Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Ryan Schenk, and I do lots of things. My day job is an “Information Systems Integrator” at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. This means that I spend much of my day writing Ruby scripts and Rails applications to connect cool scientific data resources to each other. There are plenty of neat resources out there, they just need to learn how to talk to each other. I also create computational artwork, pretend to be a graphic designer, and enjoy kitesurfing.

What services/products do you offer?

I spend most of my day wearing the “Web developer” hat. I attempt to write well-thought-out code, design RESTful web services, author semantically meaningful XHTML, and create beautiful CSS. Of course, I also live in the real world, so most of the time things don’t go as planned, or even as initially desired; part of the fun (and headache) of being a Web developer is striking that balance between theoretical elegance, real-world pragmatism, and the limitations of current technology.

I do more than Web development, though. I am currently interested in ways to visualize large datasets; at MBL we have lots of data, but few facilities for presenting it visually in a meaningful way. I recently made a tool that can lay out a tree structure in a circle, like a bulls-eye. It can be used, for instance, to generate maps of social network, or answer life’s burning questions like “how many degrees away from Kevin Bacon am I?”

Who/where is your audience?

At MBL, my main audience is scientists and researchers due to the subject matter, but nothing is stopping a member of the general public from using things I’m building. Not everything is research-focussed, though. I made a fun app, called TaxaToy, that can show you how many new species are being discovered annually since the 1700’s. If you view something high-level, like the kingdom Animalia, you can see the Gilded Age, World War 1, and World War 2.

What is the website?

TaxaToy lives at http://taxatoy.ubio.org Please be gentle, it will probably explode in Internet Explorer.

You can also see a sculpture I made at http://www.vimeo.com/686286 This sculpture deals with the interplay between map and mirror, as well as fully embracing Michael Fried’s criticisms of minimal sculpture in his essay Art & Objecthood. It’s also way fun.

And of course where I work at MBL is http://www.mbl.edu adn more specifically, http://www.ubio.org

Well-Funded or Bootstrapped?

Turns out, MBL has a lot of money.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?

I am currently on a mission to decimate my student loans. So I’ll tell you where I see myself in 1 year: completely and utterly out of debt!

Right now, in 5 years, and in 10 years, I see myself doing what I enjoy, and having a great time doing it. We live in such an exciting time for the Web, it will be fascinating to see where ideas like semantic Web and Microformats will take the traditional “website” as we know and love it.

Where were you born - where do you live now?

I was born in Traverse City, Michigan, and was brought up in a military family. When I was growing up, we lived in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Alaska, and finally Cape Cod.

Right now I live in a cute house near Woods Hole, with my wife Ruth and our attack-cat Meowstro. When it’s cold I bum a ride to work, but when it’s warm I drive my scooter, ride bike, or skateboard to work. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I put a straight pipe on our scooter, so if you see a yellow vespa making a great deal of racket near Woods Hole, that’s me.

PC or Mac?

I switched to the Mac about 5 years ago, and love them. Macs just make everything I want to do easier and more enjoyable. Luckily, I get to use a very nice one at work…the only problem is my 30″ Cinema blocks my water view.

And I’m a total Quicksilver junkie. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone lives without it. I write Quicksilver actions like it’s going out of style. Just today I was thinking how easy it’d be to Quicksilver-enable a coffee machine with an Arduino board…

Where did you go to school?

I spent two years at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and hated it. I transferred to Clark University, also in Worcester, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I graduated with a Computer Science degree, and I suspect I could have gotten a minor in Art History if I had simply filled out the requisite paperwork.

What Social Networks are you on?

Facebook hit Clark in early 2005. I attempted to resist, but was soon assimilated. Now that I’m a grown-up, I also have a “Linked In“. I’m not sure what you do with it, but I think it’s like Facebook, except you post your resume instead of pictures of yourself cheerfully inebriated at a party.

I also enjoy keeping in touch with the technically-savvy crew on Cape with Pownce. I have a del.icio.us for links, Flickr for photos, recently switched from YouTube to Vimeo for videos, and I have a Useless Account. It’s pretty sweet…I’ve changed my password a few times.

Greatest invention ever?

Double bass pedals.

Person you believe has contributed most to the world of technology?

Just this afternoon I was reading more about Alan Turing. Did you know he wrote a chess playing program for a computer that didn’t exist yet? I also like Dijkstra. He invented algorithms used today in routers and multiprocessor computers, and according to one of my professors, never once physically used a computer.

Where have you traveled in your life?

I’ve been all over the US, (all the places I grew up — we had to drive to each one), but have traveled little internationally. The one other country, aside from Canada, that I’ve been to was when my wife took me to Kuwait City to visit her parents. That was awesome! Very cool place.

Why set up shop on Cape Cod?

This is the last place the Coast Guard sent us, and where I graduated high school. It’s nice to have a home for once, and it doesn’t hurt that the kiteboarding is quite good here!

5 Websites you go to every day?

The miracle of RSS has drastically reduced how many sites I visit. But…

http://www.backpackit.com - Love this site for todo lists, calendars, and reminders. Pretty much my whole life is on Backpack now. Thanks for the tip, Dave!
http://www.css-tricks.com - Don’t go there every day, but a great blog.
http://blog.labnotes.org - Ditto
http://www.mikedidonato.com - My friend’s blog, which was updated every hour for the entire month of January. That was utterly beyond epic.
http://meowstro.etsy.com - My wife’s Etsy. Awwww.

What’s on your iPod right now?

Remember my extreme student loan repayment plan? No iPhone until they’re gone. Until then, I will be listening to my Creative “Faux-Pod”. It has some electronica like Boards of Canada, Tycho, and Ulrich Schnauss. It also has some fine British rock, like The Jam, The Buzzcocks, and The Clash’s Sandanista. It has plenty of favorites like Yo La Tengo, and an unspeakable amount of noise rock, hardcore, and metal. I’m currently listening to The Stooges’ Fun House.

What is on your desktop/screensaver right now?

There is an awesome program (with a terrible name) called Desktoptopia that will automatically rotate your desktop picture with images from its gallery. You can rank your favorites, ban the especially bad ones. There are quite a few bad ones, but some of them are fantastic!

You are on a deserted island - do you bring a laptop or book?

With a solar panel, laptop, and a satellite modem, you could make a killing video blogging from a deserted island, especially if you managed to pull off a solid beard and a Steve Sutton-esque delivery.

However, presumably, this deserted island would be situated in the tradewinds, so I’d rather bring a full kite quiver and a few boards…

Phone call or text message?

I recently overheard an old lady remark with horror, “…and now the kids are saying that email is for *old people*! They all send Facebook messages!” You know, I sent out our Christmas letter on Facebook this year…

I feel a similar way about text messages, and I use them all the time…

Feel free to tell us anything else….?

I am really digging Microformats. Every web developer worth their doctype ought to familiarize themselves with Microformats and how important they could become if adopted widely. Here’s some links to get you started:

http://microformats.org
http://zappatic.net/safarimicroformats - Microformat support for Safari!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4106 - and for Firefox!

Thank you for your time, Ryan! Now get out there and kitesurf!