About Me
Hello and welcome. I'm Chip Zoller, author and creator of Neon Mirrors.
I'm currently Principal Solutions Architect at Stackwatch, the company behind Kubecost. I've held many different roles in IT including, most recently, Lead System Architect of Edge at Dell Technologies. For a full and updated résumé, please see my LinkedIn page.
In addition to my technical background, I hold doctorate (2011) and Master's (2007) degrees in music performance on oboe and English horn with heavy specialization in the music history and theory of the Belle Époque. I also serve as administrator, contributor, and international copyright reviewer to the world's largest music score library, IMSLP. When not working, experimenting with, or writing about new cloud-native technologies and innovative ways to combine them in pursuit of solving customer challenges, I can often be found enjoying craft beer or small batch bourbon with my wife and our two rescue pit bulls, Dory and Lemon.
About Neon Mirrors
Neon Mirrors is the personal blog of Chip Zoller and contains writings and ramblings on diverse subjects spanning the gamut between technology and music.
What's In A Name
The name "Neon Mirrors" is multi-dimensional in significance. It is a reflection (or mirror) of who I am as a person: an amalgamation of technology and music. It is also an acknowledgement of our current period in history, one which is characterized by radical, rapid transformation similar to the period from which the name was formed.
As one of the noble gasses, Neon was discovered in 1898 yet was not applied in technology until 1910 when French engineer, Georges Claude, demonstrated its application in an early gas tube sign. It wasn't until 1915, however, when it was patented and thereafter used commonly in modern life.
While Claude, and many like him, were busy innovating technically in turn-of-the-century France, one of the countries most celebrated composers, Maurice Ravel, was doing the same thing with a pen and a keyboard. His ground-breaking composition for piano, Miroirs (1904–05) pushed the envelope and took risk with regard to form, style, and technique. Each of the five movements are reflections of things commonly seen above water, or are reflected on in music. This piece, along with his 1908 monument, Gaspard de la nuit, are often regarded as some of the most challenging works in the repertoire at the time.
As evident from the merging of these two words, their origins lie in France and come from roughly the same period of time in the early portion of the twentieth century. One is grounded in technology; the other in music. Both represent mirrors across time as we are seeing the same type of rapid innovation in the era of cloud computing, as well as represent a reflection, or mirror, of who I am. Technology meets art. These are not orthogonal concerns but more related and intertwined than many think. During the course of this blog, I hope to more fully explore these concepts in detail.
Disclaimer
This blog does not accept compensation in any form from any person, organization, or company. There are no ads, there are no sponsorships, and there are no commissions. If it's written here, you can be assured no one has requested, demanded, approved, endorsed, or paid for the content you see, including my current employer. This is the way I wish to keep it.
Privacy
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