..........things that go in fields..........

..........documents..........

..........paragraphic..........
(enigmatic/historical/colloquial/trendy/academic)

To sum me up in utterance, to paint me with prose; such an idea is foolish blasphemy. I can manage only a discrete approximation to my continuous perspicacity; write more and converge. Goddamn, this is garrulous.

In your mind, I am whatever I say I am, unless you already know me, in which case, why are you reading about me? Like free jazz, I take a few listens to get used to.

That's not true. On my outside - the part you see - I am frankly friendly and easy on your eyes. I am versed and practiced in the social soup du jour. Offer to engage me and I will attend to you with amusement. Attention is all any of us want, right? Fame and love? Maybe that's just me.

I am...
The anti-socialite with too many friends;
The weatherwise wayfarer with a case of the bends;
The degenerate crank keeping up with the trends.
Everything that begins eventually ends.

Somewhere between the amiable outside and my cavernous insides resides an amorphous specter with ignoble intentions. Don't worry, I don't let her out around people. She is at times a reminder, at times a motivator, and occasionally a regulator. She works hard in my sleep to save me from suicide, though we all know she will eventually lose to nature's penchant for decomposition. She's a keeper so I'll keep 'er despite her imperfections. I mean, no one's perfect, right?

I dare you to know me. Poke around my site with your clicky mouse. Hover over things and uncover my secrets. If you're inspired, use your typing fingers to tell me.

I was born the son of George Basil and Janet Kay Constantine in Bridgeport, Connecticut on November 6, 1979. My brother Robert was born approximately twenty-one months later. We lived in Fairfield, Connecticut for the first four years of my existence.

From there our family moved to rural Chester, Vermont where my dad had restored an ailing farm house on a 50 acre plot of backcountry. We kept a number of animals including the obligatory dogs and cats as well as horses and sheep. My dad was on ski patrol at Okemo Mountain in Ludlow, VT and our family had season passes every year. My parents ran a local interior decorating and glass shop while my brother and I attended Chester-Andover Elementary School. After a few years, my mom decided to return to her nursing career and got a job at the local hospital. While in Vermont, I did most of the normal things that kids did. I played most of the sports offered including little league baseball, pee-wee football, soccer, ski team, and school basketball. I also won the school spelling and geography bees. In 1990 my parents divorced. We put the house on the market because my mom wanted to return to Texas where her family lived. My last year in Vermont I attended 7th grade at Green Mountain Union High School, and the following summer my brother, mom, and I moved to Richardson, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.

In Richardson, I attended Richardson North Junior High for 8th and 9th grade and went on to J.J. Pearce High School for the rest of high school. During my time in Richardson, I played soccer for Dallas Inter '80 soccer club. My family hosted a number of exchange students from Venezuela who came primarily to play with Dallas Inter and receive an education at American schools. At J.J. Pearce, I excelled in my classes, was elected Student Council Vice President, and was voted "friendliest" in my senior class. I also attended church at First Baptist Church of Richardson.

I spent my freshman year of college at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas studying physics, but the small-town conservative mentality, the overtly religious focus, and the limited educational opportunities forced me to leave after my freshman year. I spent the following two years studying physics and mathematics at Texas A&M University in College Station. I started playing drums and percussion at A&M and would play with mostly anyone who asked. I wasn't particularly committed to my coursework so my grades suffered. Upon leaving OBU I had hoped to find a less conservative culture in College Station, but I was sorely disappointed. After two years I left A&M and moved back to Dallas.

In need of rejuvenation, I sold my car, bought a backpack and Eurail pass, and went to Europe for three months. I returned to the States with no car, job, home, or money. I did some odd jobs and tried my hand as a semi-professional musician for a while, but I eventually realized that I needed to return to school to finish my Bachelor's. I went to University of North Texas and studied mathematics and music. During my year and a half at UNT, I completed more semester hours than my first three years of combined, and my GPA was higher than ever.

Upon graduation, I started a job as an analyst for Watson Wyatt, an actuarial and human resources consulting firm. While there, I passed my first actuarial exam and learned some of the basics of pension and benefit plans. But ten months into the position, the company laid off my department. I quickly got a job as Java developer at ORIX Capital Markets, and I worked there for ten months. During my time in Dallas, I attended church and played in the band at Journey Community Church.

