Ryan grew up in Ohio, graduated from the Ohio State University with a B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering in 2000, and then moved to Santa Cruz, California, to work in the field of graphics programming. Some of his hobbies include backpacking & camping, cooking, gardening, mountain biking, running, swimming, yoga, snowboarding, and showshoeing. He really digs nature's visual and structural patterns, and is quite fond of photographing them, as well as attempting to mimic them using computer graphics. He reads a book here and there (more nonfiction than fiction these days), and spends a lot of time researching stuff and trying to understand the world better. He's a big fan of music, and although he's not currently playing in any groups, he was formerly in two percussion groups - a gamelan orchestra and a trash orchestra.

Ryan strongly believes in good environmental stewardship and the humane treatment of animals. He tries to spread knowledge about how poorly food animals are often treated, and encourages others to boycott factory farming and pay a little more for free-range meat and cage-free eggs.

He also believes spirituality is something one discovers by exploration and practice and mindfulness - not by being told what is sacred or how to connect to it. No one shirt fits all... at least, not well. But hey, let's all accept each other, no matter what shirt we have on, ok? We all have the same goals.


Work

I'm currently at Microsoft as a full-time programmer, working on some next-gen console projects.

Here is my slightly-outdated resume.

Previously, I worked at NVIDIA (August 2003 to April 2007), makers of those ridiculously fast 3D graphics chips. While there, I wrote demos and special effects that showed off the cutting-edge technology in our chips. Check out Cascades (requires a GeForce 8000 series and Vista) and GeoForms (requires GeForce 7000 series).

Before that, I worked for NullSoft, makers of the dandy little Winamp music player. I had an R&D position. Check out some of the fun music visualizers I wrote while working there: MilkDrop, Geiss 2, Monkey, and Smoke. If you want to write your own audio visualization plug-ins (using C/C++ and DirectX 8), check out VMS, the Visualization Mega SDK, complete with source code.