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.
Unexpectedly simple things amuse me.
, proliferated WWW guestbooks everywhere (Feed my ego, please!), and the letter
.