These are some of my interests.
My interest in researching the family tree began in 1979 when I realized that my job was about to take me to another state and I had questions for the older members of my family. In retirement, this is where I spend most of my time.
When I started college, my intention was to become an astrophysicist. Eventually, I realized that there is an incredible amount of math involved. My math skills are good, but not that good. So, I decided Computer Science was a better direction. I still follow the latest research in physics and astronomy.
While studying Computer Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, I ran across an algorithm for converting year, month, and day to Julian day number -- a serial numbering of days used by astronomers. This eventually led me to research other calendar systems, especially ancient calendars.
RosettaCalendar.com -- a calendar converter I wrote many years ago. Someday I will add more calendars to it.
sdncal20.zip -- Free, open-source software I wrote in the mid-1990s for date manipulation and calendar conversion. Since it is free, this library has been included in many software packages. Likely the most famous is PHP, the language used by WordPress and over 75% of all websites. If you visit a website that does anything with dates or calendars, it is likely using this library somewhere behind the scenes.
For as far back as I can remember, I have loved science fiction. A few years ago I was reading The Early Asimov, a collection of Isaac Asimov’s earliest works. They weren’t really very good, especially the first few. That made me think that maybe I could write something that didn’t suck much more than these early works of one of the best SF writers ever. I started writing. So far, I haven’t created anything I think is worth publishing, but maybe soon.
This is the next big thing. If you think computers and the Internet changed our world, AI will have an even bigger impact! I have been studying this for many years. In retirement, I have more time to spend on it and am studying deep learning neural networks.