Katherine Allison Doubek
... is an interdisciplinary developer, designer, artist, researcher, musician, and writer living in the American southwest.
Location
I was born in 1979 in Austin, Texas, but grew up mostly around Dallas. I graduated high school, went to a local university until I ran out of money, then left to experience the world for myself. I started a hippie commune in Boston, hung around in Germany, London, and Switzerland for awhile, worked as a missionary in Mexico on and off, and eventually ran into a wonderful woman in New York City. We came back to Texas, got married, and got a cat and an apartment. Where we go next depends largely on where I go for grad school, though my wife has an equal say in the matter. In early 2008, I left my full time engineering job to return to freelance software development, graphic design, and writing.
Education
I'm currently an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Arlington, and I'm on schedule to graduate in December of 2008. In the interdisciplinary studies group, my concentrations are artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. My thesis is already published - I'm just finishing up some coursework before moving on. I'm looking for graduate schools with solid linguistics and computer science departments, though where we go next depends as much on scholarships as it does the availability of public transit and generally sustainable living.
Occupation
I've been a professional designer, developer, and writer for more than a decade (with time off for good behavior). If you want to hire me to do some systems and software development, I'm a senior partner and Director of Possibilities at Binary Spring. I also work as a freelance designer and copywriter. Check out my portfolios and drop me a line; we'll see what we can build.
Languages
I speak English natively, and have a working knowledge of Latin, Greek, Russian, French, and German. I can process a few others pretty well, for a total of around a dozen or so. My interest in most languages is academic: I want to know how and why they work, and how to enable technology to process them. With some of these studies, I end up with enough knowledge to hold on conversations in real-time. With most, however, the best I can claim is to be able to translate a text if I have my grammars and dictionaries with me. My main interests in the study of linguistics are syntactic and semantic disambiguation, grammar construction, phonological processing, semiotic theory, and computational models of human language.
Parade of Preference
Books
Most of my favorite writers, writing, and people in general are on Everything2. Other influential works include 1984, The Art of War, Atlas Shrugged, Brave New World, Breakfast of Champions, Catcher in the Rye, Close to the Machine, Cosmicomics, Fahrenheit 451, The Flashman Chronicles, Generation X, "Goedel, Escher, Bach", The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Howl, Leviathan, Life After God, The Little Prince, Lord of the Flies, Microserfs, Programming Perl, The Remains of the Day, A Social History of American Technology, The Spiral Dance, Still Life with Woodpecker, Tao Te Ching, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Utopia, and White Noise.
Music
I have ten years of classical vocal training, with concentration on operatic form. I also play classical guitar, mandolin and keyboards. The music I listen to runs across all genres, including 1 mile north, A Perfect Circle, Aimee Mann, Air, The Album Leaf, Ani Difranco, Aphex Twin, The Beastie Boys, The Beatles, Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Ben Folds Five, Bjork, Boards of Canada, Bob Wills, Brian Eno, BT, Buena Vista Social Club, Cake, Calexio, Cream, Dar Williams, The Decemberists, DJ Dieselboy, Dirty Three, Elucido, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, Explosions in the Sky, The Flaming Lips, G. Love and Special Sauce, Godspeed you Black Emperor, Gus Gus, Idlewild, Interpol, Japancakes, Jeff Beck, Jeff Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Jump little children, Jurassic 5, KMDFM, Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, Loop, Lou Reed, Low, Magnetophone, The Mars Volta, Massive Attack, Metric, Modest Mouse, Mogwai, Mojave Three, Mum, Notwist, Opeth, Pink Floyd, The Pixies, Placebo, Portishead, The Prodigy, Propellerheads, Pullman, Quarashi, R.E.M., Radiohead, Set Fire to Flames, Sigur Ros, Simon and Garfunkel, Soul Coughing, Spiritualized, Stars of the Lid, Stereolab, Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Terre Thaemlitz, U.N.K.L.E., Velvet Underground, We, Yes, and Yo La Tengo.
