About

me

That’s me, Ammon Shepherd. I am a Digital Humanities Developer at the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia.

This site is kind of divided into three areas, as this is basically how I see myself, divided into three areas of life; work, school, and the rest (which includes religion and family). I think all three of these areas are what make me me, so they should be all taken in together. My academic work is influenced by the technical work, which is in turn affected by my personal and religious life.

Academic: I’ve spent a lot time, money and effort on becoming an historian, but I did not finish my PhD at George Mason University for various reasons. Most of the academic posts are about things of historical interest, or rather interest to historians, that I find on the web. I have also blogged about the process of going through the PhD program (but alas, in not much detail). I think technology has a lot to offer in the way of historical research, knowledge dissemination and collaboration. That’s what I was hoping my dissertation was to address (see NaziTunnels.org). My favorite tagline about history (that I made up in grad school) is “History, it happens every yesterday!”

Technical: I’m a techie. I’m a systems administrator with over 10 years of experience running web, database, and file servers. I have also worked for over 5 years in web development, production, and management (whatever that means, I build and repair websites, I guess). I know Python, Javascript, HTML, CSS, Javascript, BASH, PHP, MySQL and whatever else fits the bill. I’ve worked with Windows (95, XP, 7), MacOS, and Linux (your major RedHat and Debian distributions and their derivatives). I also work on the hardware, at one time setting up and managing 20+ servers and over 150 faculty and staff computers and other equipment. I’m also into hobby electronics with the Raspberry Pi and Arduinos, and love working in a Makerspace (Scholars’ Lab Makerspace).

Personal and Theological: I’m deeply religious, but not overtly so. I love to talk about religion and theology, but I most likely won’t bring it up in person. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’m happily married and have six kids (boy, girl, boy, boy, girl, girl). This is my attempt to follow Russell Ballard’s admonition to share the gospel using the ‘new media’ available to us today. If you’re interested in reading my personal study notes, and ideas from learning the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then I’m interested in your comments and ideas too. Drop me a note or a question, and I’ll respond.