nick@kavassalis.com
keeping track of the many activities of Nick Kavassalis
check out my new geotracked microblog here!
greetings! i am a software developer, systems, and network engineer living in Toronto, Canada. in my spare time i am a video game collector, world traveler, food nut, photographer, and motorsport enthusiast. i currently work at the most awesome Federated Media Publishing. if you would like to get ahold of me for professional or personal reasons, feel free to email me at the email listed in the title of the page.
this is the n'th version of my personal home page. i am not a fan of personal writing (i can rarely find the time, and by the time i do i forgot most of the interesting stuff thats happened) so this will mostly be pictures and links of interest. for microblogging, you will want to check out my twitter & google latitude powered micro blog, alternatively twitter or my facebook profile. i likely will not be updating this page that often. thanks and enjoy!
photography
i am a photographer, and take pictures of just about everything, but I love landscapes, wildlife, and urban photography. i shoot Canon and love all well engineered camera equipment (some quick blurbs on my favourite lenses), film & digital, Rollei, Nikon, Leica, Zeiss, etc. i must add, the Canon EOS 5Dmk2 is the first digital body I've ever had that i believe makes film completely obsolete. yes it took this long (color reproduction, dynamic range, resolution vs good slide film).
I've decided I don't wanna maintain an FTP+shellscript gallery anymore
So I've created a Flickr account, check it out!
some of my favourites from 2009:
gaming
while its tough to find time to really game these days, i try my best to finish everything i start. i (although i'm currently not aggressively acquiring) collect game soft and arcade equipment, here is the gallery of my game soft and other stuff, its not terribly up to date, was updated a bit in 2008, but last time it was seriously updated was 2007. I hope to fix this eventually, but i've got 500+ software titles sealed and stored up that are way too time consuming to photo!
computing
i love to develop in C and assembler, specifically for embedded systems and video game consoles like the sony playstation, though its hard to find time for it these days. i used to develop .net and Java medical imaging software, automating image comparisons to self-test the validity of results. i also love PHP, perl and web development due to its rapid and fun nature. thankfully i do get many opportunities for web development, and have developed several CMS systems, many automated web tools and custom solutions. having written software for radiology dosimetry and imaging as well as blog maintenance scripts gives one a good perspective :) i strive to automate and integrate software and workflow; any repetitive task can and should be eliminated, this is the goal of a computer scientist.
i also enjoy network and systems engineering. its always a fun challenge to build faster and more robust solution, and see it go live and actually serve millions of people. my personal systems and networking engineering project is the ever cool evul networks, with locations in three countries around the globe. i also helped design and build priority colo's world class datacenter in Toronto with a very talented team of engineers.
eventually i'll probably put snipits of code, examples of reverse engineering (my favourite past time) and screenshots of things i've developed here.
motorsports
i am a motorsport enthusiast, favouring classical chassis engineering and engine design over lazy computer drivng aids and cheap forced induction solutions. the only racing i follow on a regular basis is Formula 1, which is being ruined quickly due to tougher regulations on engineering.
i received my performance driver training from BMW here in Toronto, and started my race training with Skip Barber in Atlanta. my goal is to finish up with Skip Barber in Sebring or Laguna Seca and get my SCCA (or equiv.) license in 2010.
the TNK Motorsports team recommends the following organizations:
The BMW Car Club of America - one of the largest and best car clubs world wide.
BMW CCA Club Racing - the racing league of the BMW CCA
contact info
the easiest way to contact me is the email listed in the title. aside from that, AIM works well if realtime chat is needed, my alias is nkavassalis. feel free to contact me by either method for a postal mailing address. please direct copyright/licensing related matters to the email listed below.