Darrell Ross

Every year when hollidays roll around, I consider making and keeping a list of items I plan on buying but haven’t bought yet just so anyone thinking of getting me a gift can get me something they know I’d love. Perhaps I could do something like that on this blog somehow.

Things I have been drooling over on eBay and other sites are:

 - Oscilloscope – I have all these fun engineering projects and it’s really tough (nigh impossible) to complete some of them without the use of an oscilloscope. Sometimes I can get lab access time but I really want one of my own. Even a 20MHz model would be helpful at this point. I just spent 20 minutes looking at a 100MHz Tektronix model that retails for around $500. They sure have come down in price. There are some really old looking ons on eBay for less than $100 but I don’t want to end up buying a $100 paper weight.

I have been searching for graduate programs that will allow me, in some capacity, to pursue a PhD while performing energy research. My BS in Computer Engineering followed by the MS in Math that I should complete shortly here at HSU make me qualified for some interesting modeling. I just need to find the program that is right for me.

I have always been interested in appropriate technology starting with my work for Real Goods Trading Corp when I was still in High School. I’ve installed a small off-grid pv-system pretty much solo.

My MS Thesis at HSU involves a mathematical model running in MATLAB of Humboldt County power supply and demand fluctuating over time. Supply sources are Wind, Solar, Biomass, and Wave using regional data and assuptions are made about efficiency of extraction based on current available data for wind, solar, and biomass and based on predictions about wave. I am taking into account probably more variables than I should for a MS degree but it’s so fun and easy to get carried away.

More on my thesis later.

Once upon a time, I liked to hand-code my websites. Here are some examples:

STARtech Competition – 1998

Photovoltaic Barn – 2005

 - I’m quite proud of this project and the site itself.

I continued to try hand-coding my sites using CSS and JavaScript. I really wanted to host my own blog, photos, etc so I began getting into PHP and MySQL and in the end, decided to make my life simpler and just use WordPress. It now takes me like 10 minutes to install a site. Joy!