C++, Python, Swift, scientific programming, supercomputer environments, machine language
Education
PhD, experimental particle astrophysics
(Ohio State, May 2015)
Interests
Physics, data science, wearables, 8-bit computers, iOS
Current goal
Employment at a cool job in the great state of California
The Apple ][ Video Player
An interesting bit of new media art and a gloriously difficult hack all at once, this work explores the modern
ubiquity of digital video by bringing it to the 30 year old Apple ][ family of 8-bit computers.
Video files (converted from short animated GIFs) are loaded into memory via floppies. The files are made
using a Python script and played back with a decoder written in 6502 machine language. Compression is achieved
via a combination of Run Length Encoding (RLE) on frame updates, and the LZ77 algorithm on full frames.
This project has enjoyed a bit of notoriety on the Internet and has appeared on such sites as:
The goal of this project was to create a weekly, automatic event for people who like Star Trek
and MST3K style comedy.
During a
show, commentary is sent as replies to the @tweetTrek account. This makes the content searchable, and puts it out of the way of those not also following the account. Participants vote to select the episode that will be viewed that week by interacting with the bot,
and highlights from the last show (as judged by the number of favorites) are retweeted throughout the week.
Automation is done using Python scripts, the 't' console based Twitter client, and the Linux cron daemon.
Built into an old writing desk, the layout of this panel was tuned so that I would have a relatively
cheap platform on which to practice the oddball control scheme of Williams Defender. A few added tweaks also
make it a suitable controller for Stargate (Defender II), Asteroids, and a very large number of other games. It
even has a passable NEOGEO layout for more modern stuff like the Metal Slug series.
It functions as both a USB controller for a PC, or as a standalone game system driven by an
internal Raspberry Pi. It runs the AdvanceMAME and MAME4ALL emulators with an AdvanceMenu frontend -- all
made available as part of Shea Silverman's PiMAME (now called PiPlay) Linux distribution. link to PiPlay (by Shea Silverman -- not me!)
Some Quick Data Science: A Look At The San Francisco Tweetspace
Right after grad school I started working on a dream project of mine: A location-tied message posting app. After a lot of consideration I decided that the best way to implement this idea was as a Twitter client, and so, Landburd (now in beta!) was born.
At its most basic level of functionality, Landburd searches and returns tweets associated with various apps in order to give the user a sort of basic sense of what’s happening nearby. The kinds of tweets I’m currently presenting are posted via Swarm, Foursquare, and Instagram. I also show regular tweets if they’re...
Animated GIFs have been kind to me. The small amount of Internet fame I've managed to garner is due mostly to a very niche GIF-related
project I finished last summer. So lately I pay a little more attention to the format, and yes, the Great Pronunciation War often weighs
heavily on my mind. Today I'm thinking there's a good reason...