Believe it or not, there is a reasonable explanation for my name; I was born in the Netherlands. I moved to Canada when I was twenty-three.
Home is in Vancouver, a most beautiful city. As for how to pronounce my name; I don't care much, say it whatever way makes you the happiest.
I'll respond to most variations, from Yop to Japp to Jape to Japper to idiot. That last one works especially well.
That's it?
Well, consider this; if I had not made this section expandable like the rest of the site, the
design police would have filed a symmetry complaint. Consistency matters. I guarantee the other sections are
more interesting, albeit only slightly.
What the heck, here's is a photo of me on a mountain. Just like that, a freebie!
Work
I work at Electronic Arts and love it. You should come work here.
If you are from a recruiting agency, do not bother. I already have an incredible job.
On an average day I get to use several languages, throw in some functional and generative programming, work
on compiler technology, transform large data sets, use distributed source control, muck with isorecursive type
systems, deal with massively parallel hardware, and eat sushi.
The sushi in this city is unbelievable. I was vegetarian for ten years, then I moved to Vancouver.
Are you smart?
Our technology group in Vancouver is hiring, and we'd like you to help us solve hard problems. To gauge your fitness, consider the
list of buzzwords in the paragraph above. Do any of those ring a bell? Maybe I should throw in some websites, authors, and technology.
Y-combinator, Reddit, Lambda the Ultimate, Git, Mercurial, Map Reduce, Hadoop, Paul Graham, Anders
Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, LLVM, Virtual Machine Design, Garbage Collection Strategies, distributed hash
tables, Kademlia, Torrents
My point being, we are working on problems outside of typical game development. I don't care that you've
never worked on games before; I need you to be smart and creative. Drop me an email and let's talk.
Movie Break
My non-programming friends and family occasionally ask what I really do at EA, other than eat sushi. The
majority of my work could be considered mathematical, with a healthy dose of management, and occasional swearing at my
computer. Nonetheless, I enjoy ideas from other fields; like those in the video below. It's
layman's psychology instead of computer science; thus no programming experience necessary.
To see the original material from which I so graciously borrowed, follow these links.
I highly recommend any talks by Lawrence Lessig or Barry Schwartz; my presentation does not do
the quality of their ideas justice. It will be time well spend.
Resume-ish
I may not be looking for a job, but I can still brag about my mediocre
resume. Here are some things I claim to have done or be capable of.
2006 - today, working on various technologies at Electronic Arts.
2004 - 2005, worked on Super Mario Strikers at Next Level Games in Vancouver
2002 - 2004, programming on Fifa 2004, 2005, Marvel Nemesis, and other games at Electronic Arts.
2001 - 2002, author of the SGADE, an open-source library for GBA programming.
1998 - 2002, worked on US Racer and other projects at Davilex Games in the Netherlands.
I like my programming multi-paradigm. Fancy, eh?
Not only does it sound cool, but solutions that best fit the problem give higher success rates as well. Give me object oriented, functional, meta, or generative; I'm okay.
When the job calls for it, I can switch to the just-get-it-done-whatever-it-takes paradigm as well. But my favorite style by far has to be common sense programming; also referred to
as; don't be stupid.
Expert at managing code and API complexity.
Expert C and C++ programmer, including exception, template, STL and
Boost experience
Experienced C# and C++/CLI programmer, with a strong understanding of low-level .NET runtime
internals.
Dabbled in Python, Java, Lisp, Lua and Arm Assembly
Practices test driven development.
Has worked on X86, PowerPC, Cell SPU, ARM, and various other obscure platforms.
At one point I could juggle five balls while balancing on a unicycle, but I have since learned that relatively
few companies have an interest in that kind of talent.
Math
I wrote about Geometric Algebra. Here is the PDF version, 404 kilobytes.
It takes one paper with complicated looking formulas and people suddenly assume you have a clue about mathematics. Boy are they wrong. Equations and
formulas scare me as much as the next guy. Occasionally I wonder what motivated me to write this paper. I suspect my love/hate relationship with mathematics
is fueled by the sheer amount of elegance at the end of the tunnel.
What I'm trying to say is; this part of my website isn't exactly about math, and I'm not expert on anything. I merely respect the field. What happened is I needed
to put this paper up, but the words 'geometric algebra' have more than four letters in them, rendering them inconsistent with the other
section titles on this website. C'est la vie. If the PDF version above doesn't entice you, here's an embedded version.
People send me emails regarding this paper, so let me write down some frequently questioned answers.
Equation (X.Y) on page Z is wrong - for several values of X, Y and Z
Yes, I regret that. But not enough to publish an updated document or list errata on this website. A scientist's integrity prescribes I make the
necessary corrections, but I'm too busy snowboarding, skydiving, or sailing. A shoddy academic I make. In the interrim, consider these errors
a challenge while reading; it keeps you on your toes.
