IT Playground
When weather does not inspire me for outdoor activities, I enjoy diving into various IT topics to gain and maintain the knowledge I keep teaching in school. Basically, I'm fascinated and attracted by Open-Source IT software or standards like
- Linux
- Python, JS
- MySQL/MariaDB
- Arduino
Since my time in university, I've been fascinated by the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Back then, we'd learned how to recognize handwritten digits. Today, I'm intrigued by the scientific achievements made available by AI frameworks like TensorFlow.
I suppose many software projects would better meet user needs if they were open source for three reasons:
- as a user, I have the freedom to customize and improve the software as I wish. This could actually encourage more people to learn programming.
- as a user or organization, I can check the source for malicious or unwanted parts (like trackers, spyware etc.)
- by buying or ordering only open source products, my organization has the freedom to adapt the software to meet actual needs.
Saying this, I am well aware that open source software does cost money (or at least a lot of time) to develop, test and distribute.
Notice: Schirmer Scientific Systems is now Green-ORCA :: Operations Research Computing and Analysis Schirmer
- Details
- Category: Research Projects
I am greatful for the oportunity to give a series of lectures on Scientific Working at the University of Applied Science in Schmalkalden.
The following topics were covered in 6 sessions:
- Choosing and framing the topic
- Task and Time planing
- Search strategies
- Pro and Contra books
- Online: Wikipedia, Google Scholar, Scirus
- Smart search: Bool operators, distance operators, truncation, wildcards and more
- Break down search results
- Literature management systems
- Literature library of the university (Online-Library, Online-Magazines (Fr. Kritikou)
- Reading strategies
- Understand and abstract scientific texts
- Fast reading techniques
- Just write: flow of writing, obstacles
- Plagiarism
- Correct citing
- Creating useful diagrams
- Basic Latex introduction
Lecture notes are available in German on request.
- Details
- Category: Research Projects
I am thankful for the oportunity to give two lectures on Natural Optimization strategies at the University of Applied Science in Schmalkalden. The different ways of natural optimization provide powerful and fascinating opportunities to tackle mathematical problems beyond classic computational borders.
Topics were:
- Basics of Optimization
- Evolutionary Algorithms
- Ant Colony Optimization
- Particle Swarm Optimization
Subcategories
Research Projects Article Count: 7
Since my studies, I am fascinated by simulation and computing algorithms inspired by nature. Be it ant colony optimization for fleet routing, be it genetic algorithms for optimizing high dimensional paramterization problems, with my research company Green-ORCA I can tackle it.
Web Design Article Count: 3
Back in 1996 I started learning HTML and CSS. The internet bandwidth was still so slow that one thought twice what size of pictures to upload, and interactivity was mainly achived with simple forms. Times have changed, and the once mainly static world wide web turned into a giant market place and communication platform.
Server-side technologies like PHP, ASP or Java plus browser-embedded JavaScript (JS) and CSS enabled platforms like Facebook or Amazon to deliver content dynamically, database-driven, on demand. The advent of AJAX greatly improved the browsing experience by avoiding page reloads and enabling true interactivity like search suggestions.
And here we are - JS-based server-side frameworks (like Meteor) with extensive code generators for client and server-side make full-stack development extremely productive, and perhaps sooner or later replace the classic server-side and client-side code mess.
However, for the time being this page is mainly a technical playground for me, based on Joomla and a few PHP and JS snippets of my own.