About Me
Jonathan Zdziarski
Click to View my O’Reilly Author Profile
| Location: | New Hampshire |
| Occupation: | Research Scientist |
Professional Interests:
Personal Interests:
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Who Am I?
My passions are that of an author, a hacker, a musician, and a scientist… for starters. Put simply, there are lifetimes worth of words and music to paint with, endless equipment to hack, and plenty of things to legally set on fire in the name of science.
I presently live and work from my home in beautiful southern New Hampshire, having just recently moved back to New England after a decade in the good ol’ South, where the Barbecue and the Mexican food was much better, and the states were much redder.
The Hacker in Me
I’ve been hacking since age 8 and have come to develop very strong interests in machine learning, cellphone hacking, and any other geek-worthy hacker projects I come across. My first PC was a TRS-80 with a cassette deck (no disk drives) and a whopping 128×48 B/W resolution. I recall bootlegging cheezy games from other TRS-80s in grade school, but consistently forgot about the lead track on the tape, and ended up with mostly worthless cassettes. My sister eventually paper mached the entire computer, rendering it completely unusable and also happened to void the ridiculously conservative warranty. Today I spend much of my hacker cycles working in the field of machine learning, mobile forensics, and writing. You can check out some of my brain children in the projects section.
The Author in Me
I took up writing when I was in grade school, but nobody really mentioned I was good at it, and so it faded away as I moved onto other things. I was approached a few years ago about writing a book covering the inner-clockwork of statistical spam filters like my DSPAM, and decided to give the pen another try. It seemed to turn out alright, and shortly thereafter I became inspired to write again on a more regular basis. I’ve recently finished a fourth book – this one about writing software for the new Jesus phone, and have apparently found a good niche. One of the things I noticed was that good writers seemed to enjoy writing, whether or not they became famous for it. Paul Graham’s essays on life particularly inspired me by reminding me that I enjoyed writing. This philosophy seems to work for just about anything else in life too: if you enjoy it, spend a lot of time doing it, regardless of whether it makes you famous or pays the bills. I’ll occasionally pen an essay about some subject I feel passionate about. You can read some of these in my papers section.
The Musician in Me
Music (noun): brief interruptions between bass solos
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| My two MTD-535s, Hand-Made by Michael Tobias |
I took up bass guitar when I was around 18, which came about by some cosmic mistake when a so-called friend of mine tried to dump his gear on me for some cash. It was a beat up Peavy Foundation, and I spent several months with bleeding fingers figuring out how the stupid thing worked. As it turned out, I started to enjoy it, and have been playing bass for the past 17 years, with only a few brief vacations. I didn’t “get” music theory until I really started playing the bass. Prior to that, I was so oblivious to music that my high school theory teacher (Mr. Metivier) beamed a book at my head and nearly got himself fired. I finally figured it out, though, and while hackers and painters are a more well known combination, hackers and musicians have more fun. They say music is sound that makes sense; I like Vic Wooten’s philosophy that music is a “language”, and like any other language, the most important thing is “having something to say”; having something written on your heart to express in music is an intimate thing, which is one way musicians differ from hackers in some ways, yet share together in others. As far as gear is concerned, I’ve since sworn off Peavy and other cheap store-bought hardware. I liked Fender up until they bought and trashed my favorite company at the time – Guild – who made me an amazing sounding Pilot Pro-5 Studio fretless bass, which I regret selling every day of my life. Since moving on, I’ve spent the past several years exclusively playing basses hand-crafted by Michael Tobias, which are probably the world’s finest. I also play a pre-Gibson Tobias Signature 6-String, an amazing custom Mike Lull, and a number of other basses I’ve found to have great tone. My musical inspirations have included Abraham Laboriel, John Patitucci, Anthony Sallee, Victor Wooten, and many others.
The Scientist in Me
During my time as a hacker, I found inventing new things to be much more interesting than the actual hackery itself. I also discovered an interesting parallel between the dangerous “experiments” hackers perform and the even more dangerous experiments that scientists do. Several years went by doing my own research and coming up with my own new ideas, some of which I’ve had the pleasure of lecturing on. Up until the past few years, most of my research had been in the form of pet projects, while I worked a series of mundane corporate programming positions at various companies. Don’t get me wrong, it can be exciting work if you’re a mundane person, but I prefer to work on projects that require stimulating thought and artful discipline. In December 2009, I accepted an engineering position with a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). We’re working on some of the coolest technologies to solve complex national security challenges. Research, invention, and experimentation seem to be my cup of tea. I gave a talk on some recent work during my third speaking engagement at the MIT SpamConference last March.
