About Me

I'm a software developer living in Austin, Texas. My wife Daphne, is a talented encaustic artist and photographer (check out her online studio). We have a home in a heavily wooded and hilly part of central/northwest Austin where we battle scorpions, tarantulas, coyotes, voracious deer and all manner of other critters and varmints.

I am a Principal Engineer and software architect for Polycom where I design and write software for videoconferencing systems and related products. My 10th anniversary with Polycom is coming up soon and I've been in the videoconferencing and personal communications industry for nearly 20 years.

When I'm not working, I enjoy boating, motor sports, computer & console gaming, reading and working on my own personal software projects. Daphne and I enjoy hunting and shooting. Lately, I've been experimenting with writing fiction. Perhaps someday I'll post something here.

About this Site

I've maintained some sort of web site off and on since the earliest days of the web. I launched keathmilligan.net as a personal blog and tech/software knowledgebase in March of 2004. I've been through a couple of iterations of CMS software and so the current site does not have all of the content going all the way back to 2004. If you're really bored, you can use the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see my old content.

Stuff I Blog About:

Technology

It's probably no surprise given my career choice that I'm into technology. I'm especially interested in how technology affects our lives and our culture. I remember in the 90s when the Internet and other technologies had us thinking that our lives couldn't be changing faster, but the early 21st century is proving us wrong. Social networking and instant-communication applications are having a profound impact on our culture that we are just beginning to understand.

See my Tech section for the latest tech-related articles and links.

Computers and Software

One of the primary reasons I had for starting this blog originally was to share knowledge and ideas related to computing and software development. Professionally, I specialize in the development of embedded network applications and infrastructure. I develop software using a variety of languages and environments including C/C++, Java/JSP, PHP, Python, Javascript/AJAX and others. I use Linux, Windows and Mac OSX in nearly equivalent proportions (I'm not an OS bigot) and I enjoy finding ways to make these environments work together better.

While I enjoy getting my hands dirty and writing code myself, most of my time is actually spent on design and providing technical leadership for other developers. I've seen many project management and development methodology fads come and go over the years and I've come to be a firm believer that there are no magic bullets - either in process, programming languages or design methodologies. The two key ingredients to a successful software project are the right people and plain old-fashioned hard work.

Most of my readers aren't programmers or hardcore computer geeks, so I usually don't promote computer/software-related articles and links to the front page, but you can find them in the Software section.

Politics and Culture

I didn't really start this blog with the intention that it would be a political blog but as I've gotten older, I find myself caring more and more about my country and my community. I have no illusions that anything I post on this site makes much of a real difference, but it's nice (and sometimes cathartic) to share and if a like-minded person stumbles upon something I've written and that inspire them in some way, then it was worth it.

My Politics

Over the years, in discussion forums, comments to my blog and other places, people have incorrectly accused me of being racist, a right-wing religious nut (I'm not even religious), a gun freak (my wife and I own three hunting rifles), a tool of the Republican Party (I frequently vote for Democrats and Libertarians) and a few other things not worth repeating. For what it's worth, I hate labels and identity politics. If I refer to myself as "conservative" or "libertarian", it is only because those terms sum up a set of some beliefs that map most closely to my own. Those terms don't define me - I don't agree with everything "conservative" nor everything "libertarian". You could call me "liberal" on a number of issues.

Like many conservatives, I began my ideological journey as a liberal. I was born poor in rural Tennessee and raised a Southern Democrat. And like many lower middle-class Scots-Irish people in the South, I subscribed to populist notions that it was the government's role to punish the rich, the corporations or just about anyone or anything else held up as the scapegoat for peoples' problems. In time, though, I began to realize that the individual, not the government, not business, not religion, that is most responsible for their own success and happiness and that the best thing government can do is not interfere.

The Issues

Aside from the candidates and contests, some of the political topics that interest me most are economics, taxation, government spending, energy, transportation (both public and private), environmental issues and national security. I try to focus most of my political blogging on state and local issues relevant to Central Texas voters.

Most of my politically-oriented posts go to the front page, but you can find them all in the Politics section.

Keath