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Welcome
to
My World!! |
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 Welcome |
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Hi there,
I'm Dany
and you have just crossed the frontiers of my world (all right web
site),
which is dedicated to keep information about me, my interests, hobbies,
programming, links, drawings, babblings, thoughts, practice my writing
abilities (so there might be some things of interest to no one
but
myself) and everything i judge worth putting on it....That doesn't mean
i'm closed to any kind of feedback,
on the contrary it is welcome (don't be afraid to made suggestions
that'll
help improve my communication abilities), BTW you also should read the Disclaimer.
Now if you want to know
more about me just keep
reading, or go visit
my Resume On Line... bits of my interests
and
philosophy are here ..Anyway, you're
welcome
to surf through my site at any time.
Update
18-March-2008: Finally after 10 years with my page on tripod and close
to two years after the last update (other than the links section
which got updated automatically) I decided to revamp the whole site
completly.
Also I got fed up with the annoying amount of ads that tripod was
inserting on my site so I moved it to this new domain.
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Who
am I? |
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Unless you're
happy/unhappy (hey, everyone it's
entitled to
their own opinions) enough to know me already :)....I imagine
that
you are wondering who the heck am I probably the easiest thing to
do is tell you the whole story:
Everything started
at the last day
of the seventh month in the 1971th year of the lord, a child was born
which
....
..Mmmm ... No, I don't
think you wanna
hear the long story so i think we'd better go for the short one:
Well my name is Daniel
Arturo Barrero Ulloa but i prefer been called Dany
(No!, there is no missing 'n' , i like it that way :-), i was born at
the start of the 70's in Bogota, Colombia,
South America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy ,Universe... and
i'm actually in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America, ...
working currently as a video games programmer which is quite different
than my previous life as a
Post-Doctoral fellow in Scientific Visualisation and CFD (Computer
Fluid
Dynamics) at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Polytechnic
School of Montreal, well if you wonder
how i got myself into this mess
(a
computer scientist doing fluid dynamics and actual physics?! kind of
weird isn't it?! ;-)
just keep
reading. Bits of my interests and philosophy are here
, otherwise you're welcome to surf through my site at anytime...
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The
Almost Short Version of My Recent Life's Story :-) |
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Well i'm going to start my story from the most
interesting
part: The University Years.
Everything
started when i was 16 in
January 1988 when i
started the university. After some years with long nights of hard
study,
party, and ..all the typical student duties ;-), in March 1994 (well i
really
finished in december 1993, but they give the diplomas in March,
notice
that in Colombia the Bs degree is a 5 year program at least) i finally
obtained my bachelor degree in Systems
and Computer Engineering (you can call it Computer Science) at the Andes
University (that's in Bogota, Colombia, .. you know the rest..),
with
a thesis on Physically Based Modeling And Simulation, at the DFAC
(CAD/CAM/CG) group (now called the IMAGINE group).
Then that
same year after giving to it
some serious thought
, i decided to continue having long nights of (you know what) and
decided
to obtain my MS in
Computer Science simultaneously with a Masters Degree on
Mathematics, all that at the same university. .... i
had decided that going out to the real world to work with
databases/cobol/rpg,
etc.. wasn't for me, and that there must be more interesting jobs but
that
i needed to gather more knowledge to get one (i had already worked one
semester
as a full time network administator/database developer/analyst in a
financial
company so it wasn't an uninformed choice)... also it was the year i
started to practice Paragliding
which changed my life forever lending me to drop out of the MS in Math
and focus myself on flying and the MSCS :-)...
