@microsoft.com, it will query the PIcon database and display Bill Gate's image if it is found. If it is not found, then it will put up the icon for microsoft.com.
• Java POP3 class

I developed a Java Class library that implements the client interface to a POP3 Mail Server. It also supports the Authorized POP interface.
 
• Web site design

I designed and created a set of WWW pages for a political campaign and I also assisted some other non-profit organizations (such as Women's Crisis Support) develop web pages.
 

Prior to 1996, I was employed by IBM for many years. The last 2 years that I was there I was actively involved in increasing the use of the WWW within the Computer Science department of the IBM Almaden Research Center. I was involved with both building informational Web pages for projects and individuals, and with Web facilities such as Java(tm) for Web based Client/Server applications.

John Thomas

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