A computer engineer and scientist, I live in Lansing, MI with my wonderful wife, Emmalena and my daughter Elena. I work part-time as an Information Technology Professional for the Michigan State University Libraries, where I develop web applications, support the storage area network, and administer VMware Infrastructure and MySQL databases. As the second half of my position at MSU I work for the Digital Evolution Laboratory as a researcher and the lead developer of the Avida Digital Evolution Platform.

In academic studies, I have a B.S. in Computer Engineering with an emphasis in Software Engineering from Michigan State University (MSU). I am currently working towards a Ph.D. in Computer Science at MSU, studying the importance of contingency in the evolution of complex functions.

Server Software

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The ProgramError site is hosted on an Ubuntu based Linode.

The posts and most pages are published via WordPress. In addition to my own custom theme, ProgramError uses several good WordPress plugins, including Yet Another Photoblog and Shadowbox JS.

Usage statistics are tracked using Google Analytics. Additional functionality is implemented with Python, PHP, and MySQL.

Formatting and Definitions

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Date Formats

When appearing in strictly numeric format, dates will always be presented as YYYY-MM-DD, except as noted. This format has several advantages. First, it sorts date components by order of magnitude. Also, the order of magnitude is sorted in the same directions as most other numbers. And finally, when using textual sorting methods, dates will be put in the correct order without special date parsing requirements.

When appearing in textual format (i.e. 2 September 2005), the year component will always be written as 4 digits, so as to ensure that it remains disambiguated with respect to the day component.

Web Standards

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Web standards are important. ProgramError markup should validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and the layout has been constructed with valid CSS 2 and 3. There may be occasional errors, but I strive to quash them when found.

ProgramError should be viewable in any standards compliant web browser. Non-compliant browsers are not supported (i.e Internet Explorer). However, if you find that a standards compliant browser has difficulty rendering ProgramError, let me know.