kuwamoto.org

(updated 9/11/13)

I was born in 1970. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do a lot of fun things:

I learned to program on an Apple ][+, and got my first job as a programmer for an Apple II clone manufacturer.

I went to college at Caltech when I was 13. At the time, I was the youngest student ever admitted there. I might still hold that dubious distinction, for all I know.

At Caltech, I met a lot of smart and creative people. I learned a lot and also screwed up a lot.

I took classes from world class professors like Kip Thorne, and then proceeded to waste that opportunity by goofing off and skipping classes. I mean… Richard Feynman had this unofficial class he called “Physics X” where anyone could drop by and ask him questions about anything, and I only went once! If I had it all to do over again, I’d make a lot more of the opportunities I had at Caltech, but none of us ever gets a do-over in life.

In college, I spent summers doing research on computer vision algorithms using neural networks.

During grad school, I did more neural network research and I got a chance to think about the fundamental thermodynamic limits of computation (kind of boring unless you are in the field. email me if you are curious).

I also spent a lot of time DJing, mostly in cities across the midwest, and was lucky enough to play alongside personal heroes like Claude Young, Dan Bell, Baby Ford, Richie Hawtin, Mark Broom, Alan Oldham, Paul Johnson, and more. Looking back, it was a kind of magical time.

During that same time, I also did this weird thing where I would post what I ate for lunch on the internet every day. At first, I did it through my finger information, and then later through the web. I only mention it because people still occasionally ask me if I was the guy who used to post what he ate for lunch (as you can see in the comments below).

My first “real” job was at General Magic, where I got to work with amazing people like Andy Hertzfeld, Darin Adler, John Sullivan, and Kevin Lynch.

Kevin recruited me over to Macromedia, which is the only other “real” job I’ve ever had. At Macromedia:

I helped create Dreamweaver 1.0, which was an amazing experience with an amazing team.

I met the woman of my dreams on that team, and married her.

I served as Macromedia’s representative to the W3C working group on CSS.

I later became manager of the Dreamweaver team, and then went on to run engineering for the entire HTML division.

I was able to start several projects at Macromedia, some of which succeeded and some of which didn’t see the light of day.

The last project I worked on at Adobe (who acquired Macromedia) was to work on Flex Builder, Flash Catalyst, and other Flex related things with an incredibly talented group of people. I eventually ended up leaving but I like to think I made a difference before I left.

After leaving Adobe, I spent some time tinkering around with various projects. One was a small iPhone project which people seem to like. One was a new IDE for HTML/PHP/Ruby/JavaScript guys (kind of like Coda crossed with IntelliJ IDEA) which never saw the light of day. I started yet another project, but it’s still sitting on the shelf in an unfinished state.

I eventually decided to spend 100% of my time on a startup with Mike Schiff. It’s called Phile, and it launched November of 2010.

As of Spring 2012, I decided to stop working on Phile and ended up at a place called Medium with a bunch of people who are all amazing. I learn new stuff from them every day.

Oh, and I’m still married to the woman of my dreams and I have two wonderful kids now.