May 16, 2013:
After a long hiatus, I am updating this page! There are many new things to report from the last five years; among them:
- I completed an MS in computer science at Baylor, and began a PhD. in computational science at University of Texas at Austin: in a nutshell, computational science is math on computers in service of scientific simulation. Very interesting stuff.
- I have finished a first draft of my novel, and am a ways into the second draft. Said second draft is, however, playing second fiddle to my PhD. dissertation! The working title is "The Head of the Unicorn;" it's around 360 pages in length (105,000 words).
- As part of the PhD. work, I'm developing Camellia, a software framework that makes it easy to rapidly do the kind of research I'm doing (into a discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin finite element methodology). The most up-to-date discussion of Camellia's features is in my dissertation proposal (see Appendix B in particular).
- August 30, 2012, I successfully defended my PhD. dissertation proposal. My present task is to make good on all the things I proposed to accomplish. That's going well, and I hope to graduate in August 2013—my defense date is set for August 1.
December 16, 2007:
I've just finished my second semester of full-time graduate study in Baylor University's Computer Science Master's program. I'm now applying to PhD programs, in Computer Science and Mathematics.
This past summer, I did an internship in software engineering at Google. As part of their Google Checkout team, I was responsible for the removal of legacy code and for the development of some new features related to digital content.
My studies have not afforded me much time for writing this past semester, but I did write about 75 new pages over the summer. I hope to get a bit of writing in this Christmas break.
January 2007:
I've just started my first semester of a master's program in computer science at Baylor University. I'm continuing work on my novel, and hope to have a first draft done by the end of the year. This semester has me studying algorithms, networking, and quantum computing, while I also pursue research related to formal methods (basically, proving mathematically that a computer program does what it's supposed to).
In addition to the research assistantship, I'm working as a tutor (math and writing) as well as as a programmer (pretty much any language, on either the Mac or the PC).
January 2006:
Over Christmas 2005, we had a family reunion in Guatemala, where my parents are spending a sabbatical. You can see the best photos from the trip at homepage.mac.com/nroberts/PhotoAlbum3.html. There are some nice ones!
Last year, I completed work on my largest programming project to date (if memory serves, nearly 20,000 lines of code!), LineNotes. It's basically software to help stage managers do their jobs more easily and efficiently. You can read the press release.
This page last updated May 16, 2013.