the twentieth century culminated with a series of phenomena that have reverberated down the years to fundamentally shape the world as we know it today. in no particular order these include the invention of the world wide web (information technology), the downfall of the berlin wall (globalization), and finally the birth of myself, s. matthew english (also taylor swift). all of which occured in the year of our ford nineteen-hundred and eighty-nine [MORE]
as a young man the idea that had the most profound explicit impact on my life is the hypothesis that with 10,000 hours of diligent practice anyone, myself included, might become an expert in a given field. many thousands of hours ago, on an extended sojourn in my least favourite city on earth, i resolved to become an expert software engineer.
under the guild system of medieval europe an apprentice in a trade would create a masterpiece to establish their expertise as a master craftsman. in my software engineering journey that "masterpiece" (pro tempore) is the mobile game i created for the app store [MORE]
as a part-time brooklynite, i've been deeply deeply affected by the developing global pandemic. in an effort to better understand this crisis i developed an interactive map as a way to visualize the extent of devastation visited on each of the 50 states, as of the 25th of march. i've left it on this date as a benchmark of the speed which which this calamity has befallen us all. [MORE]
the process of dimensionality reduction required to collapse my life and works down to a single document, e.g. a résumé, always struck me as particularly dehumanizing, and so i've never made one and inshallah i never will. my work is always intended to speak for itself. nevertheless i've picked out some past achievments that i like to remember fondly and i've collected some of them here to share with you as well [MORE]