I'm having predictable and in fact predicted spasms of uncertainty and confusion about my career.

Just had a wonderful dinner with Michael Kowalski, whose life story is a cross between Horatio Alger, Thomas Merton, and Michelangelo. In about 1994 he decided that he wanted to work as a computer graphics programmer, despite being a beginning computer user. He put himself through the intro computer science curriculum at Brown, and eventually earned a masters in CS at Brown. He was a co-author on a SIGGRAPH paper, or maybe several, and his work was on the cover of the proceedings one year -- the Dr. Seuss-ish non-photorealistic rendering of a dandelion-ish flower on a green field with a blue sky. Now he works at Rhythm & Hues on Maya plugins, Houdini plugins, and proprietary effects software. I asked him why he learned Maya, and he said that it was because he felt like he needed something concrete to point to, a concrete skill to help in the job market. This seems very savvy. Based on what I saw people asking for at SIGGRAPH, I'm going to leave 3ds max behind and start working with Maya instead.

Michael gave me some badly needly encouragement and perspective. I have built a decent framework for eBooks (my research) which I now think should perhaps be called "PolyBooks." (More on that later.) He pointed out that I have a strong intuition for computing... I think there is something ineffable, but good, about my relationship to computing, software engineering, user interface design, graphics, and art.

Like Michael, I need something concrete to point to. I need a demo reel.