Now I am a Ph.D. student in the department of Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University. I completed a Master of Science in June 2006, and I expect to complete my Ph.D. in June 2009.

Hey y'all! Welcome to my personal website. By now you know my name and occupation and such, so I'll use this space to tell you a little bit more about myself.

I work hard and play hard out here in Cali. You can usually find me in my office doing research - developing codes in C, testing algorithms in Matlab, writing papers in LaTeX, talking math with my officemates... If I'm not there, then I'm probably either out with friends - eating, drinking, watching movies, going to concerts, shopping, traveling, playing sports - or making music with my bandmates. (Be sure to check out my media page!) I also spend lots of time at the gym to stay healthy.

I came to Stanford from Dallas, and I still have plenty of family and friends there. I try hard to stay in touch and go back for holidays. My Dallas friends are some of the best friends in the world.

But I love the bay area. The weather is next to perfect, and the location - nestled between gorgeous coast and rugged mountains - is unbeatable. The population is exceptionally diverse, and there are always new and interesting people to meet. So if you're one of these interesting people, feel free to contact me. I'd love to get to know you!

when i was six, i wore long, over-sized t-shirts that hung well below my waist. over my shirt, i wore an elastic belt with a magnetic belt buckle that bore a cartoon picture of the incredible hulk. i believed that this belt-around-the-outside-of-my-shirt look made me look like ralph macchio from karate kid. i also wore matching sweat band and wrist bands. i learned to breakdance in my living room while listening to the ghostbusters soundtrack on vinyl. i later advanced to the cassette tape of michael jackson's thriller. i had a small cassette-playing stereo "boombox" with two 4-inch speakers that i would hoist onto my shoulder and take with me to school. for some reason, the school allowed this. at recess, i would turn on this magic music maker and breakdance next to the monkey bars.

i wore sweat pants every day because i feared my butt looked too big in denim. i was in 2nd grade.

in middle school i rode a customized GT mach one bmx bike. i knew what a pearl jam was. i had a bowl cut - shaved on the sides and back - that i would blow dry straight every morning. i sagged my pants and wore cross-colours clothing with messages like 'love see no color' because i was an angsty civil rights activist. i melded preppy with pothead, gangsta with jock, and rebel preteen with christian evangelist. my maroon jeans had a small label sewn onto the zipper flap of the crotch that said 'girbaud'.

in high school i drove an '87 ford taurus with a deteriorating paint job because i just didn't give a shit. i slept on a water bed. i wore my backpack with both shoulder straps. i had a white game dartmouth cap that i intentionally mangled by arching the brim and soiling the fabric. i slam-danced in the mosh pit at a green day concert.

today i keep up with the trends as dictated by the high-end department stores and mass media culture. this activity distracts me from dwelling on the utter futility of existence. additionally, it helps me forge shallow relationships with other people keeping up with said trends. sometimes these relationships provide partial, temporary stimulation and gratification.

i build websites. i have backpacked through europe. i make electronic music on my apple laptop. i wear designer jeans and white pumas. i drink overpriced blended coffee drinks. i own an iPhone. i went back to school. i can fake my way through a conversation on politics, philosophy, pop culture, religion, music, fashion, pop science, drug lore, and social networking websites. i will talk about the vibe of a place as though it were a tangible, quantifiable, and objective concept. i drink pabst blue ribbon and ketel one vodka. i buy organic groceries and i don't know why. i can navigate public transit systems. i conspicuously send text messages from public places when i am alone. i often carry a man bag. sometimes i go to ikea to browse.

i am a hipster. if anyone has a better solution, i'm glad to listen.

I study uncertainty. Ubiquitous uncertainty. I cannot escape, evade, or eliminate it, so I embrace it.

We can classify uncertainty as either a lack of knowledge (epistemic) or inherent variability (aleatory). We can represent uncertainty in probabilistic terms, and this yields tools for analysis. We can manipulate the probabilistic representations and apply quantitative metrics to understand "how much" uncertainty exists in a given system.

We can employ massively parallel supercomputers to compute millions of possible scenarios. By examining these computed scenarios we can determine what is "most likely", as well as how much we expect the actual outcome to deviate from the most likely.

We focus on fluids - particularly turbulent flows. We strive to improve existing methods and create new techniques for quantifying the uncertainties in turbulent flows.

I find this research very challenging, stimulating, and satisfying. What else could I want in life?

..........something like a blog..........