"Ben, you're a big, honking geek" -- Alex Harper

Links to Ben's Major Webspaces

Information on Basia, the Polish jazz-pop singer
Combee's Notebook (a collection of writings)

Vital Stats

Full Name: Benjamin Lawrence Combee
Age: 29
Sex: Male
Place of Birth: Dalton, Georgia, U.S.A.
Place of Residence: Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
Job Title: Senior DTS Engineer
Employer: PalmSource, Inc.
Alma Mater (University): Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing
Degree: B.S. Computer Science (Highest Honors)
Alma Mater (High School): Northwest Whitfield High School
E-mail Address (non-work): combee@techwood.org
E-mail Address (work): bcombee@metrowerks.com
Home Telephone: +1 512 977 8603
Geek Code (3.12): GCS/M/MC/PA/P/O d-- s+:++ a25 C+++(---)$ UL+++$ P++ L++ E++ W+++(--) N+++ o+ K+++ w+++(--)$ O M+$ V- PS++ PE- Y++ PGP++ t+ 5 X R tv+ b++ DI++++ D+ G++ e++ h r y?
Meyers-Briggs Personality Type: INTJ (Mastermind: Introspective/iNtuitive/Thinking/Judging)

Tell me about Ben's life

I started with the World Wide Web back in 1992 just after XMosaic 0.10 was released. That was the first version to allow inline images, if I remember correctly. That was when I was attending college at Georgia Tech. Before that I was a high school student at Northwest Whitfield High School, a truly wonderful place with great teachers. <GRIN> Before that, I went to North Whitfield Middle School where I spent most of my time in the ALPHA room avoiding the rest of my classes. Before that, I was in elementary school in Varnell where I programmed the TI 99/4A computers for the teachers.

When I was at Georgia Tech, I was president of the gatech.edu ACM chapter. I was very active in the Wesley Foundation at Georgia Tech. Some of my favorite things about the Wesley Foundation are collected in the WF Drinking Game. I remain a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, a leadership and academic honor society, as well as a member of the Golden Key honor society and the Phi Kappa Phi honor society. I also was a President's Scholar, a program that provides an almost-free college education to outstanding high school students in exchange for their continued excellence and leadership.

My interests in computer science include computational theory and automata, hypermedia, telecommunications, operating systems, and programming languages. My interests outside computing include science fiction, foreign and independent film (especially Hal Hartley), progressive politics, alternative and feminist music, and bad puns.

I moved to Austin, Texas back in late June of 1995 after graduating from Georgia Tech. I get out to go walking on the hike and bike trails, see movies, take in live music shows, and hang out at coffeehouses. I'm a big fan of public access television, especially ACAC (Austin Community Access Center). One show for which I do production and technical work is The Show With No Name, a showcase for interesting video clips, although I must admit I don't always agree with the programming decisions. It currently airs each Sunday night, from 10 PM to 11PM on ACAC channel 10. Back in early 1996, I made two 20 minute episodes of my own series, (COOLLIST) Television, but I've no immediate plans to do any more.

What about Ben's family?

Good question. I have my great father, Lamar; my dear mother, Rose; and a wonderful kid sister, Cyndi. You can write to any of them at rcombee@ocsonline.com; my sister has her own web page. I love them all very much; they're good people.

What music does Ben like?

Is Austin really a good place for music?

Does Ben collect video games?

What about Ben's diet?

I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian. I've been one since October 1995. People occasionally ask me why, but I can't provide a simple answer. My choice is the result of lots of little judgements and experiences I'm made over the last few years. I believe that a vegetarian diet is the best diet for a person to have. It reduces ones contribution to the much-too-large meat industry. It reduces animal and human suffering.

Links about Vegetarianism

The Vegetarian Pages, a big collection of veg resources
Quotes on Vegetarianism and Compassion, some comments I've collected on the topic

Where has Ben worked?

In high school, I was a clerk and BBS operator for PC Systems of Dalton, a defunct computer store. During the summers of 1991, 1992, and 1993, I worked as an intern for Shaw Industries, a Fortune 500 carpet manufacturer, doing database, simulation, and device control projects. In school, I was a teaching assistant for the CS1410 and CS2760 classes and a research assistant for the Software Reverse Engineering group where I was the maintainer of the Reverse Engineering Group WWW page. For two and a half years, I was employed my Motorola in the Austin Design Center of the Advanced Core Development team of the Advanced Messaging Group of the Messaging Systems Products Group doing CAD support for integrated circuit designers, and later on, systems software development. Most of what I worked on is still confidential, so I can't say much more.

In January of 1998, I started working as a compiler engineer at Metrowerks, an Austin-based software company that makes development tools for all sorts of systems. I've been involved with CodeWarrior Professional 3, 4, and 5, plus the two releases of CodeWarrior for NetWare. March 2000 saw a new transition, as I left Metrowerks to join Veriprise Wireless, a startup company in the growing wireless data access space.

I returned to Metrowerks in April 2001, after Veriprise went under, suffering the fate of many of its fellow dot.coms. I was the lead developer on CodeWarrior for Palm OS. I left Metrowerks in February 2004 for a new position at PalmSource in their Developer Technical Services Group.

On what code is Ben working?

In the past, I did some work on offline USENET news reading based on the SOUP (Simple Offline USENET Packet) specification. With the paradigm shift in the last few years towards PPP access to the net, SOUP isn't as useful, so its fairly low on my priority list now. I did write one utility, soupcmd, a proof-of-concept COMMANDS file processor, but its not-very-useful since no newsreader program supports it, and it relies on GNU AWK being installed. I happen to have a few other bits of software I've written floating around on the net, so if you happen to use something of mine, send me an e-mail. Known items that are out there include RNDSTART, a Windows 3.1 system sound and background randomizer, and VB Dice Roller, an early Visual Basic 1.0 hack. I also was involved in the development of one of the IBM PC implementations of Core War when I was at the Georgia Governor's Honors Program in 1990.

PGP Public Key

A quick explanation: PGP is a cryptography system that uses a public key (mine is encoded in the above block of text) and a private key (that is securely stored at home) to allow transmittal and receipt of messages and files. Unlike symmetric crypto systems like DES where each communicator shares a common key, public key systems (PGP, for example) PGP require a pair of keys. With my public key, you can either send me a message that only I can read, or I could send you a message with a signature that could be produced using my private key and that you could verify with my public key. For more details, see Combee's Cryptography Corner.

Ben Combee
combee@techwood.org