Wasn't there a C++ library alongside this paper?
At one point I published a C++ library to do Clifford Algebra. It avoided storage for and operations on blades
in a multivector that are always zero. It did this at compile time using a combination of C++ template meta-programming, preprocessor
macros, and a small amount of offline code generation. Performance was substantial compared to other libraries available at the time
(mostly because my code avoided all do any heap allocations).
However, compile-times were beyond horrid. My abuse of the accidentally Turing-complete template compiler led to one 400 line unit-test
for the 5 dimensional conformal algebra taking three hours to compile on GCC. More often than not, the compiler crashed.
Interesting as that library may have been, it was completely unusable for anything practical. If you really want the
code, drop me an email and I can send you my (horribly broken) latest snapshot. It can serve
as a case study on C++ abuse.
When will Geometric Algebra change the world?
Back in 2003, my excitement over Geometric Algebra lead to hopes it would bring significant improvements to the fields of computer graphics,
physics, and animation. These days, I consider it just another instrument in my geometric toolbox. Clifford algebra is by far the most
elegant and powerful method for modelling multi dimensional spaces. But practice and elegance don't always favor each other, especially not
when performance is critical. Nonetheless, I encourage anybody to learn more about Geometric Algebra, if only for an improved understanding of quaternions, and
additional problem solving skills. Plus, screws in the conformal model are really fricking cool.
Read
I put books in my house, they make me look smart. Occasionally I read one.
Despite having yet to read a Mark Twain book, I've always ensured my schooling didn't interfere with my education. So far, the following books have shaped my
thinking in ways that Harry Potter can't.
The reason I list books on my website is partly as a recommendation, but also because a man's favorite books say
much about his beliefs. I love a soap box, but try to be subtle about it - until you get to know me.
Jump
I have BASE number 1018, made 121 jumps, and didn't die once. Now I'm retired from the
sport.
It's quite an enjoyable pasttime to throw one's body from bridges, cliffs, antennas, and buildings. I did always use a parachute of course, otherwise the fun stops right after
the first jump. Doing BASE for three years, the fear ultimately caught up to me. So I quit while I still had an injury free track record and moved on to
more exciting ways to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon. These days, I like to knit, collect stamps, and stare out the window.
This video shows various jumps I made.
Misc
I get bored easily. This section shows a few fights with ennui.
Caution, this section is fairly random, probably only of interest if you were
involved in these shenanigans.
Sinterklaas 2007
The following video was the 2007 invitation I made for our annual Sinterklaas party; loosely
based on an old Dutch tradition, similar to Santa Clause in North
America. Inspired by an XKCD comic, we used 9000 balls to turn one of my rooms into a ball pit; and later donated
the balls to the Vancouver Developmental Disabilities group. We got presents from Sinterklaas, Santa,
Jesus, and the Easter Bunny.
Sunny Winter Jumps
More BASE footage, from when some friends and I paid a visit to a local bridge in February of 2007.
Marleen Surprises Roderick
At the end of 2007, Roderick lived with me for three months, visiting
from Holland, doing an internship at UBC university. He had not seen
his girlfriend for two months, so we flew her over as a surprise.
While Roderick was on the bus coming home from work, we called him and
said that UPS had deliver a large box. He has no idea what's in it.
The video starts with some photos from a visit that Roderick and
Marleen made to Vancouver some years earlier. Twenty seconds in,
Roderick is up for a shock.
As for the music, it's intentionally sappy. Cry away.
Snowboarding in Les Deux Alpes
I spent the summer of 2001 snowboarding on a glacier in France. This is an edit some friends made after that trip.
The Suitcase
In the summer of '97 we had the crazy idea to make our own movie. We
were teenagers, but surely we would be able to give Pulp Fiction a run
for its money, right?
Overnight, I put a script together, borrowed two video-8 cameras
(that's right, analog), and given my lack of acting talent; opted to
stand behind the camera.
The result was a 40 minute long feature film called The Suitcase. It
had little resemblance to my original script, but we didn't care; what
mattered was that we had laughed non-stop from the first "Action!" to
the last "Cut!" three weeks later.
Inspired by Quentin Tarantino - who was the hip and trendy movie maker
those days - we had it all; maffia, guns, fast cars, women, drug deals
gone bad, pseudo-intellectual plot twists to confuse the audience, and
every other cheesy cliche we could think of.
All acting was Dutch. However, this abridged version contains
highlights that hardly rely on language, only on a group of friends
willing to share their abysmal acting skills and talent for idiocy.
So what; we had fun.
Unless you know or are one of the people in this movie, I doubt this
video will be interesting. I put it online for old friends and
nostalgia's sake.
It's probably for the best I didn't pursue a career in film making.
Link
I recommend other websites, much better than this one.
