Singularity
Singularity is the personal web space of Jim Armstrong, mathematician, algorithmist, and programmer ... although not necessarily in that order :)
I enjoy applied mathematics, and currently work on mostly Flash and Flex applications. Although my formal training is in numerical analysis and computational geometry, much of my previous experience is in the area of business decision analytics, including operations research, AI, game programming, and predictive analysis. Companies use such algorithms for computer games, analyzing geo-coded data, competitive analysis, increasing revenue, up-sell and cross-sell predictions, make-vs.-buy, general forecasting and a variety of other business decisions.
If you have seen any episodes of the television show Numb3rs, then you have a good idea of what I do, although I'm not a geeky college professor ... just a geeky guy with a notebook computer :)
The TechNotes series provides Flash (and any other ECMA-Script literate programmer) with a repository of technical papers on numerous topics in applied mathematics. Some of my ongoing background projects include the AS3 Parametric Curve Library and 2D Character Rigging classes. These developmens are supported by
Business Loans
Hanalei Bay Resort
Earn An Online Degree
Compare Prices Australia
Flowers, flower delivery, UK
Pearls
Quality wigs from Wigs World
Arkadas Ara
Online Shopping Websites
Software Reviews and Downloads
Wellness Hotel
UV curing
JP Domain Registration Japan
Home office desk
Tuxedo Shirts and Accessories
Bio
Mr. Armstrong did his undergraduate work in Math and Aerospace Engineering with some graduate studies in Operations Research. Much of his undergraduate time was spent studying numerical analysis and computational geometry.
After graduating, he moved into the high-performance computing industry and spent the majority of that time writing assembly-language math libraries for supercomputers. At the end of his HPC career, he became interested in operations research and business decision analytics. This interest eventually led him to become market development manager for Finance and OR at Silicon Graphics. His tour of duty in the operations research arena included writing low-level solvers for multi-objective decision analysis and planning under uncertainty. He then moved onto freelance work where a career writing plugins in C++ for high-end 3D software has migrated to custom application development, mostly in Adobe Flash. About 70% of his time is spent in application development with the remainder split among applied math consulting and background projects.
Although he currently programs predominantly in Flash Actionscript (2 and 3), his past programming experience includes assembler, Fortran 77, Fortran 90, C, C++, and C#.
His favorite all-time movie is 'The Matrix' and he can most often be found listening to RUSH. His favorite spectator sport is football, favorite participation sport is tennis, and his favorite non-technical books are Clive Cussler novels.
Visit Mr. Armstrong's personal blog.
Publications
White papers
Recursive Taylor Series
Managing Supply-Chain Risk
Multi-Objective Programming
Lagrangian Relaxation
Post-Graduate Publications
Armstrong, J., Mulvey, J., and Rothberg, E., TIRM: Total Integrated Risk Management, RISK Magazine, special supplement on controlling risk - June 1995, pp. 28-30.
Armstrong, J., LARGE: Lagrangian Relaxation with Genetic Enhancement: Part I: Mathematical Preliminaries, working draft Dec. 1995, Silicon Graphics Advanced Systems Division. Updated version available here.
Armstrong, J., Implementing a 3D, Explicit Finite Difference Operator on a Massively Parallel Machine, MASPAR technical report TR003.0692, June 1992.
Armstrong, J., Algorithm and Performance Notes for Block LU Factorization, proceedings of 1988 International Conference on Parallel Processing, Penn State University Press, University Park, PA.
Armstrong, J., A Multi-Algorithm Approach to Very High Performance One-Dimensional FFT's, Journal of Supercomputing, Volume 2, No. 4, Dec. 1988.
Armstrong, J., Optimization of Householder Transformations, Part I: Linear Least Squares, proceedings of 1987 International Conference on Parallel Processing, Penn State University Press, University Park, PA.
Undergraduate
Physics and Mathematical Modeling - placed 1st in Southwest Regional Mathematical Sciences Competition, 1981
Advanced Transformation Techniques for Special Relativity - placed 2nd in Southwest Regional Mathematical Sciences Competition, 1982
PHASER: A CADCAM Program - placed 1st in Southwest Regional Mathematical Sciences Competition, 1983
A Variable Order Taylor Series Method for Nonlinear, Six-Degree-of-Freedom, Stability and Control Problems - placed 1st (oral presentation category) in Southwest Region AIAA Student Paper Competition, 1984.
Awards
2112fx.com (no longer online) - International Web Page Awards, Best Personal Site, 2000. Best Audio/Video, 2000. Best Personal Site, 2001.
Finalist in Best Use of Video at South by Southwest Interactive Festival, 1999. Blog was a finalist in Developer's Resource Category, 2004. Finalist in Video category at 2002 New York Flash Film Festival. Finalist in NetFestival 2002, Broadband category.
Moderator in 3D and UltraMath forums at Ultrashock.com
Conferences: Invited speaker at FITC Toronto 2007 (Dynamic Skeletal Animation), FlashForward 2004 NY (GIS applications in Flash), FlashForward 2000 NY (3D Flash) and Promax/BDA 2001 (Flash for Visual FX in Video).
Books: Contributing author to 'Fresh Flash: New Design Ideas with Flash MX' by Friends of Ed. Member of beta review team for 'Essential Actionscript 3' by Colin Moock.
Clients
Mr. Armstrong provides applied math and custom programming services to a variety of companies. A small sample includes DVD PowerTools, J.C. Penney, Origin Designs (ExpressJet, Neuhaus), Pursuant Group, ShoutStream Inc., Slingshot (Jack Daniels, ThyssenKrupp), