About
This blog is not going to be about, how the Large Hadron Collider will end the world, how worldwide media are in a conspiracy to exaggerate the truth about Climate Change, or how Hollywood is failing to adhere to the strict rules of Physics (actually I can’t guarantee posts on that won’t happen – heres looking at you ‘The Core’). This blog is going to be about my trials and tribulations, in learning Post Graduate level Physics, coding useful physical applications in FORTRAN, parallelising code to run on large super computers, and my new hobby learning to code in object orientated C, known as Cocoa, with an ultimate aim of developing and designing a new standard in multiplayer iPhone games.
Physics
The physics I will discuss could range from the simplest; such that an A-level student could understand, to the rather more complex areas, such as Quantum Physics, aimed at more of a Graduate level, and will compliment my current field of research into ab initio molecular dynamics. Discussing important news and views from the bleeding-edge world of physics. My grounding in physics comes from my first degree; Integrated Masters in Physics (MPhys (Hons.)) from the University of Salford in Manchester, UK in Physics with Space Technology. Following on from my First with Honours, I have undertaken the mammoth task of a PhD at King’s College University in London, working within the excellent Thomas Young Centre.
Programming
I don’t class myself as a programming expert and yet I have always been willing to help when my colleagues have come to me for advise. I started on the long programming road learning the simplest language (if you can really call it programming), HTML, moving onto the more versatile and yet utterly useless language of PASCAL (Delphi) at Salford. During my Masters, I designed and wrote a simple car-following model, learning C++ from scratch to use simple objects to control the model cars in the system.
Since then I have found out that the majority of scientific coding is done in the low-level language FORTRAN for simplicity of coding practises, cheap mathematical computational cost, easy integration with Message Passing Interfaces (MPI), and large multitude of prebuilt mathematical libraries for scientists. So have learnt to programming simple ‘post processing’ applications to read and analyse simple outputs from plane wave ab intio codes such as Quantum ESPRESSO, and am now working towards the development of new coding implementations within the ESPRESSO code, adding new (and exciting!) additional features.
As a hobby I have also begun to learn to code in Object-C (Cocoa) using XCode 3.2 on the Mac OSX operating system, going back to basics with simple programs, hopefully progressing to development for the seminal iPhone hardware with the (modest) aim of revolutionising the multiplayer gaming sector with new ideas and features never before seen on a mobile devise – I have big plans, just need to learn to code them!
So sit back, relax and enjoy physics, FORTRAN, games and Cocoa – and please feel free to comment!
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