About Me

Education and Work

• Diploma in Chemical Engineering, "Kalorimetrische Titration mit computerunterstützter Messwerterfassung", Fachhochschule Aachen
• Diploma in Chemical Engineering, "Modellierung und Simulation des dynamischen Verhaltens ein- und zweiphasiger, halbkontinuierlich betriebener Rührkesselreaktoren", Technische Universität Clausthal
• Dr.-Ing. in Chemical Engineering, "Synthese von Ethyl.-tert.-butylether und Butylacrylat an sauren Ionenaustauschern", Technische Universität Clausthal
• Five years technical lead, responsible for software development for the Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
• Now self-employed software developer with focus on modelling and simulation of technical systems, general internet technology, usability and project management

For my background in software development, see below and the rest of my website.

Computers

Below, I note most operating systems and programming languages which I worked with so far. However, there are things which are not so easily described: There's the big picture, that is Software Engineering, - including project management, architecture, programming and deployment. The most important thing to focus on is to satisfy the people which will be the users of the software.

I favor "light" development processes, i. e. those who only afford the necessary bureaucratic overhead (and not more) to get the job properly done. See the Agile manifesto.

I have experience with these operating systems (alphabetical order).

• Apple Mac OS X - I have this system on my notebook and like it a lot.
• FreeBSD - I administered two servers at work for five years and had a desktop client at home for two years.
• Linux - I experimented with several distributions at home. Since October 2004, I'm running Gentoo Linux.
• Microsoft Windows - Used mainly as an X terminal at work. ;-)
• OS/2, eComStation - I used them for my desktop at home for about five years.
• Sun Solaris - I worked with Solaris during my PhD studies for many simulations. This included some Fortran programming.

I have experience with these programming languages (again, alphabetically).

• Assembler - I used it to write a simple graphics compression routine for the Apple II, and for a hardcopy routine for my 9-pin Star printer.
• BASIC - This was my first programming language which I had already learned when I got my first computer :-)
• C++ - I wrote 9000 lines for a gas/liquid chemical reactor simulation for my diploma thesis at the Technical University Clausthal.
• Forth - I like it a lot, though I haven't used it for a long time now.
• Fortran - I had to use Fortran during my Dr.-Ing. studies for some reaction kinetics and liquid-liquid equilibrium routines.
• Maple - Maple was useful for some symbolic computations (solid-liquid reaction kinetics) for my Dr.-Ing. thesis. I've done only a little programming in Maple.
• Matlab - I like Matlab! I used it for writing simulation code for the dynamic simultaneous diffusion and reaction in float glass melts.
• Pascal - This was my second programming language, and my main language when I had an Apple II. However, I became frustrated when my programs no longer fitted in the 64 KB memory ;-)
• Perl - I wrote several small programs with it. Before advancing to larger ones, Perl was "superseded" by Python. ;-) You may check out my comparison of the two.
• PHP - I used it on a job for web programming.
• Python - This is the language I'm most familiar with. I have given some presentations, and even wrote a book. I use Python at work and for my private projects.
• Rexx - I wrote some installation scripts in my OS/2 days.

Other computer-related skills:

• PostgreSQL database (administration, SQL)
• Web programming (HTTP, HTML, CSS)

Other Hobbies

• Finland - I was there on a business trip in Helsinki in 1998 and liked it a lot. In 2003, I was two weeks on vacation in Finland; I visited Hanko, Helsinki, Rovaniemi and Tampere.
• Hiking
• Psychology - I'm very conscious about people and the interactions between them. I also like to help others and to teach.
• Tolkien, especially "The Lord of the Rings"