The Jesus in Me
My interests take a knee to one thing I am undeniably certain about – my God, Lord, and Savior Jesus Christ. When I gave my life over to God, all of my former interests became subservient to the more long-term callings on my life, and to clarify for others what I have come to find is a scientifically beautiful piece of logical harmony – the Bible. “Who I am” can’t possibly be expressed adequately without sharing my Christian faith, as it’s not only shaped my character but brought a new level of insight into my professional and personal life. I first heard about God and became a Christian at age 17, which is really when I began to think for the first time in my life. Prior to that, I just assumed the church was something people created to feel good about themselves. When I got my first taste of the difference God made in the lives of some people around me, I immediately drove myself to the nearest church to ask somebody about it (yeah, I led myself to the Lord).
Being a Christian isn’t as easy as turning on a light switch; in fact, I spent much of my late teens and early twenties a complete self-destructive mess and hurt several people I cared about in the process. It took another decade and a move to Georgia before I came to understand what it meant to genuinely love people and desire to live a life of conviction. We all are in need of forgiveness, both from God and other people, and as you grow, you begin to understand the true depth of that need. During my decade in the south, I was part of a dynamic, multicultural church in middle-GA which then expanded to Alabama.
I’ve spent several years lately studying church government and what the real church was originally supposed to look like. I ended up teaching myself the Greek language so I could read many manuscripts in their native dialect and see just how much mainstream theology was concoted by preachers in Armani suits. I concluded that most churches fall into one of two schools of thought: they’re either cheapened by the American culture engine and have compromised their faith to appeal to the masses, or have gone off on some apostolic power trip that was greatly exaggerated and have compromised their faith to appeal to their own ego. What bothers me most is that neither class seems to care one way or another about representing the true church, which I think is why so many people have such a strong aversion to it. It’s likely that the true church would show its face only if persecution and genocide were to hit America. Fortunately, the God I worship still loves us, even in our ignorance, and in spite of ourselves, we are still forgiven.
As you may have guessed, I consider myself to be of the thinking population, and not one of the masses asleep in their own reality. This followed me into my Christian faith, but started much earlier. At some point in my younger life, it occurred to me how programmed I had been by society and pseudo-science to be an atheist, before I even knew what being an atheist meant. When I stumbled across God, it made me realize there’s much more to this life than I had been conditioned to believe. Today, I’m sure many of my Christian beliefs would get me burned at the stake, but I’m not going back to my old, dead life, and am quite amused by the ignorance of the few who discredit my accomplishments by my belief in God.
Other Interests
In addition to my primary interests, I enjoy good music, Greek apocrypha, fine wine (a good bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella), and reading. My time in the South helped usher me into a fascination for firearms (and a love affair with freedom), and I enjoy the discipline of long-range rifle marksmanship. I’ve also been known to barbecue on occasion.
Professional Goals
I’m already doing what I love, and think I can see myself doing this type of work for a long time to come. My musical interests have got me interested in becoming a more proficient bassist and possibly getting into doing some studio work for Christian artists, or joining a ministry-focused Christian band again some day. However it pans out, I like having the experience to do the things I love and get paid for most of them. Missionaries, outreaches, Bible smuggling, and seeding new churches all cost money. After all, the Bible teaches that it’s God who gives us the ability to earn wealth, and in spite ofmany misconceptions about wealth, it’s still one of the ways in which the faithful bankroll some of these ministries. I certainly wouldn’t mind being one of these guys. God doesn’t float C-notes down from heaven to pay for this stuff, He likes to work through His people. Life’s much too short to care about dying with a few million in the bank having done nothing with it. Every dollar we have is ordained for a specific purpose, and my goal is to find out what God’s plan is for them.
Contacting Me
Although I write a lot of articles about different technologies (hacking cellphones, linux, spam, etc.) I don’t usually have time to answer many direct technical questions. I strongly recommend trying one of the mailing lists related to a particular project (such as dspam-users) or google before emailing me a technical question, because it runs a strong risk of ending up in the bit bucket. Sorry, but that’s just the way it has to be.
Aside from that, if you’d like to know more about my availability, my faith, or any other personal topics, please feel free to shoot me an email.
NOTE: I will not assist you with your iPhone unless you are law enforcement
Just wanted to say that you have some great content on your blog. If it’s allowed I would like to use some of the information you provided on my blog. If I link back to your website do I have your permission to do so?