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If you would like to contact me, send an email to:

afarrell_online ( at ) yahoo.ie

Who Am I?

Andrew Farrell, born and bred in Dublin Ireland.

The kind of person I am is up to interpretation (mainly by myself). I would describe my self as an idealist technophile. What does this double speak mean? well...I have an enthusiastic interest in philosophy mainly asian philosophies. Apart from the soft and feely aspect of myself I am also a technophile, I have done a BSc. and MSc. in Computer Science, finally specialising in Networks and Distributed Systems. What can I do with computers? Well...my studies thought me how computers can communicate remotely over the internet, through the air as radio waves and as pulses of light accross glass fibre optics. The complicated bit is ensuring that everything is reliable (handle failure gracefully), the channel is secure (encryption stuff), and that mechanisms are in place to ensure that right clients get the right information at the right time and in the right order. The systems I worked with include wireless laptops, mobile phones, and other gadgets.

The route I choose for my thesis was that of Semantic Web Services. This is a huge area of research and will feature in the Internet of tomorrow. Semantic Web Services describe available functionality (e.g. to buy a ticket) in a non-ambigous explicit fashion so that computers can automatically reason and infer what the service provides and how to use it in conjunction with other web services. This explicit description is stored in an Ontology which describes how entities (e.g. Ticket, Person) relate to each other and indeed when they don't based on a set of rules. Ontologies are used extensively in Anti-terrorism to flag individuals or activities if they satisfy any of the rules predefined in the ontology. An example of a rule would be:if Mr X is now known to associate with Mr Y, and Mr Y associates with a known terrorist Mr.Z we can infer that Mr X may associate with the terrorist Mr.Z.

Interests

Beyond my intro above there are other things in life that are important to me and which I actively pursue. Since I started college I have been doing Shotokan Karate, this is a Japanese martial art that originated on the island of Okinawa. Although karate was at the core of all my martial arts training I have been introduced to other martial arts via the club, including judo, aikido, goju ryu, and Brazilian Jujitsu. I have also practiced with traditional weapons including the 6ft bo staff, the 4ft jo staff, the tonfa, and katana.

I do enjoy a worthy outdoor challenge like a multi-mile hike. A few mates and I often go to Wicklow and climb a mountain or two just for the laugh. A few years back we went to Peru and hiked the inca trail, 50 km of the most challenging and rewarding terrain on the earth. I will never forget walking up the last few Inca steps and seeing Machu Picchu for the first time with my own eyes.

Travel is obviously the best way to see the world and financially permitting I like to do it as much as possible.