Academia (nerdy fun stuff)

2017 - CCDSimul - This is a client/server C# project to run two distinct copies of MaximDL to interact with two astronomical CCD cameras. MaximDL supports imaging with multiple cameras on the same computer, but not at the same time. So I needed to implement something that would allow me to take images at the same time on both cameras. CCDSimul allows two computers, each running MaximDL and having the camera installed locally to interface across the local network and synchronize imaging on the two cameras. Further, the results are output to a shared Dropbox folder on the two machines, which syncs the image files.

2016 - ManPol - A C# GUI for manual polarimetry to operate the instrument

2016 - ArduinoPolarimeter - This code is the firmware to upload onto an Arduino UNO. You will need an Adafruit motor shield board. I used this one. This software represents the brains running behind the custom Polarimeter project my dissertation was based on.

2015 - Pier Modification Project - Renovated the 10 year old concrete and rebar (earthquake-proof) in order to replace the telescopes with larger ones. 16” > 24” inside the same 12’ AstroHaven dome. Our group modeled in SketchUp that while this set up would be an extremely tight fit - it should work if we modify the concrete piers such that the counterweight shaft from the mount doesn’t hit the pier.

2013 - Installing a 20’ AstroHaven dome and 4 telescopes in Australia at Siding Springs Observatory -

2012 - Transit of Venus Outreach Project - Retrofitted the 24” Morehead Telescope with a solar filter to image the sun while Venus transited. Quite a fun project and very cool result despite bad weather!

2011 - Automating a 20-meter radio telescope at NRAO in Greenbank, WV - My colleague Josh and I got the specs for the OCU and decided we could program it. We set up a simulator and then a web2py interface for pointing the telescope around the sky from a browser on the intranet. This was a component of my master’s degree.

2010 - Replacing a telescope mount in Chile - will fill this in soon

2009 - Astronomy 101 Lab Graphing Tool - I built a graphing tool in Adobe Flex that allowed the undergraduate students the ability to graph the results from their labs. There were four modes, which matched with a particular lab(some duplicates). Line graph, Period Folding, Matching a sine curve, and plotting venus on a custom chart to check a geocentric model of the universe versus a heliocentric model of the universe.

2008 - IDLwave - After graduating from Furman University, I was asked to stick around for the summer before I went to graduate school at UNC to lead a project for Hayden S. Porter. I successfully led a team of 3 to process the translation and refactoring of a Java codebase into IDL. The project was called IDLwave and delt with atmospheric modeling, resulting in the following paper.

2008 - Quadrowulf - My advisor, Hayden S. Porter, was looking to build a new compact Beowulf cluster. I had just heard about and seen the build and documentation for Microwulf, and suggested that I could build Quadrowulf for him. He gave me a budget and said get it done. The PDF below documents the project.

2007 - Kernel upgrade to keep on campus Beowulf running - the on-campus Beowulf cluster, used by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to model the atmosphere, was losing nodes and the replacement parts from the manufacturer were new motherboards with SATA hard drives. The nodes would not boot and I was tasked to fix it. Successfully accomplished this task.

Personal (fun stuff)

2018 - Blockchain Resume - I wanted to learn more about the Bitcoin blockchain as a data structure, so I created a simplified model based on a resume. The code is complete with cpu-level ‘mining’ (hashing) and can match a user-specified difficulty in the hash headers of each block.

2017 - Raspberry Pi Mirror -

2015 - Igloo - This has been a pet project for a long time, in 2015 I finally checked it off the bucket list.

2014 - Fire pit in the woods

2010 - SS5000