Chris Dolan

About me

I'm Chris Dolan, the creator of this site. Contact me at . I'm a software developer with a PhD in astronomy. Links to my various online persona are available from my Google+ page.

Software Architecture and Development

Avid

I am currently a Sr. Principal Engineer at Avid Technology working in our Media Enterprise division. I specialize in highly-available distributed computing and orchestration systems for our broadcast news customers.

Clotho

I used to be a senior software developer and shareholder at Clotho Advanced Media, Inc. I was the lead developer for our MediaLandscape project and managing developer for several of our clients. I produced a lot of YAPC::NA videos using our software.

Open Source

I'm also a participant in several public software projects.

As a Java developer, I'm most active in the OSGi and SOA communities. I'm a commiter for the Apache River and Ops4J projects. I am very diligent about carefully reporting bugs in the projects I use, as follows:

As a Perl developer, I'm an active contributor to CPAN both as myself and as Clotho. My published packages are listed below. I'm a member of MadMongers, a Perl group based in Madison, WI.

AnnoCPAN::Perldoc::SyncDB (make a local copy of annocpan.org data)
CAM::App (web/database application framework)
CAM::DBF (read and write dBASE III DBF files)
CAM::EmailTemplate (template-based email message sender)
CAM::EmailTemplate::SMTP (Net::SMTP based email message sender)
CAM::PDF (PDF manipulation library)
CAM::Session (DBI and cookie CGI session state maintenance)
CAM::SOAPApp (SOAP application framework)
CAM::SOAPApp::Std (Clotho standard SOAP tools)
CAM::SOAPClient (SOAP interaction tools)
CAM::SQLManager (encapsulated SQL statements in XML)
CAM::SQLObject (object parent class for SQL delegates)
CAM::Template (Clotho-style search/replace HTML templates)
CAM::Template::Cache (template files with database storage)
CAM::UserApp (extension of CAM::App to support web login)
CAM::XML (encapsulation of a simple XML data structure)
CGI::Compress::Gzip (CGI with automatically compressed output)
Devel::EnforeceEncapsulation (find access violations to blessed objects)
FLV::Info (Read/write/convert Flash Video files)
Module::License::Report (guess the license of a Perl module)
Net::IP::Match::Regexp (efficiently match IPv4 addresses against IPv4 ranges via regexp)
Perl::Critic::More (supplemental collection of Perl::Critic policies)
Pod::FromActionscript (convert Actionscript documentation to POD)
SWF::NeedsRecompile (tests if any SWF or FLA file dependencies have changed)
Win32::Codepage (gets Windows default filesystem encoding)

I'm a core developer for the following open source projects:

Group Editing and Authoring Software (GEAS)
Family Web
Perl::Critic (makes recommendations for Perl code)
PPI (Perl parser written in Perl)
Net::VNC (VNC client library)

I'm a contributor to these open source projects:

Fink (software for MacOS X)
Module::Build (building and packaging infrastructure for Perl modules)
PPI::XS (faster version of PPI)
PAR (Perl ARchive toolkit, like JAR)
Module::ScanDeps (library dependency detector)
Mozilla (open source web browser) [my bug lists]
Planet (RSS aggregator; the engine behind Planet ChrisDolan)
Plagger (another RSS aggregator)
Parrot (virtual machine for dynamic languages)
Flash Javascript Integration Kit (lets Flash talk to Javascript and vice versa)
HTTP::Proxy (customizable web proxy in Perl)
Module::ScanDeps (library dependency detector)
CGI::Session (WWW Session maintenance for Perl)
OLE::Storage_Lite (Microsoft document reader for Perl)
SSWF project (scripting SWF files)
Ming project (SWF output library)

My arch repository is at http://www.chrisdolan.net/arch/ and currently contains my contributions to the PlanetPlanet project, but it's out of date... See my posts on the Planet-Devel email list for more details.

I delivered two presentations at YAPC::NA 2006. How Perl::Critic Facilitates Code Best Practices described how to use Perl::Critic to perform static source code analysis. Shrinkwrap Software with Perl, PAR and SOAP introduced a solution to producing commercial, user-friendly software with Perl as a rapid development tool. I presented an updated version of the Perl::Critic talk to the Madison Perl Mongers.

I'm a long-time Slashdot reader and respected contributor. I also contribute occasionally to these mailing lists and websites: MadLUG, MacSlash, use Perl, Perl-Critic, ParsePerl, Perl Module-Authors, Perl QA, Parrot Porters, PAR, CPAN ratings, AnnoCPAN and ffmpeg.

I contributed an entry to the book Perl Hacks by O'Reilly & Associates.

Web Development

Individually and as part of a team, I've built many web sites. Some of my most recent volunteer projects include sites for:

The Horribly Hilly Hundreds bicycling challenge ride
Westmorland Neighborhood Association, where I live
Scott Dolan, my brother
Brian Casey, candidate for Dane County Board of Supervisors
This page!

Education Outreach

Many years ago, I created an astronomy web site about Stars and Constellations. It pretty dated now, but at the time (1996) it was unique and became fairly popular. Due to its popularity, the University of Wisconsin Astronomy Department decided to keep it after I graduated. Several of my Java applets still run nicely despite being many years old.

Through my constellations page, I got involved with the effort to revise H. A. Rey's book called The Stars: a new way to see them. The new revision is titled Find the Constellations (the title is changed presumably since it's not authored by Rey any longer). My contribution to the book is the chart that says where to find the planets in any given year. That data comes from a web tool I published in 1997, based on the skycal software.

I contribute occasionally to the following educational projects:

Scientific Research

I completed my PhD thesis in 2000. I studied a starbirth region in the direction of the constellation Orion. It was fun work! I prefer software development, but I miss astronomical research sometimes. My list of publications is available via the ADS Abstract Service.

Not me

These other Chris Dolans are unrelated to me (not in any paticular order):

Christopher J. Dolan