About Me

I’m Joel Bennett. HuddledMasses.org is my site, where I write about technology and software development, and occasionally about news from the real world, our vanishing privacy and personal rights, my struggles with studies, research, and work, or whatever else strikes my fancy. If you need to get in touch with me, you can fill out a comment form on one of the posts, or just email me.

History

Jaykul is a pseudonym I’ve used since the late 1980’s or so, starting in games and BBSes and eventually even as a member of open source software development teams. Doing “real world” work like software development under pseudonyms has gone rather out of style in the early years of this new millennium, but rather than loose it completely, I choose to simply mix it into my real name.

I grew up in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and moved to upstate New York in 1989 where I attended a small private high school. I graduated from Nyack College in 1996 with a inter-disciplinary BS in Youth Ministry and Cross-Cultural studies, and then went to Guernsey and the southwest of England for about a year …

At the end of 1997, I married my wife Wendy, and early the next year I started working at the Xerox Corporation, where I still work today. In that time I’ve completed all the computer and math courses that are part of a Computer Science BS and MS at RIT and am working on my masters project to finish that degree

Over the years I’ve contributed in various ways to open source projects such as geoShell, WinShellEx, PoshConsole, PowerShell Community Extensions and many others to a lesser extent, like WordPress and Joomla.

Miscellanea

• I was an atypical nerd in High School: one of those guys that gets A’s and B’s without actually studying — but I was also a starter on all of our high school sports teams.
• I first learned to read and write in Spanish — in public school in Costa Rica.
• Some of my favorites: fruit: mango, sport: soccer, drink: hot tea, color #336699, music: house, nu jazz, literature: Sci-Fi and spy novels.
• I tried to teach my eldest daughter to count on her fingers in “binary” (did not work out).
• I can’t tell a G# from a B or Do from Sol, but I nonetheless learned to play both the guitar and the saxophone as a kid (but I long ago lost those skills for lack of practice).
• I enjoy photography, but have never bothered to take a class and actually get good at it.
• I believe in God.
• I’m never quite happy with visual design work I do (including my websites).