Greetings. Welcome to Rusty's Home Page.

I grew up in New Orleans to which I periodically return in search of a decent bowl of gumbo. However, I currently reside in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In what passes for real life these days, I'm a software developer, nature photographer, and writer of computer books, novels, and short fiction. I've also been known to speak at a conference or two including Devoxx, EclipseCon, JavaOne, Lunacon, Readercon, Software Development Expo, Summit 2000, MacFair, OOP, XMLDevCon, JavaDevCon, XMLOne, XMLEurope, Extreme Markup Languages, JAOO, Javapolis, JavaZone, STARWest, STPCon, EclipseWorld, XML 2006, and MacWorld. I've also trained developers at numerous corporations including Google, Bank of America, Verizon, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and Hoffman-LaRoche. I'm a member of several professional organizations including SFWA, the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, and the Brooklyn Bird Club. I'm also a member of the Taos Toolbox Class of 2018.

My short fiction includes:

• “On Summoning Demons”, kferrin.com, 2019
• “What Does a Time Machine Cost?”, Abyss & Apex, 2018; reprinted in TimeShift: Tales of Time
• “Why I Don't let My Kids Go Trick-or-Treating”, Unnerving 4, October, 2017
• “Holding the Door”, Editor's Choice, Fiction River 23, September, 2017
• “Classified Ads”, Daily Science Fiction, March 21st, 2016; Podcast in Season 2 of Kaleidocast
• “31”, The Flash Fiction Press, February 18, 2016
• “Knocked Up”, Hidden in Crime, Fiction River 16, November, 2015
• “Blood Test”, Young Explorers Adventure Guide 2016, Dreaming Robot Press, 2015
• “Pinning Portugal”, Caped, Local Heroes Press, 2015
• “Frænir the Fearless”, New Realm, October 2015
• “Ants on a Trestle”, Crossed Genres, September 2015
• “For Your Safety”, SF Comet, August, 2015
• “To the Point”, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, January/February 2015
• “Rejection Letter”, Only Disconnect, Third Flatiron, 2015
• “Net War I”, The Time It Happened, Third Flatiron, 2015
• “The Valediction”, T. Gene Davis's Speculative Blog, June 2015
• “Refusing the Call”, Abbreviated Epics, Third Flatiron, 2014
• “The Right Books”, Master Minds, Third Flatiron, 2014

Here are some of my books:

My family keeps bugging me to "write a book they can understand" so I hope one day to branch out of the computer book ghetto and write some more general non-fiction. It hasn't happened yet though. In the meantime, though, I've begun keeping a blog and online journal about whatever topics strike my eye, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Buffy in Cyberspace, Intelligence, Timothy Leary, The Spot, Fruitopia, Fuzzy Truth, Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, The vagaries of book titles, Cab Rides in New York, and Robert Anton Wilson's The New Inquisition

The quickest, most reliable means of reaching me is to send email to elharo@macfaq.com. I don't give out my phone number or street address to any and all on the net; but if for some reason you'd like to call me or send snail mail, send me email with your phone number, and I'll get back to you. (It wouldn't hurt if you told me why you wanted to call me either.)

As well as my popular books and writings on the web, I've written and cowritten a number of technical papers on topics ranging from solar physics to railguns to baseball. Most recently:

• Harold, E., "Obscuring XML", Extreme Markup Languages 2005
• Harold, E., "XOM Design Principles", Extreme Markup Languages 2004
• Harold, E., "SAX Conformance Testing," XML Europe 2004
• Bukiet, B., Harold, E., and Palacios, J., "A Markov Chain Approach to Baseball," Operations Research, Volume 45, Number 1, January-February 1997, pp. 14-23
• T.R. Rimmele, P.R. Goode, E. Harold, R.T. Stebbins, "Dark Lanes in Granulation and the Excitation of Solar Oscillations," Astrophysical Journal, 444, L119-L122 (1995).
• Harold, E., Bukiet, B., and Peter, W., "Maximum Projectile Velocity in an Augmented Railgun,"; IEEE Transaction on Magnetics, Volume 30, Number 4, July 1994, pp. 1433-1436

I've also been known to cross over to the other side of the fence and do some editing on occasion. I've been technical editor for Teach Yourself Perl 5 in 21 Days by David Till, The Developer's Guide to the Java Web Server by Dan Woods, Larne Pewkowsky, and Tom Snee, and for the Java chapter of Andrew Tanenbaum's Computer Networks, 3rd Edition, and the XML chapter of Cay Horstmann's Big Java, 2nd Edition.

