In the process, I also decided to switch my theme. Many thanks to MidMo Design for their awesome Clean Home theme. Over the next few weeks I’ll be making a few tweaks to make it my own; let me know if you notice any problems or if anything seems wacky.

What I can do

Whenever possible, I like to code in Python. It’s been my language of choice for more than 6 years. Lately I’ve also been writing lots of Javascript, especially for the Firefox extension I wrote for my master’s. (I’m pretty handy with HTML and CSS too.)

I also know my way around Java: I worked on the Eclipse team for a short time, and later worked on IBM’s Java VM for more than four years, where I wrote some heavy-duty C and C++ code. I’m also happy to dive into other languages when I need to: Ruby, PHP, shell scripting, etc.

For the past two years, I’ve been working on my master’s degree in Computer Science (with a focus on human-computer interaction) at the University of Toronto. For my master’s thesis, I did a field study examining how people use tabs in Firefox, which I recently spoke about at the Mozilla Mountain View office. For one of my courses, I also did some interaction work on the One Laptop per Child XO laptop.

And, of course, I’ve been writing about programming and HCI on this blog for more than two years.

For more details about me, check out my about page, or get in touch and I can send you a full CV.

What I’m looking for

For a full-time job, I’m looking for something where I can do interaction design and also write lots of code. Ideally I’d like to work on a public-facing product or site that I use and love.

For part-time and contract work, I’m up for pretty much anything that’s interesting and challenging.

Get in touch

If you think you’ve got something I might be interested in, send me an email @ pat at dubroy.com.

Since all my other plans fell through, I decided to show up to the Twitter party (fashionably late, of course). You can get your Dubroy fix in bite-sized chunks at http://twitter.com/dubroy. Hope to see you there!

And from time to time, I bookmark things that strike my fancy at http://del.icio.us/pdubroy. Most of the links are relevant to this blog, so I try to post a link roundup here every now and then.

Some popular posts from the last couple months that many of you have probably already seen:

• Mundane usability problems
• Usability mistakes with radio buttons
• Oversimplification is confusing (or, Don’t ask stupid questions)

And some older posts which sparked some interesting discussions:

• Donald Norman on the design of intelligent machines
• Why I’m not doing a paper prototype
• Google is not enough
• Warming up to OpenID
• On static and dynamic typing, and corn tortillas

If you’re looking for some longer reading, check out the article I wrote for Boxes + Arrows earlier this year, called Doing Today’s Job with Yesterday’s Tools. Here’s the summary:

Where is the software that can help us cope with the massive amounts of information that we deal with on a daily basis? Patrick Dubroy points out the usability problems with current personal information management techniques, and makes some suggestions about how to improve the situation.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I almost forgot, today is the one-year anniversary of this blog! A year ago today, I started the ball rolling with a post on the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework. Back then, I had just left my job, and was thinking about returning to the academic world to study human-computer interaction. And a year later, here I am — working on my master’s in the DGP lab at the University of Toronto.

I started this blog for a couple reasons: first, as a way to sort out some of my thoughts on the human side of software; but most importantly, to interact with other people who are interested in this stuff. So far I’ve gotten lots of feedback on my articles, but I usually seem to hear from the same five or ten people. According to Feedburner, there are almost 60 people who subscribe to my RSS feed, so I’d like to hear from some of my other readers! Leave me a comment and let me know a little bit about yourself. What do you do, what are you interested in, what’s your favourite beer? (Mine is St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout.)

In the next few weeks, I’ll be launching a new design for site. Before I do that, I’d like to hear your opinion on things. What do you like about the blog? What don’t you like? Would you like to see more or less of certain kinds of topics? Let me know! You can leave your comments here, or email them to me at pat@[this domain].

So, thanks everybody for a good year. For the newer readers, check back on Monday — I’ll be posting a retrospective of some of the most popular articles from the past year.

(Photo by ieatstars on Flickr)