I’m a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Iraq war (2003 Tip of the Spear), a hacker and geek, photographer, and a very proud uncle.

In the past I was a youth mentor at a free local hacker/makerspace. My passion is teaching kids usable skills that they may not have the opportunity to learn elsewhere at their age (like using tools, electronics and circuitry, hardware hacking, and taught kids as young as five learn how to solder). Our society often places an undue burden on young people in the development of many useful skills, mostly due to our emphasis on safety above all else. The safest way to use a dangerous tool (soldering irons, drills, saws, blades, etc.) is obviously to not use it at all, to have someone else (for kids–an adult) do it for you. Instead of learning how to use or do something safely, we learn to just have somebody else do it for us. Rather than a kid learning to fix something that’s broken (or at least try), we seem to be teaching our children to just throw it away and get a new one. It’s really too bad, my experience is that kids love to build and fix things. We should be encouraging these interests, even when there are some risks in them doing so.

Implants and biohacking have been on my interest list for quite some time now, and recently took the plunge. I installed my first implant (NeXT) in my left hand just two days ago, and have a couple other X-Series’ patiently waiting in their boxes for their day to shine. I didn’t start with a specific function in mind for them, but figured I’d experiment for awhile first to learn what I can do with them. I’ve got some ideas, and I’m sure I’ll come up with better ones along the way. I’m happy to have finally joined the community!