Paul Carlisle



Currently, I am Research Scientist at ERIM International in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We do an awful lot of interesting stuff at ERIM, from radar systems development to satellite imaging, physics-based computer modeling and image analysis. I recently graduated from the University of Michigan - Dearborn, majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. Prior to obtaining my Computer Science degree, most of my working life was spent in the printing industry, doing everything from business forms to high speed photocopying to four-color process work, with some typesetting and image processing thrown in along the way. My current work involves Software Engineering, algorithm development and analysis, and code optimization for our clients' systems, which range from UNIX workstations to Cray supercomputers.

I chose to go into Computer Science and Mathematics because of a long-standing interest in those fields; recreational math has been a hobby of mine for as long as I can remember, and the arrival of personal computers only served to bolster that interest. I taught myself machine language on a Commodore 64, after becoming frustrated that a Life program I had written in BASIC ran so slowly. Since then, I have progressed through several models of Amiga and Macintosh computers; my current Mac has over 500 times the memory capacity and 10000 times the storage capacity of the 64, and as far as I can calculate is infinitely faster. Where will it all end?

Some of my other interest include physics, cooking, fossil collecting, astronomy, and classical music; I actually got to perform with the Met once when they came to Detroit (well, OK, I was a supernumerary, but it was still fun). My kids are also interested in this stuff, since they have no choice, and a lot of the projects I have pulled together for this site were done with them in mind. They include:


Some notes on this site

This site began simply enough - I needed a place for my Moon Calendar applet to live. Once I found out how easy it was to write HTML, the opportunity for shameless self-promotion became apparent. I decided to put anything up here that was cool, with "cool" being defined as anything that more than one non-family member showed the slightest interest in. It has also been an interesting exercise in self-discipline, since I feel obligated to be at least somewhat rigorous in what I present here, as opposed to the frantic hand-waving my face-to-face explanations usually entail.

All of the HTML for these pages is written from scratch, mainly because I don't like any of the Web authoring tools which I currently have available to me: they either mangle my layout too badly, or include nonstandard tags which cause the pages to burn if viewed in an incompatible browser. Since the Web is supposed to be an inclusive medium, it only seems fair to stick to formats that everyone can view. Many tools also seem to include an inordinate amount of junk in their code, resulting in a waste of bandwidth. Until we're all wired with optical cable, it seems like HTML should be as spartan as possible.

I hope you enjoy the site. Please send any thoughts to the email address below.



I maintain links to all my pages with a single JavaScript program. If the links don't appear below, you either have JavaScript turned off or are using an older browser. In any case, you can always see a complete list of links, with short descriptions, above. If you have questions or comments about this site, please send me an message.