Analog Electrical Engineer Explores Physics & Astrophysics

[Guy Madison]

I am an analog electrical engineer by trade engaged in self teaching myself Analysis / Particle Physics and Astrophysics for the last couple of years.

I have worked in the computer graphics field for almost 30 years, ranging from hardware / chip design / device drivers and compilers with 30 patents along the way.

I wrote gobs of the original OpenCL framework while working for that big company in Cupertino, a lot of my spare time spent programming is in simulation using graphics processors, multithreaded programs and big number mathematics.

 

[jedishrfu]

Welcome to PF!

For OpenGL you might be interested in the Processing IDE with lots of OpenGL java examples to create interactive art in java. Its very light-weight for a professional programmer but still fun to play with and to use for prototyping ideas. That's my main use for it. Its has a couple of dozen third party libraries the most notable is PixelFlow which can generate some amazing interactive graphics examples.

For numerical computing, there's a new kid on the block called Julia (julialang.org). It looks to be a replacement for MATLAB with a lot of interoperability features for C, R, Python and Fortran.

Lastly, there is also the OpenSourcePhysics (www.compadre.org/osp), a collections of java code to do physical simulations using several ODE solvers. Comes with many examples and works with Eclipse of Netbeans IDE.

 

[Guy Madison]

Thanks!

I have played with Processing, it was fun for small stuff... but it had no debug capabilities other than printf's so I gave up on that and just write event based loop apps in SDL or Cocoa on OS X. I worked on the guts for OpenGL and OpenCL for years so I know my way around that... my language of choice is C / C++ as all my tools and background are there so it just makes it easier to use.

I splurged this year and purchased the home version of Mathematica, once you get a bit of it... the rest is intuitive. I now use that as a prototyping platform, it's supported well documented and since I paid for it.. I should be using it.

OpenSourcePhysics looks cool, I will dig into that.

Thanks again.

 

[Electron Spin]

From an old R.F analog peeps, welcome my friend! I love the hardware aspect too! Every once in a while I will awake with a L,C, or R stuck in my ear or hair! jk

Welcome my friend,

ES

 

[Guy Madison]

I get those imaginary numbers and transformations stuck in my head also, my daughter wants to be a math major.. I checked out the requirements and realized analog EE's only need 4 additional classes to get a math major!

 

[Electron Spin]

I get those imaginary numbers and transformations stuck in my head also, my daughter wants to be a math major.. I checked out the requirements and realized analog EE's only need 4 additional classes to get a math major!

I am happy I'm not the only one! My wife calls me a cuckoo bird or a nutzoid!

I wouldn't mind those pesky imaginary numbers except for those sharp exclamation points, sometimes they feel like cactus needles or something!

Anyway I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Again, Enjoy and be happy GM!

Electron spin..