Ross Finlayson

Technical Interest Areas

Other Hobbies and Interests

• Mountain biking, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, photography, hiking, skiing, (and, although not recently) racquetball, bridge, and windsurfing.
• In mid-2011, I made a two-month road trip around the U.S., visiting each of the 48 contiguous United States, plus the District of Columbia.

Background

• From Auckland, New Zealand. (Now a U.S. Permanent Resident.)
• BSc & MSc degrees (Mathematics), University of Auckland
• PhD (Computer Science), Stanford University (in David Cheriton’s "Distributed Systems Group").
• Computer scientist at Apple Computer (from April 1989 to April 1993), where I headed operating systems research.
• Computer scientist at Sun Microsystems (from April 1993 to June 1995) - worked on networking, security and distributed object systems (CORBA-based).
• Founder, Live Networks, Inc. (LIVE555.COM) (incorporated August 1995) - an Internet technology and consulting company, currently focusing on infrastructure software for streaming media

Some trivia

• I attended the same high school as Sir Edmund Hillary and Russell Crowe. (Not at the same time, of course. Hillary attended many decades earlier than I, and Crowe a couple of years later than I.)
• I personally witnessed the total solar eclipses of August 11th 1999 (on my 40th birthday!), August 21st, 2017, and April 8th, 2024; the 1999 Izmit earthquake (magnitude 7.6); the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (magnitude 6.9); the greatest comeback in sports history (damn!); and 'The Play'.
• So far, I have visited 5 of the 7 continents. I’m hoping to visit the remaining two - Africa and Antarctica - someday.
• I have hiked to the top of: the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, the highest 'mountain' in Australia, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, and Ayres Rock (Uluru).
• I have a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. (Coincidentally, I’m from the the same Scottish clan as the Gracies.)
• One of my great uncles was an All Black. (Like most New Zealanders, I worship the All Blacks: Rugby World Cup Champions for 1987, 2011, and 2015)
• Despite the preceding three trivia items, PE was by far my worst subject in school. (Come to think of it, though, I was almost as bad at art.)
• My 'Erdös number' is 4.
• Here’s where I was for 'Y2K', and here’s where I was for the real turn of the millennium. (The latter photo was taken out-of-focus; the coordinates shown are "N22.89018, W109.90094".)
• For fun, I enjoy visiting degree confluence points. Here are the points that I have visited (or attempted to visit) so far.
• There are at least four other "Ross Finlayson"s on the Internet: A consultant from Idaho, USA, a deep-sea fishing boat captain in Cairns, Australia, a university graduate in Glasgow, Scotland, and a student at (or graduate of) the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. (I don’t appear to be related to any of them. However, because many of my ancestors were from Scotland, it’s conceivable that I’m distantly related to the last two.)

Address

Countries/Territories Visited (in order; 47, and counting)