.....well,
i'm going off topic
here, but hey it's
My page!, anyway lets get back on topic... were was i... oh, yeah.....
to pay my studies i obtained an assistantship in the CS
department's Networks
Group to do some research in the area of Client Server applications
(sponsored by Digital), then i took the opportunity of going one
semester
to Venezuela to follow some CG and AI classes at the Simon
Bolivar University and do some great Paragliding,
when i got back from Venezuela i got a fellowship to do some research
in
the area of Terrestrial Navigational Systems (GPS systems in
cars,
sponsored by Liikuva) for
one
semester, after that i got a assistantship to work as programmer, help
to the system administration and web mastering of the brand new Super
computing
Center of the university: MOX
( It's was a only little Cray, and some other good machines to be
really Super Computing but it's the
first
and only cray there is in Colombia for the time being, so it's a nice
start :-)..well in September 1996 I finally obtained my
Masters
Degree in Systems and Computer Engineering (similar to MS in CS-CE,
notice
here also that in Colombia the MS degree is a 2 year program min.) with
a thesis on Modeling and Simulation of Turbulence Phenomena for VR
systems,
at the DFAC
group .
well and if
you think the story is
over.... you're wrong,
but don't get desperate it's almost finished, because from there I went
to France thanks to a fellowship of the French government to made
a "These en Informatique dans le domaine de la sinthese d'images"
(that's a Ph.D.. in CS in the area of Computer Graphics) to follow my
research
over the simulation of natural (turbulence) phenomena applied to
computer
graphics (and the extra opportunity to do some serious Paragliding by the side ;).
To do that
i'd went to the IRIT,
at Toulouse, France, Europe, etc... But everything wasn't so nice
and simple since there isn't a direct equivalence between Colombian
degrees
and French degrees, I was obliged to inscribe myself in a D.E.A. in
Computer
Graphics (a one year Master Degree) happily since I had already a MsCS
I was exempted of classes and examinations, and could take the time to
improve my French, and work in research only, and had only to
present/defend
the final Ms Report in June 1997 on the subject "Modeling and
Simulation
of Turbulence in Participating Media", so as it turns out to be now i
have
2 MsCS in Computer Graphics! .... well , from there I started my Ph.D..
at the same laboratory at the team of Computer Graphics "Equipe
Synthese d'Images", where I finally got my Ph.D. (defended on
January 2001) after 3 years of research ........
and my four years of Paragliding in the
Free flight paradise that's france (in case you haven't noticed i'm a Paragliding
fanatic, and pretty proud and happy of being one :-)....
But that's
not the end of the story,
after finishing my PhD y went back to Colombia to see what could be
done there, also because it was a requirement of the grant. Back there
since the computer graphics industry is quite crude (almost non
existant other than creating animations for tv ads and web sites, more
with a user than developer mentality), so i worked at several
universities giving computer graphics courses, doing some independant
consulting and continued researching different topics of computer
graphics and animation by my own side, like building with a friend (hi
Mauricio!:) a Full Body
Motion Capture Device
(of the exoskeleton kind),
3D scanner
device(touch probe) and even created a company to continue
development and comercialization of those devices.
Well, now we
get to the end of the story,
if I was back in Colombia working as a teacher and developping computer
graphics stuff, how did i get to Canada?.. well, actually it was thanks
to this site :-).. a professor of the
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (Hi Marcelo!
:-), was looking for someone that
worked on scientific visualisation and had a good knowledge of CFD for
a research project that he was developping. Anyways, he found my thesis
and papers on this site, then after reading them he contacted me and
offer me the opportunity to do a Postdoc at his institution in Canada,
and since i had never been in Canada before, the research proyect
sounded very interesting (and Colombia's economical situation is going
down the toilet) I decided to accept the offer and so, that's how I end
up at
Montreal learning that actually -40C doesn't mean the thermother is
broken!! :-) and doing some cool
stuff but forced to be on the
ground for the most part of the year :-(.. Towards the end of my
Post-doc in 2004 I had to take the decision of staying on the Academic
path and go for a tenure position or go to work on the industry for a
while, even though I love research, I was tired of the publish or
perish mentalily and was going too much into real physics, so I decided
to look for a job into the video games industry.
