Hello, world! This is my little slice of the internet. Believe it or not, I’ve had a personal website up since 1997, when dialup was still a thing, social media didn’t exist, and searching the internet was still live because those sharp Stanford students hadn’t crawled and cached it yet. I try to post random things I’m involved / interested in. Professionally, I’ve worked as a software engineer, computer science professor, and STEM teacher PreK-5). In other words, I have a strong appreciation for industry programming, teaching, mentoring, and formal science.
Some of the university courses I’ve authored and taught, include traditional computer science curriculum, computing history, engineering, mobile programming, and capstone / senior design projects. Teaching has honestly been the most meaningful and rewarding part of my career. All of my teaching has been in the Central Florida area, at Stetson University, Full Sail University, and mentoring at various schools, libraries and community centers. Some colleagues and I co-founded a 501.c3 non-profit, Cacti Council, which promotes critical and creative thinking in education, especially computer science and programming. We have spoken to middle and high school students about STEM fields, taught classes at Orlando Science Center and Winter Park Library, and contributed to various outreach programs with the same focus, such as Code.org‘s Hour of Code. Here are some photos of me teaching elementary students:
My education includes a BS, MS, and PhD in computer science from UCF. My PhD dissertation focused on utilizing spectral solar energy (not just light or heat independently) and fits into the interdisciplinary field of smart architecture and building performance, which utilizes smart sensor technology, human-centred design, and various methods of simulation and prototyping to improve lives. I’ve been a member of various academic organizations and honor societies over the years including the ACM, OSA, IEEE, SPIE, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, and Phi Theta Kappa. I have reviewed papers for Solar Energy.
My
industry programming career includes independent and commercial game development, Department of Defense simulation and visualization, power diagnostics for the power generation industry, and eDiscovery. I have worked on video game titles for the Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, and Android; on federal government contract vehicles Joint State Response Training System (JSRTS) and STRI Omnibus Contract (STOC) for the National Guard and PEO STRI; and contributed to an elaborate expert system which processed hundreds of thousands of power plant sensors daily for over 500+ turbines around the world. As a teacher, I still develop scripts, tools, and programs as needed to help with day to day maintenance and provide good examples for the students.
A long time ago in a country far, far away… I lived for a year in Japan as an exchange student via generous sponsorship by the International Rotary Youth Exchange program. It was such a rich, insightful experience, that I feel every student should have the opportunity (or even be required) to attend school in another country for some amount of time. I have since traveled back to Japan (and China) several times.
A few years back I got into 3D printing, at first for my students and then for myself lol. My 5th graders learned to model in TinkerCAD and then print their creations. Some holidays and celebrations, I mass produced batches of knickknacks so everyone in the school got something. I’ve printed literally thousands of models, mostly with an Anycubic KOBRA Plus and a Flashforge Finder II, but some with the Ultimaker S5 at the Winter Park Library. I rarely model anything myself (because I’m not an artist), although occasionally I throw things together in TinkerCAD myself. However, most models were downloaded from Thingiverse.
I used to moonlight as a video game music composer and sfx guy. Some titles include: Gravity Lab!, spout: monochrome mission, and many other games that were canceled :_(
As you can probably tell, I am somewhat of a hobby collector lol. I enjoy learning (just about anything), pleasure reading, playing and writing music, sailing, biking around town, home improvement (when I don’t have to do it), cooking, gardening, volunteering too much, and chasing new hobbies that I will likely never have time for…