Projects Great and Small

Hello everyone, my name is Sean. I will be using this blog to keep you all apprised of my progress in my Capstone Project here at Oregon State University.

Let’s begin with a more proper introduction. I am a Computer Science student at OSU, slowly but surely working my way towards my Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. I am currently on a part-time schedule and attending my classes online. This is so that I can work full-time to earn enough money to attend school as well as feed myself, among other necessities.

When I’m not studying or working to earn my living, I enjoy reading, writing small programs, and playing video games. As mentioned, I like to write small programs to help keep my skills fresh, but my main hobby is microelectronics projects. My current favorite project that I’ve built is my IBM 5150 PC Motherboard kit. Some other projects are my Z80 Membership Card and my 1802 Membership Card microcomputers.

I suppose I began my journey with computers and computer science when I began volunteering at NextStep Recycling, an electronics recycling place in Eugene. I was able to volunteer enough hours that I was given a refurbished PC, where I first began learning to code. I continued to volunteer there all through high school, building low-cost refurbished computers to help bridge the digital divide.

I’ve worked a number of jobs, but I am currently being transferred from providing customer support for a major video game hardware company, to providing support for financial investments. It will be an interesting change to be sure.

I elect not to outline my journey with OSU in any great detail, as doing so would likely take multiple paragraphs to outline the various frustrations and setbacks I have endured at this institution. My only relief comes in the fact that I am nearing the end of my time here and I will soon be able to earn an actual living with my skills well above the poverty line where I currently hover.

I deeply enjoy the theoretical aspects of computer science, as those are the aspects that most closely approach the pure beauty of mathematics, another field that I love. As for actual computer technology that I find interesting, I am simultaneously fascinated and disgusted by our current advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Fascinated, because recent progress has been incredibly brisk. Disgusted, because the areas where this incredibly powerful technology has been overwhelmingly focused has been to generate text or images, when we could be using this technology to predict novel methods of folding proteins, or other problems that can actually serve to improve the human race.

There are many projects listed in the EECS Projects Portal, but there are a number that have stuck out to me as particularly interesting:

GPU based modeling of material degradation inside of a nuclear reactor: This project not only appeals to my love of physics, but it also relies largely on GPU and multi-core processing, which I also find very enjoyable.

Artificial Intelligence for Election Predictions: This project would allow me to experience a different form of artificial intelligence development outside of my own personal AI trading algorithm project.

There are also a number of projects designed to develop an AI trading algorithm, which as I mentioned I am also working on in my own time. Unfortunately, these projects are all on-campus, and thus are unavailable to me.

If you have made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through my rambling blog post. I do appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Sean B. Higgins