-= Orb Deluxe =-

Welcome to the personal web pages of Chris Mitchell.

my resume.

Intellectual Property

Economics & Investing
The Observed Economy: occasional excerpts from my amateur economics and finance research. I view macroeconomics as a tapestry of innovation, production and labor mobility. Financial capital and cultural cohesion appear to be important secondary elements. Of note is the Boom Wave Theory, a model of business cycles with a tactical allocation investing system built on top of it. I also study taxation and education.

Software & Social Media
Games: several original playable games for various platforms.

Eye Scene. A popular discussion forum about eyeglasses I ran from 1997-2011. I wrote the custom forum software in Perl and PHP in 2001 (earlier versions ran on off-the-shelf software). Includes links to follow-on sites, including Moonshiner's version of the site running on the same Perl/PHP software.

Reddit AMA about my search engine projects and work history (ca. 1998 to 2008).

Music

Lyrics for band Nine Days Wonder (USA):

Mortal Man's Dead Hand Blue (m4a, lyrics 1985)
Spirit of the West (m4a, lyrics 1985)
Spirit of the West - demo version (mp3, lyrics 1985)

Original music:

Whispers (mp3, 1992) lyrics
Nautilus (midi, 1998)
Spiral9 (mp3, 2009)

With the Normal Fauna music collective: Can't See A Thing (YouTube video, percussion 2020)

New Perspective by Evan Acey (YouTube video, percussion 2021)

YouTube playlist with several modular synthesis pieces created with the VCV Rack 2 virtual modular system (2022). Video descriptions also include downloads of the module/cable setups, known as patches, that can be run and modified in VCV Rack 2 free version.

March Madness analysis: The Expectations Index System
Here's a bracket picking system I've been working on for a few years. It's based on historical expectations for each school versus their current seed and falls back on Sagarin scores when it can't decide.

In a nutshell, Expectations Index favors teams who enter the tournament with a seed that corresponds closely to their historical strength when ranked against the other teams in the tourney.

EI is based on school historic tourney wins and current coach's career tourney wins. So Duke is always at the top of the list (i.e. an expected #1 seed) and if they pull a #1 or #2 seed from the selection committee they get a "good" rating on expectations. If they drop lower than #2 in the tourney seeding they get a "bad" rating. Any "good" team is picked to beat any "bad" team, even if it's an extreme upset like an appropriately seeded #16 against a team that doesn't have the historical/coaching portfolio of a typical #1 seed. To fill the other games ("good EI" vs "good EI" or "bad EI" vs "bad EI") I just use the higher Sagarin score.

The EI bracket won my small office competition in 2018 (14 entrants). It was the only bracket in the competition to pick Villanova to win. EI also picked the UMBC upset of Virginia, although it typically picks one or two 16 > 1 upsets per year so this result isn't as surprising as the upset itself.

Expectations Index Final Fourcast for 2022 March Madness (3/14/22): Gonzaga over Kentucky, Kansas over Tennessee; national champion: Gonzaga

Teatime

(Pink Floyd were served tea on stage at this point)

Internet Radio & Podcasting

An internet radio playlist in .pls format. Five stations, mostly news. All working as of March 2014.

I like a couple of shows from Monocle 24's radio service and the RSS feeds don't seem to appear on their web site (and in one case apparently not even in Google search). So, as a public service, here they are (working as of August 2013):

Monocle 24: The Briefing - RSS feed

http://feeds.feedburner.com/monocle24thebriefing

Monocle 24: The Urbanist - RSS feed

http://feeds.feedburner.com/monocle24theurbanist

Keys for Trade

* A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build
* Arma 2
* Asura: Vengeance Expansion
* Attack of the Earthlings
* BLACKHOLE
* Broken Age
* Broken Sword: Director's Cut
* Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
* Brutal Legend
* Car Mechanic Simulator 2017
* Card City Nights 2
* Chaos Reborn
* Chroma Squad
* Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink
* Company of Heroes 2
* Crusader Kings 2 DLC:
  - Way of Life
  - The Republic
  - The Reaper's Due
  - Charlemagne
  - Legacy of Rome
  - Sons of Abraham
* Dark Arcana: The Carnival
* Dead Age
* Deadlight
* Deep Sky Derelicts
* Demolish and Build 2017
* Die Young
* DiRT Rally 2.0
* Fantasy Versus
* Funfair Ride Simulator 3
* Gone Home
* Grey Goo
* GRID 2
* GTR Evolution (inc. RACE 07 and Formula RaceRoom Add-On)
* Guns, Gore & Cannoli
* Hacknet
* HIVESWAP: Act 1
* Infinite Air with Mark McMorris
* King of Dragon Pass
* Lethal League
* Lethal League Blaze
* Life is Strange
* Lost Chronicles of Zerzura
* Lucid
* Magicka (2 copies)
* Main Assembly
* Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart
* Oriental Empires
* Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
* Out of the Box
* Overlord: Ultimate Evil Collection
* Papo & Yo
* Psychonauts
* Rain World
* Rebel Galaxy
* Robot Squad Simulator 2017
* S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
* Sea Legends: Phantasmal Light Collector's Edition
* Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun
* Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition
* Shufflepuck Cantina
* Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
* Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete (2 copies)
* Sid Meier's Civilization IV: The Complete Edition
* Sid Meier's Railroads!
* Sir, You Are Being Hunted
* Snake Pass
* Sniper: Ghost Warrior Trilogy (2 copies)
* Space Pirates and Zombies
* Speed Brawl
* STAR WARS - Knights of the Old Republic
* STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords
* Steve Jackson's Sorcery! Parts 1 and 2
* Stories: The Path of Destinies
* Sundered: Eldritch Edition
* Tacoma (2 copies)
* Tangledeep
* The Battle of Polytopia (2 copies)
* The Crown of Leaves
* The Signal from Tolva
* The Town of Light
* To The Moon (2 copies)
* Torchlight
* Tower of Time
* Train Mechanic Simulator 2017
* Tropico 4
* UNDERTALE
* Wandersong
* Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
* World of Goo