It seems like I update this 'about me' page once in a year, and it's new year. So here it is.
I am JongMan Koo, an apprentice geek. I read Hacker News and reddit, use Ubuntu Linux, and am an advocate of OSS in general. Having started programming when I was 9, I wrote various programs in various environments -- from purely hobbyist settings to professional software engineer and hardcore programming contests. During those years I worked on various things including websites, a multimedia platform like Adobe Flash, a contextual advertising engine, a high performance market data decoder for a trading firm, a research environment for quantitative trading, and an online judging system for programming contests -- in BASIC, Pascal/Delphi, PHP, Javascript, C/C++, Python and what not.
I was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, until I graduated from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science. In 2009, I moved to Chicago, IL for a job and living here since then.
My limited reading outside technical area mostly consists of fantasy or SF literature. My favorites among them are the ones from Tolkien, Rowling, Martin, 이영도 and 홍정훈. Besides those, I read a tad bit too much comic books -- mostly Japanese comic books. Sadly, I don't listen to much music or watch much TV anymore. When I do, I listen to 2000's Korean pop and watch 무한도전. A recent addition to my limited set of hobbies is cooking: I found out I actually like it.
Outside programming, I am a novice in pretty much anything. There are certain things that I want to get better at -- photography, dancing, and poker are what come to mind.
Since July 11, 2009, I am married to a wonderful lady, and we are expecting a child this summer. I am truly excited about it. :-)
