Dave Martin

Dave was born on the Ohio River in a small Western Kentucky town and has never strayed very far from the water.

Always keenly interested in music and technology, he moved to the big city of Louisville and obtained a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Louisville. Then, hearing the siren call of California, he applied for and received a fellowship from the Hughes Aircraft Company, moved to Los Angeles, and continued his education at USC, receiving a Masters Degree in EE/CS.

Somewhere along the way he developed an interest in software development, left circuit design to become a programmer. He discovered UNIX, C and the ARPAnet simultaneously in 1978 and thus became convinced that the Universe is benevolent.

During his career as a software developer Dave has worked on many interesting projects, the most exciting being a racing engine control system that he developed for Nissan Performance Technology. This system incorporated an integrated real-time operating system and engine management application that was used very successfully in a variety of racing applications in the US, Japan and Australia.

Dave enjoys building systems in dynamic languages that are elegant, extensible and easily maintainable. He is especially interested in systems with extensive performance monitoring requirements. He is fluent in PERL, PHP and Javascript, and speaks conversational Ruby, mostly in the Rails context.

When not face-down in his MacBook Pro, Dave works as a live sound and recording engineer using Pro Tools and Digital Performer. He also plays bass trombone with a local big band and is a California-certified massage therapist.