Mark Livingston


Ph.D., Univ. of North Carolina, October 1998


I moved to the Washington, DC area and work on augmented reality, similar to work I did at UNC. This web site exists roughly as it did when I left UNC in October 1998. And the picture above is even older than that. Click here for some more recent ones.


* I was awarded a Link Foundation Fellowship for 1997-1998. The Link Foundation is part of the Institute for Simulation and Training and was established in 1953 by Mr. and Mrs. Edwin A. Link. Mr. Link invented the Link Trainer, which was the first successful flight simulator, in 1929. And yes, they get, er, a link.
* My Dissertation Research, zzzz
* Work-related amusements
* I was a member of the Ultrasound Visualization research group. As part of this group, I worked a lot on magnetic tracker calibration and latency management in augmented reality, and did some work on a hybrid tracking system that combines a vision-based tracking algorithm with a conventional magnetic tracker.
* Work-related publicity (the ultimate amusement)
* The hybrid tracking was featured on the British Broadcasting Company show Tomorrow's World on 28 October 1996. They even had a web page promoting it. I think they gave us a little more credit than we deserve for what we had developed at that point (or currently, for that matter), but we loved the effects they used to describe the potential of the work. They were, um, looking well into the future. :-)

* The ultrasound system was mentioned in Business Week magazine on 23 June 1997 in an article describing UNC's strong research in computer graphics. They weren't very nice about sharing their web page, though. }:-( But they still get a plug, since they quoted me in the article. [:-) My mom actually convinced an airline stewardess to give her the airplane's copy of the issue; she was so proud of her baby! [:-)

* We also got mentioned in a Wired! News story dated 2 June 1997. We didn't know about the article until after it came out, but UNC alum Ulrich Neumann was interviewed.

* We've also been featured on the WRAL-TV (Raleigh, NC; CBS affiliate) evening news. Sorry, no video. }:-(
* WTVD-11 (Durham, NC; ABC affiliate) came to do a story on research in virtual reality, and I was giving a demo to a group of kids when they came. I don't know if I was seen on the air, though.
* Here's a nice C module for doing very accurate timing on an SGI.

* Other computer-related amusements
* A long time ago (in a galaxy far--oh, sorry), I wrote a somewhat cute and marginally useful utility for Unix that emulates the DOS vtree program (and other similar things) in creating a graphical directory tree.
* I helped design the original North Carolina Hillel web page. That's when I came up with the Tar Heel bullet, and I've made liberal use thereof, as the image-capable of you can see.
* In designing the Hillel web page, I wrote a C program to generate a table-based HTML calendar. I think it has nice features. Feel free to use it.
* I wrote a program that computes Banzhaf power indices for blocks in a block voting system, such as the U.S. Electoral College. I wrote this page to include all the math, but to also be accessible to those without a strong math background. I also wrote it to amuse myself, and I hope it amuses you too. I have gotten some positive feedback (including from Prof. Banzhaf, who is still at GWU near me in DC), so you might go ahead and take a chance. Live a little!

* Unrelated amusements
* I used to use this to amuse my friends: the favorite parlor trick. Convert the date (month-day-year) into the day of the week. It's quite straightforward with a computer, but I'll show you how to do it in your head.
* My Dreidl Page, which has grown beyond its original mandate.
* I keep kosher in the traditional Jewish custom. Even if you don't, you gotta check out the cartoon!
* I graduated from Duke University, so this GIF animation amuses me.

Animated Duke
       University GIF
* Unexpectedly simple things amuse me.

This page was brought to you by Mark Livingston, formerly spammed as , proliferated WWW guestbooks everywhere (Feed my ego, please!), and the letter mem.