the NERD

Let's face it: I'm a nerd. Always have been, and it doesn't look like it'll be going away anytime soon.

I have a degree in Chemistry. I loved Organic Chemistry (it was my favorite class in college). I was that kid in high school Math class who almost always knew the answer, even if I was too embarrassed to say so sometimes. I wrote this web site almost entirely from scratch. I'm trying to write an iPhone app. I'm talking seriously nerdy stuff, here.

So this is where I'll start with some musings about some of the nerdiest of the nerdy things that make me tick.

Science

My artwork was selected for the November 2009 cover of the journal Structure

I've been working in science for over 5 years, most of it as a protein crystallographer. What does that mean, you ask? Here's the nitty-gritty:

To understand how a protein interacts with other proteins or substances in our bodies or other organisms, it's sometimes helpful to know what it looks like on the molecular scale, that is to say, the actual 3-dimensional shape of the molecule. By recording and analyzing the diffraction patterns produced by placing a tiny protein crystal in the path of a narrow beam of x-rays and using some complicated mathematics to interpret them (which, I'll be the first to admit, I don't entirely understand), we can generate some of this information.

It's the crystallographer's job to construct a model of the protein, much like the ball-and-stick models you used in high school Chemistry, only now it's done entirely with computer graphics programs and software designed specifically for the field, and instead of the dozen or so atoms you chained together, these models have thousands of atoms.

Some of the projects I've worked on deal with pressing issues, including antibiotic resistance in infectious bacteria, AIDS vaccine research, and how enzymes might be used to degrade plastic.

Computers

In college, I started goofing around with HTML and CSS and took the intro C++ class. Over the past 10 years or so, I've gradually acquired a basic understanding of Javascript and PHP as well. Of course, I'm no whiz kid when it comes to any of this, but it definitely counts toward my ever-increasing nerd factor.

One side effect of using niche scientific software at work has been learning the basics of Unix systems, and, in particular, their implementation in the underpinnings of Mac OS X. My knowledge here is limited as well, but let's just say I'm in the habit of writing shell scripts and running command-line programs.

Along the same lines, I'm a big-time fan of all things Apple. I bought my first Powerbook, a 1GHz 15" Titanium G4 (which, by the way, I still have, and which, despite the abuse I've inflicted upon it, works like a charm, albeit a little slowly by today's standards) and 3G iPod (no, not the phone, I'm talking about the astoundingly huge-capacity 10GB model, b&w display and all) back in 2003, and I've never turned back.

And More...

Maybe nerdy isn't exactly the right word for it, but I rarely go out. I just don't. I'd rather be home with a movie and a beer for a chill sort of evening.