Mike Piatek-Jimenez "Gaucho Primo"

In case you have been wondering who the guy behind Gaucho Software is, here is a quick Mac biography.

I have been a Mac user since I was 7 years old when my dad brought home a Mac 512KE in 1984. Since then I've owned several Macs including a Mac II, PowerMac 7200/90, Powerbook 5300, Pismo Powerbook 400, and a Titanium Powerbook G4 667. For nostalgic reasons, along the way I have acquired an SE/30 and a Powerbook 180 as well as a PowerMac 6500/275. Now my primary development machines include a dual 2.5Ghz G5 and a 2.0Ghz MacBook Pro.

As far as education is concerned, I graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2000 with a BS degree in Computer Science. While there, my primary interests were in networking and embedded systems. The programming languages that I prefer to use include Objective C (of course), Perl, and Java. Other languages in which I've developed software include Visual Basic, XML/XSLT, C/C++, Pascal, Fortran, VHDL and Motorola PowerQUICC assembly. I'm always interested in learning new languages. I'm also an advocate of open source software and have used Linux, FreeBSD and other open source software since 1996. If I didn't have to help pay the bills, all of my software would be open source. :-)

In August 2002 I decided I wanted to give something back to the open source community and finally took the opportunity to learn how to program for Mac OS X. XRG was my first Cocoa project, and the first piece of software I would personally release to the public. Needless to say, I was pretty nervous the morning of October 24, 2002 when XRG was finally released to the world. It took a little time to start building popularity, but the project took off, and is still my most popular project to date. I started thinking about creating my own Mac development company near the end of 2003 when I attended the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference. There I met some indie Mac developers including Oliver Breidenbach (iStopMotion), Steve Gehrman (Path Finder), Gus Mueller (VoodooPad), Brent Simmons (NetNewsWire), and Dan Wood (Watson). I started to think, "Hey, if they can do it, why can't I?"

In April of 2004, I decided to go for it. My wife, Katrina, was just finishing her Ph. D. in Mathematics, and we were about to move to a new town. Being a graduate of UC Santa Barbara (where the mascot is a Gaucho), it seemed natural to pick the name Gaucho Software for my new company. I registered gauchosoft.com on April 1st, and when August came around I began writing code for a project that ended up becoming Seasonality. The concept of Seasonality started as a screensaver, until I came upon the conclusion that not too many people would want to check the weather by starting a screensaver. I transitioned the underlying frameworks to a desktop application project, and had a release ready by March of 2005.

Gaucho Software is still a young company, but the products continue to grow. I typically have a couple of consulting projects that I work on when I'm not working on my own software. I have been working with DynDNS Inc. on their Mac Client, DynDNS Updater, for quite awhile now. It's a great project and the people at DynDNS are a pleasure to work with.

Interests outside computers and development include bodyboarding (very difficult to do in Michigan, but I try to take every opportunity when visiting the ocean), mountain biking, and photography. I also enjoy spending time and traveling with my wife, Katrina. If you'd like to learn more about me, check out my blog, or you can visit my personal website.