Yes, I'm that stpeter guy — and yes, there's a lot to absorb here! For the latest updates, peruse my online journal, follow my Twitter feed, or watch my GitHub repositories.
I'm a technologist, best known for my work on XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber), an open Internet standard for real-time communication. I've also worked on identity, security, internationalization, and related topics. I've had 18 RFCs published at the IETF, where I've also served as an Area Director on the IESG. By night, I run jabber.org and xmpp.net; by day, I build collaboration systems for Cisco (needless to say, everything on this website is strictly in my own voice).
I'm a writer, having authored The Tao of Roark, a dictionary of philosophy entitled The Ism Book, a set of essays entitled Randian Reflections, a collection of poems entitled Ancient Fire, translations of Sappho, Horace, and Epicurus, and most recently an Epicurean dialogue on happiness. Books about Nietzsche, Thoreau, and Aristotle are on the way.
I'm a musician, having written a few dozen songs, composed four extended works for solo classical guitar, set to music the Langston Hughes poem Freedom's Plow, and arranged some songs by the progressive rock band Yes for solo electric bass. After I record all that, I plan to work on solo bass recordings of songs by the rock band Rush and perhaps an electric bass rendition of the Cello Suites by J.S. Bach.
I'm an advocate for free culture, having republished numerous public domain texts at The Monadnock Press and written the essays Who's Afraid of the Public Domain? and What Is Copyright?. Everything on my websites is covered under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication unless expressly labelled otherwise. The source files for my sites are also hosted at github.
I'm a student of philosophy. My favorite thinkers are Lao Tzu, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Epicurus, the gnostic Jesus, Abelard, William of Ockham, Montaigne, Spinoza, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Lin Yutang, Ayn Rand, and Hao Wang.
I'm a lover of the arts. My favorite painters are Jan Vermeer and Joaquin Sorolla. My favorite sculptors are Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French. My favorite playwrights are Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Ibsen. My favorite novelists are Victor Hugo, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Ayn Rand. My favorite poets are Sappho, Horace, Andrew Marvell, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, and Timothy Steele. My favorite composers are J.S. Bach and Duke Ellington, followed by Chopin, Dvořák, Albéniz, and Granados. My favorite musicians are Glenn Gould, Julian Bream, Stephen Isserlis, Patricia McCarty, Andras Schiff, Alicia De Larrocha, Earl Hines, Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Jarrett, Marcus Roberts, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, George Winston, Michael Hedges, Kristina Welling, Fairport Convention, Renaissance, Rush, and especially Yes.
I'm a vibrant loner, a gregarious misanthrope, a poetic geek, a cerebral musician, a practical philosopher, a spiritual non-believer, a progressive libertarian, a secular conservative, a free-market liberal, a rational patriot, an inhabitant and admirer of America and the Anglosphere and Western Civilization.
I like conversations, not comments. If you enjoy what you find here, feel free to contact me.
—Peter