Simon Spero - A Homepage



One of the downsides to having been on the web as long as I have is that my homepage often goes for several years without being updated. As a new millenium dawns, and as I  run out of alternate avoidance behaviour, the time has come again for me to drag my home page kicking and screaming into whatever century this happens to be. Welcome to that century.
 

Personal

Name: Simon Spero
Nationality: English
Age: 29a
Email: ses@unc.edu
Nickname: Simon Spero - The Internet Hero (Imagine a blasted  LA-born Jewish American princess imitating Dick Van Dyk  in Mary Poppins. No wonder the name stuck).
 

Pictures:

Here are some  great pictures of me taken by my friend Kelly-Jo Garner.
When Kelly-Jo has time she does contract work - if you need some portrait shots, she can work wonders.

Music

I like most sorts of dance music, though my favourite genre at the moment is Progressive Trance (in their hearts, all Englishmen want to be Sasha). I'm also partial to a little bit of Gothic/Industrial (all Englishmen also want to be Robert Smith too). I was thinking of combining the two and forming a band called The Ravers Of Mercy, but was forced to stop after the first chorus of "Hug A Russian".

To distract me when I'm telecommuting, I have a Roland JP-8000 and a Yamaha RM1x , together with a wonderful software synth called Reaktor. I also have a pair of Pioneer CDJ-100s and a DJM-300,  which my turntabilist friends mock me for until I point out that the whole rig weights about 45lbs with enough music to last a week. I still occasionally have fits of Technics envy

Exercise/Diet

I try to work out three or four times a week to fight the onset of IT butt. When I'm gaining I eat a regular diet - when I'm cutting I follow a lowcarb Cyclic Ketogenic Diet.  This basically means that I avoid carbohydrates Monday-Friday, then load up on cartbs over the weekend. This usually means that by Friday I'm ready to kill for a couple of slices of toast, but their's no better way to lose bodyfat without losing muscle.

Work and Research

I am currently work for the University of North Carolina as the Emergency Geek for ATN. Basically that means I get to do my own thing until things getting completely messed up, at which point I get sent in to try and sort things out. When disasters aren't happening, I get to do my own thing - this is best thing about working for the University. Before that, I was one of the original employees on the  Sunsite project (now metalab), which was the third web site in the United States, and the first site ever to offer hosting.

My main research interest is in the design and implementation of highly scalable internet protocols like HTTP-NG  ; Once my green card arriives I hope to get a start-up going based on some some of this work, If things work out, it could change the entire way the Web works. You might want to start shorting Yahoo now :-)