User:Drmadskills

About me
Official website and blog: http://philipobrien.wordpress.com

My greatest loves are my fiance, Shotokan karate, and computer science. Aside from that, I just read a lot, travel, go camping, and stay generally busy.

Karate
http://dailykarate.wordpress.com

My second greatest love in the world (second only to my fiance), is Shotokan karate. I've been in karate since January 2006 and its become my greatest passion.

Although I don't put great emphasis on karate competitions and winning medals, I believe in trying my hardest when I do take part. To date, I've won:

Provincials (in Nova Scotia)

 * 6 Gold in men's brown belt category
 * 2 Silver in men's brown belt category
 * 1 Silver in men's brown belt category

Nationals (in Canada)

 * 1 Silver in men's brown belt category
 * 1 Bronze in men's brown belt category

Computer Science Research
I'm an avid programming competitor and general programming enthusiast. I've attending programming competitions such as the CS Games and the ACM ICPC. I've been teaching python programming at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Canada since January 2008 and hope to be teaching an introductory Java course in fall 2008.

I am a research scientist with GenieKnows in Halifax, Canada. I specialize in the area of information retrieval and semantic web theory, but I have great interest in mobile computing, machine learning, and software engineering. (I even own a beautiful iPhone).

Miscellaneous
I try to give back as much as I can to the world. I donate blood regularly, I teach computer science (as mentioned above) as well as assist in teaching a parent and youth karate class, and I volunteer whenever possible.

I've recently gotten back into painting Warhammer 40,000 models. Finding time to play the game, and people to play it with, will be impossible. My love for painting the models was always greater than my love for playing with them. Perhaps I'll post a gallery of some of my paintings at some point.

Userboxes
I've created a Userbox to designate people's rank in karate, specifically, Shotokan karate. If these are popular, I could generalize them to belt colours for any karate style (not specific to Shotokan). Talk to me if you're interested in using these, but don't practice Shotokan specifically.

I'll be working on dan rank userboxes soon, and hope to post them here eventually.