AustinTek homepage

Joseph Mack

jmack (at) austintek (dot) com

Jun 2007


Table of Contents

1. Wifi, SysAdmin, Bioinformatics and Contract Programming Services
2. HOWTOs
2.1. Linux Virtual Server (LVS), a layer 4 router
2.2. Gnucash
2.3. Howto make an external usb/firewire harddisk from the PENR-525u2f case
3. Ham Radio
3.1. AZ_PROJ Azimuthal Equidistant Projection Ham Radio Software (azproj)
3.2. Articles on the Future of Ham Radio
3.3. Aurora Propagation
3.4. Analysis of VHF Contest Logs
4. Articles
4.1. Outsourcing
4.2. Partition Magic Critical Error 19
5. OutDoor Trips
6. Book Reviews
6.1. The IBM Way
6.2. Leaving Earth; Genesis
7. Amateur Astronomy
7.1. Cloud Survey of North Carolina
7.2. Wifi in the Wilderness: setting up wifi internet connectivity at a star party
7.3. Yet another home analemma project: the Mack family driveway analemma
8. Computing Class
9. About Joseph Mack

1. Wifi, SysAdmin, Bioinformatics and Contract Programming Services

Austintek is a small consulting business, based in North Carolina, USA. It services the Triangle (RTP, Durham, Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill) area. Service in the Triad and outside can be arranged.

  • Austintek provides wifi connectivity for conferences, meetings and outdoor events, and installs permanent wifi setups for businesses.

  • Austintek does sysadmin for unix computers (and clusters of computers).

  • Bioinformatics is our speciality. I found the DD(35)E motif in the retroviral integrases, showing that the enzymes were a tri-acid enzyme, and made predictions on the enzyme's functionality based on its conserved residues. I found that the retroviral integrases were members of a larger family which includes the bacteria IS sequences.

  • Austintek can do contract programming, benchmarking and data analysis. We can program in -

    • languages: C, C++, Java, Fortran, Perl (and cgi), Python, mpi, omp, pvm, X-windows (Xt, Athena widgets), Motif, RPC sockets, APL, xml, html, shell (bash, csh, awk, sed, tcl/tk), Pascal, LaTeX.
    • databases: mysql, postgres
    • scientific, math packages: Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, R.

2. HOWTOs

2.1. Linux Virtual Server (LVS), a layer 4 router

Linux Virtual Server (LVS) HOWTOs

The Linux Virtual Server (LVS) Project is a GPL'ed layer 4 router for Linux, which allows you to combine low cost servers (e.g. web, database) into a single highly available, high throughput server.

For my write-ups on LVS (HOWTOs, performance, meeting note, trivia quiz, iron-on labels, presentations, configure script), please see my LVS page

2.2. Gnucash

Gnucash tutorial.

Gnucash is a GPL double entry accounting package. This tutorial is referenced from the Gnucash website documentation page.

This presentation was delivered, on 9 Jul 2001, to the North Carolina Sysadministrator's Association (NCSA), an organisation based in RTP, NC, USA, which has monthly meetings with

  • a technical presentation
  • free food (courtesy of sponsors), i.e. pizza and soda
  • an opportunity for computer people to meet each other and to look for jobs

I was the treasurer of NCSA from Dec 2000 to Dec 2003.

2.3. Howto make an external usb/firewire harddisk from the PENR-525u2f case

Making an external USB/firewire harddisk from the PENR-525U2F case

3. Ham Radio

I've been a ham radio operator since High School (first licensed in 1964 as VK2ZJM). I currently hold the callsign NA3T. I'm interested in VHF equipment design and moon-bounce (communication using the moon as a passive reflector).

3.1. AZ_PROJ Azimuthal Equidistant Projection Ham Radio Software (azproj)

I maintain (and co-authored along with Michael NV3Z) the AZ_PROJ azimuthal equidistant projection website. This projection produces maps of the world in which you are at the center. Great circles through your location are straight lines enabling you to determine bearings to anywhere in the world. The code for the map generator is freely available under GPL.

3.2. Articles on the Future of Ham Radio

A 50yr plan for ham radio in response to the ARRL's plan for restructing for ham radio.

3.4. Analysis of VHF Contest Logs

Analysis of the 1999 Spring Sprints (the sprints are a VHF/UHF contest on the US east coast).

4. Articles

4.1. Outsourcing

A talk (http://www.austintek.com/outsourcing/outsourcing.html) given to the North Carolina Systems Administrators (http://www.ncsysadmin.org/) 12 Jul 2004. Outsourcing is the replacement of American workers by cheaper labor from overseas. The labor can be imported into the country, e.g. by giving the worker an H1-B visa, or by contracting the job to workers overseas.

4.2. Partition Magic Critical Error 19

How I recovered a disk with the undocumented Critical 19 error.

5. OutDoor Trips

I've hiked for most of my life. I wrote up

by John Ward:

6. Book Reviews

6.1. The IBM Way

The IBM Way, by Buck Rodgers, the VP of marketing at IBM from 1974-84 (publ 1986). This what Buck Rogers' wants you to think about how IBM works.

7. Amateur Astronomy

7.2. Wifi in the Wilderness: setting up wifi internet connectivity at a star party

Wifi in the Wilderness: Setting up internet connectivity for observers at the Mid-Atlantic Star Party using wifi.

7.3. Yet another home analemma project: the Mack family driveway analemma

Yet another home analemma project: the Mack family driveway analemma .

8. Computing Class

Introductory Computing Class using Python as the high level language.

9. About Joseph Mack

I'm a scientific programmer working as a contractor at a US Govt supercomputer center. I

  • visualise 3-D scientific data. Here is an image of the isotherms in a lake. The data was collected by raising and lowering a sensor towed behind a boat. The surface track of the boat is shown by the red line. The lake bottom is shown as a colored wall behind the isotherms.
  • design, operate and code Beowulf computers. My job is to replace the Cray computers with Beowulfs for coarse grained computations.

I have Ph.D. in biochemistry and had 25 yrs of scientific research, including University of California (Davis), Yale University, US Department of Agriculture, National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Institutes for Health (NIH) before turning to programming for a career.