Table of Contents
Austintek is a small consulting business, based in North Carolina, USA. Services requiring physical presence are concentrated in the Triangle (RTP, Durham, Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill) area. Service in the Triad and outside can be arranged. Contract programming is available for anyone.
Austintek provides wifi connectivity and networking for conferences, meetings and outdoor events, and installs permanent wifi setups for businesses.
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, LaTeXi, javascript, css.
- databases: mysql, postgres
- scientific, math packages: Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, R.
Jan 2011: The classes have been going 4 yrs now. I taught python as the initial course because the kids wanted it. Python worked out well as a language to teach procedural programming.
- It looks the same on Linux, Windows and Mac, so the kids can use any machine/OS they like.
- You get a minimum number of errors, so the frustration level for the kids never gets too high.
- You're insulated from the OS/machine/hardware so the kids don't have to know about registers etc.
Class lessons for a group of 7th graders with no previous exposure to programming (as of Aug 2008, now 8th graders - in the US 5-8th grade are called Middle School). The students are doing this after school, one day a week for about 90min, on their own time and not for credit. My son's school didn't want me to teach the class using any of the school facilities, as they thought it would compete with a class in Java given to advance placement math 12th graders. However I could use the school facilities, if I didn't teach anything which would fullfil a requirement (which I assume meant anything practical). So the class is at my home and is free. Since this is a hobby activity for the kids, I don't ask them to do homework.
The course is finished (Oct 2009) and the kids are now learning C. I thought I would cover more material than I did in this course. I can see, with a year's hind-site, that the material could be clearer. There wasn't time for any projects. One student gave a 20min lunch time presentation to his teachers on using numerical integration to determine the value of π
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Google stopped indexing the programming class page about Aug 2008, when the class notes reached 1M (the other indexing services seem to have no trouble with it). There is no mention of size limits on google's guide to author's page e.g. google's addurl and associated pages. I've divided the sensible single page into smaller pages in the hopes that google can handle the material. If you want the material I'm using in class, go to the link immediately above. Here below is the same material divided into what I hope are google sized pages.
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Material the wasn't used in the Introductory Course. Presumably some of it will go into the C course.
Complex Numbers. This course provoked the most interest of all the non-programming courses.
Computer Programming for High School students: C as the high level language.
Class lessons for a group of 9th graders who have taken my introductory programming course.
Computer Programming for High School students: Electricity.
This short course was added in the middle of the C class, when the students found that their lack of knowledge of computer hardware was making it difficult to learn C.
Computer Programming for High School students: Mechanics.
This course was added in the middle of the electricity course, so that students would know about forces and energy. This course became progressively larger and took over all the class time. I was quite happy with this as I think mechanics is more fundamental than electricity or programming.
A 30min video of me teaching a science class to 3rd graders (http://www.austintek.com/icosahedron_class/) at my son's school. I've been doing this for about 10yrs and it's lot of fun.
In the summer of 2009, the python class took an end of year field trip to the DIVE (http://www.austintek.com/DIVE).
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. Here's the Linux Virtual Server (LVS) HOWTOs. For my write-ups on LVS (performance, meeting note, trivia quiz, iron-on labels, presentations, configure script), please see my LVS page.
Gnucash is a GPL double entry accounting package. Here's my Gnucash tutorial. This tutorial is referenced from the Gnucash website documentation page. This tutorial was delivered, on 9 Jul 2001, to the North Carolina Sysadministrator's Association (NCSA), an organisation based in RTP, NC, USA. I was the treasurer of NCSA from Dec 2000 to Dec 2003.
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).
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 software was co-authored with Michael NV3Z and released in 1994 under the GPL. I maintain the AZ_PROJ on-line map server, which has been online since 1996, generating 10,000 maps/year.
A 50yr plan for ham radio in response to the ARRL's plan for restructing for ham radio.
Analysis of the 1999 Spring Sprints (the sprints are a VHF/UHF contest on the US east coast).
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.
I've hiked for most of my life. I wrote up
Hiking Trip to area near the Mt. of the Holy Cross, Colorado, 8-15 Jun 2002 with an old friend Steve. Steve, not to be outdone, has written his version the trip (also available doc format).
I'm a scientific programmer working as a contractor at a US Govt supercomputer center. I have Ph.D. in biochemistry and have worked at the 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. I've been programming since first year in college and building and designing electronics since grade school.
Here's my 2 page resume, a more detailed 3 page resume and my list of publications.