OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

85495 Nichael Cramer nichael@s... 2000‑10‑27 BIO
As Bob Nelson has pointed out, I seem to have never got around to
actually posting a Bio.  So, here goes...

**********************************************************************

OK, the general, boring stuff first: Originally a Hoosier, I met LOML
when we were students at IU (25 years come Thanksgiving, by the way).
Started out studying Physics (cosmology/particle physics) but grad
school (UT, Austin) taught me that I was qualifying myself for
probably one of two dozen jobs in the country (many of which were held
my then-current professors).  After a couple of years, we ended up
heading back to Bloomington where LOML was to do her Masters in
Biology.

One day I answered a notice on a bulletin board (this was back in the
days when Apple ]['s had just become available and everyone with a
grant was rushing out and buying one and then discovering that they
had to hire someone to actually run the things for them).  A Masters
in Physics had basically qualified me to drive a cab.  But I then
found that my one course in CompSci (intro Fortran) suddenly got me an
inside job where people treated me with something like respect.

So, the little light went on over my head.  In short order I got my
Masters in CS and have been frantically writing software ever since,
first at TI in Dallas, and later at BBN in Cambridge MA (following
your usual hiatus at the standard small Kendall Square start-up).
Mostly in AI and human-factors behavior-modelling (with some early
work in Genetic Programming); originally in Lisp [how's that for OT
content] and more recently primarily in Java and the standard set of
web-technologies (XSL/XML, servlets TCL, etc).  Currently working for
a small consulting group in Woburn (north of Boston), albeit remotely
as more or less your classic case of a "telecommuter".


Anyway, on to the more interesting stuff: LOML (Crystal) and I now
live in southern Vermont, nestled away in the woods with Maera(13) and
Asah(10) (I am, in Greg Brown's words "A man rich in daughters").

My first woodworking was while I was still in school when I stumbled
across one of Graham Blackburn's books.  This was a bit surprising
since I've always been a disaster with anything mechanical (when I was
in the 7th grade I tried to get out of shop class --I *really* didn't
want to be around all those noisy, dangerous machines.  I even offered
to take Home Ec instead to make up the hours.  They didn't buy it...)

In any case, soon after this I made my younger sister a
frame-and-panel blanket chest for her wedding, using bascially a 1/4in
chisel, a hardware-store bought #4 and a (tailed) router while using
the deck of our student-housing backporch as my workbench.  All things
considered, it came out pretty well if I do say so myself.

It wasn't long after this that the Woodwright's Shop started.  I was
fascinated by the idea of using handtools, but I had no idea how to
begin.  The local hardware stores had the standard assortment of #4's,
a block plane or two and the occasion #78, but here was Roy and Graham
talking about "The best way to do this is with your plow plane."
Yeah, right...

Eventually when I got out of school and got a Real Job (and we moved
to Dallas) I took over the garage, set up a shop and started making
stuff in the evenings.  This was great, but when we ended up moving to
Boston everything had to go into storage, where it stayed for a
distressing number of years.

It wasn't until we moved to Vermont (and out of the no-free-space
condo-maze of East Cambridge) that I was really able to set up shop
again.  More importantly, a few years back the current "handtools
explosion" really began.  Fueled by such (for me, eye-opening)
discoveries as Garrett Hack's and Mike Dunbar's books (and, somewhat
later, the Porch) the OT-world opened up for me.  [The most
distressing part was the discovery that I had, for the last 10+yrs
been living withing a couple of hours of things like Crane's
auctions...  :-(  ]

My current projects involve various pieces of furniture for around the
house, together with a budding interest in plane-making.


In sum, I guess you would have to say that I am your standard
evenings-and-weekends in the basement (fanatic) hobbyist
amateur/dilettante[*] of the hard-core OldTool variety (i.e. in that I
currently no longer own any tailed- apprentices[**]).

(And to be clear --following some recent discussions-- this should in
no way be read as a comment on those of other persuasions.  I truly
understand how blessed I am, free of such constraints --proffessional,
in terms of physical health, financial, otherwise-- that allow me the
freedom to pursue these interests in this way.  I know my own skills
(and lacks thereof) well enough to understand that I wouldn't last a
month if I had to make a living doing this.  But neither does that
mean that I'm any less serious about it than anyone else.  ;-)

   [* I use both of these words in their precise senses as one
      who both "loves" and "takes delight in" the task at hand.]

   [** OK, to be precise, I own one tailed-drill which is used
       exclusively for honey-dew chores; but in my mind it
       doesn't count because it's never allowed near my
       "woodworking" projects.]


Nichael


Nichael Cramer                  "...the tongue of his foreplane
nichael@s...                    whistles its wild ascending lisp..."
http://www.sover.net/~nichael/                        -- Whitman



Recent Bios FAQ