I have so far restrained myself from using this blog to rant or spew my opinions. However, with my amateur interest in cryptography, and my not-so-amateur interest in liberty and freedom, the news about US spying has piqued my interest. I want to talk about a point I think a lot of people are missing. Read on at your own risk
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No Mo Pho No
I’m experimenting with ditching my phone number entirely. Here the back story:
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Past Work: Large-Scale Mirror Actuation
When I was an undergrad at Georgia Tech, I worked on a research project for a year. I worked part of the time while still in school and continued after I graduated. I didn’t really have a senior design project and most undergrads didn’t do actual “research”. So, I felt pretty lucky to be involved in a real research project, especially given the level of my involvement. I worked with Dr. Harvey Lipkin and his grad student Russell Marzette Jr. Russell and Dr. Lipkin had developed a new way to actuate (bend and position) really large telescope mirrors and it was my job to develop software to model and test this technique. I wrote some MATLAB and ANSYS code to automate all of my tests. What was really cool (and unknown to me prior) was that I could use ANSYS from the command line and write scripts which match a normal GUI work flow in the 3D environment. I could create structures, apply loads, mesh structures, and run simulations all from scripts. This allowed me to create a MATLAB GUI to set parameters (or sets of parameters), create and execute custom ANSYS scripts, and format ANSYS-generated image and text results. I could set a span of parameters and run an entire batch of ANSYS simulations back-to-back.
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Slot Car Track Layout Editor
When I was a kid I was gifted a vintage slot car track. Its was an early 70’s Riggen brand 1/32 scale set : two cars, two controllers, and a decent amount of track. I still have it and I occasionally pull it out and play with it. Last weekend the weather was pretty nasty outside so I decided to have some fun with it. I thought it would be cool to make a little MATLAB app that would let me create and edit track layouts before I put everything together.
Seedling Grow Light
I really enjoy cooking with fresh herbs or making the occasional side salad. However, I hate going to the grocery store and buying a huge container of field greens or basil, only to have half of it rot in the refrigerator before I get to eat it. I thought a much better solution would be to grow my own herbs and greens and then pick them as I need them. This way I would always have the very freshest ingredients, without any waste or extra trips to the grocery store.