At SIGGRAPH 2004 I took
the opportunuty of being there presenting a poster to pass my resume
around, the first person I talked to was the recruiter of a huge game
company and got dissapointed as she basically convinced that having a
PhD meant that I will "never" will be able to get into the industry
:-(.. fortunately while wandering around I stumbled upon the stand of a
Canadian game company that made one of my favorite RTS games, I was not
even thinking anymore to pass my resume around, but the HR lady in the
stand actually convinced me to give her my resume, and a few months
later after a couple of interviews I got hired by them, and thus I
finally started working profesionally programming video games since
March 2005 at Relic Entertainment :-)
Uff!!, finally
that wasn't a so short
story ;)... oh, well... Now, if you read until here
and
you're not tired to sickness of reading about me, now i suppose you are
wondering what are my main areas of interest and work, you can keep
reading
to see a pretty short list (no, really this time is really short :-)...
Anyway, you are welcome to wander through my site, or
go take a look
to my Resume On Line if you want all
the
concrete info about me without the prose.
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A
(Really) Short list of my interests and work |
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Well basically
i'm interested at
everything that could
represent a challenge to me, or allows me to learn new things and not
only
in the area of Computer Science, not because i just love science, but
also
since the better answers to the problems can come from the must
unexpected
/ unrelated places, but in general my main areas interests are:
- Computer Graphics:
Mainly: Visualization,
Physically Based Modeling (My
BS thesis), Photo realistic Rendering, Real Time Rendering,
VR,etc....
- Modeling and
Simulation of Complex Systems (fire,
smoke, clouds,
folding
paper, etc.. my MS thesis and Ph.D. research)
- Paragliding.
- Artificial Intelligence: Mostly animation control,
and Artificial life
i haven't worked a lot on this area but i'll try to improve that when i
get the time..
- StarWars:Yes,
i
belong to the millons
of crazy lunatics that think these are among the best movies of all
times
(the original ones of course not the crap of SE and new trilogy).
- GUI: programing and design.
- Game Programming, I
know it is my current job but I
really like it and even before getting into the industry it was a big
hobby for me.
- Electronics and
robotics (one of my oldest dreams,
maybe someday i'll
get
to know someone crazy enough to help me build a super robot.. well at
least playing with the Lego Mindstorms kit, the adc and the exoskeleton
i
builded could be considered finally as a good start ;-)..
- Computer Programming:
I just love programming, and
contributing to Open
Source proyects, the language doesn't matter as long as it is a decent
one (no, cobol is not one) , it's great to learn to master new
languages
to the smallest detail, and it's better to use the best tool for each
job.
- Drawing, Sketching,
Painting, sculpting: well i've
always loved to draw
but i have gotten quite seriously into it latetly although i can't say
i consider
my self an artist ;-).
- Have Fun: Paragliding,
Programming,
Television,
Movies, Role Playing Games, Roller Skating, Paragliding,
Video Gaming, Linux (hey, it
not only
works great but it also lets you have fun working with it :).
- Did i said Paragliding?..
If you want more information about me, you can always check my Resume
On Line, or wander through my site.
Si quieren informacion sobre uno de los mejores Otorrinolaringolos de Colombia pueden visitar el consultorio de Otorrinolaringologia de mi hermana: https://lillybar8.wixsite.com/consultorio/inicio
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FeedBack
and Disclaimer |
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Any comments, suggestions, questions, problems,
etc.. are welcome
and can be send to:
daniel.barrero@gmail.com
Insults, flames, etc.. can be directed to /dev/null
To
some this could seem somewhat
paranoiac but
there have been happening some stupid legal battles over web site
contents everywere all over the world. It's not to say that i'll do
something illegal as almost if not all of the material posted here is
my original work, otherwise it'll have the corresponding credits, but
as there is always some stupid people that will try to use any method
to get easy money, i think it's better to protect myself , so here it
is:
Disclaimer:
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Lego, Linux, Star Wars and All
trademarks mentioned
in this web site are the property of their respective owners.
All
things posted here not created by me are posted with the
approval of their respective authors, or follows the guidelines given
by
their respective licences.
I'm
not responsible for the
contents of linked
sites or sites wich link to this site.
All
the information provided in
this site is
provided As Is without any guarantee of any kind, and can be modified
without
notice at any time.
If
you have a problem with
the posted material
it's without any intention of harm of any kind, just tell me and i'll
do
the necesary modifications.
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