Over the years, I've written a number of shorter form articles:

• Java at 20: How it changed programming forever, InfoWorld, May 21, 2015
• The Open Road: Building the JDK, today.java.net, 2007-11-29
• Java 2007: The year in preview, IBM developerWorks, 2007
• Introducing Subversion, IBM developerWorks
• New elements in HTML 5, IBM developerWorks
• Ten Predictions for XML in 2007, IBM developerWorks
• Testing Legacy Code, IBM developerWorks
• Managing XML data: Identify XML documents, IBM developerWorks 2007
• XML 2007, IBM developerWorks
• Simple Xalan extension functions, IBM developerWorks
• Tip: Debug stylesheets with xsl:message, IBM developerWorks
• Managing XML data: eXist — an open source native XML database, IBM developerWorks
• Pull parsing XML in PHP, IBM developerWorks
• Tip: Combine and alternate xml-stylesheet processing instructions, IBM developerWorks
• Encode your XML documents in UTF-8, IBM developerWorks
• Managing the Java classpath (UNIX and Mac OS X), IBM developerWorks
• JavaOne 2007: Prodigal Sun returns to the client, IBM developerWorks
• Managing the Java classpath (Windows), IBM developerWorks
• Managing XML data: Native XML databases, IBM developerWorks
• Why XForms?, IBM developerWorks
• XForms extensions to XPath, IBM developerWorks
• The Java XPath API, IBM developerWorks
• Tip: Configure SAX parsers for secure processing, IBM developerWorks
• The Java XML Validation API, IBM developerWorks
• Measure test coverage with Cobertura, IBM developerWorks
• SimpleXML processing with PHP, IBM developerWorks
• Fuzz testing, IBM developerWorks
• RELAX NG with custom datatype libraries, IBM developerWorks
• Testing object serialization, IBM developerWorks
• Tip: Configure Apache to send the right MIME type for XHTML, IBM developerWorks
• Managing XML data: XML catalogs, IBM developerWorks
• XML in 2006, IBM developerWorks
• Tip: Loop with recursion in XSLT , IBM developerWorks
• An early look at JUnit 4, IBM developerWorks
• Testing Legacy Code, IBM developerWorks
• Zap bugs with PMD, IBM developerWorks
• Measure test coverage with Cobertura
• Managing XML data: A look ahead, IBM developerWorks
• Managing XML data: Identify XML documents, IBM developerWorks
• Managing XML data: XML catalogs, IBM developerWorks
• Native XML databases: Theory and Reality, IBM developerWorks
• Test Your Tests With Jester, IBM developerWorks
• An early look at sXBL, IBM developerWorks
• RELAX NG with custom datatype libraries, IBM developerWorks
• 10 Reasons We Need Java 3.0, OnJava, 2002-07-31
• An Introduction to StAX, XML.com, 2003-09-17
• The XMLPULL API, XML.com, 2002-08-14
• Using XInclude, XML.com, 2002-07-31
• RDDL Me This: What Does a Namespace URL Locate?, XML.com, 2001-02-28
• Who Trusts the Trustees? Trusted Security Providers in the Java Cryptography Extension 1.2.1
• The Java Gated Community Process

I've also been interviewed here and there:

• ONJava.com: A Distributed Discussion with Elliotte Rusty Harold, OnJava, 2004-12-15
• O'Reilly: An Interview with Elliotte Rusty Harold, http://java.oreilly.com/news/harold_0399.html
• Artima: What's Wrong with XML APIs
• TechNetCast Play: Interview with Elliotte Rusty Harold (Video), http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_play_stream.html?stream_id=436