introduction
I was born and raised in the tiny rural town of Glennallen, Alaska. Living 180 miles from the nearest movie theatre or mall and trudging to the school bus at -50° F was an interesting experience. At least school was cancelled whenever it hit -55° F. Being more or less forced to stay indoors by the cold weather, I turned to an obsession with computers at an early age to stave off cabin fever. The influence of my frighteningly intelligent older brother Orion solidified this obsession. I have always used Macs at home, but I also use Linux and Windows regularly, especially for work.
Programming is my primary hobby. I started out in HyperTalk, the scripting language built into HyperCard, in elementary school. I've since moved onto C++, writing cross-platform games in OpenGL as a hobby. For a look at some of my projects, take a look at my code page.
I am a music obsessive. I have a 120 gig mp3/aac collection and enjoy a little bit of everything, from Aphex Twin to Stevie Wonder to Sonic Youth. Since high school I've dabbled in making some of my own tunes, some of which I plan on putting up soon. I play the guitar moderately well, the piano poorly, and Logic Audio excellently.
I currently reside in Fairbanks, Alaska with my wonderful girlfriend Dana and my bizarre pug Popcorn. Over the next few months we will be moving to the lower 48, and I will be seeking employment as a programmer, preferably in the games industry.
education
I graduated from Glennallen High School in 2003.
I recently graduated with honors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in May 2007 with two bachelor's degrees after four years of sweat and toil.
- B.S. in Mathematics
- B.S. in Computer Science
- 3.76 Cumulative GPA
- Outstanding Undergraduate Student of the Year in Mathematics 2006-2007
- Outstanding Undergraduate Student of the Year in Computer Science 2006-2007
I also had the opportunity to participate in the 2006 COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling. Our task was to use the power of mathematics to determine the optimal placement for wheelchair caches in airports over four caffeine soaked days. Not the most exciting premise, but we did come up with a cool self-evolving airport simulation model that did the work for us. We received a rating of 'Meritorious', placing us in the top 20% of over 800 teams. You can read our paper here.
work
I have been employed as a summer programming intern for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program for the past five years by NorthWest Research Associates, Inc. HAARP is a world-class ionospheric research facility that I was fortunate enough to attend high school just a few miles away from. Working at HAARP was a blast. I met and assisted scientists and students from around the world, was sent to Boston to visit the Air Force Research Lab at Hanscom Air Force Base three times, and got to work on projects spanning many platforms, purposes, and languages. During my first few years at HAARP, I got to spend a lot of time helping out around the site with construction and computer upkeep in addition to programming. Recently though, I spent most of my time on major software projects, some of the highlights of which are listed below.
- C++ and Python software to automate an all-sky photometer. Software ran on a Red Had Enterprise Linux distro and was responsible for adjusting exposure times, switching filters, and taking pictures based on a parsed schedule during night-long experiments.
- C++ software to drive a motorized photometer platform, rotating it throughout the night according to a parsed schedule.
- A web-based Java keogram browser that organized and enhanced photometer data with an easy-to-use interface.
- CGI Perl data browser for the AMISR(Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar).
- Created a complete platform for the HAARP Spectrum Monitor. Set up a Linux box and wrote C++ applications and Perl scripts that collect data, create graphs, and serve them for visitors to the HAARP website 24 hours a day.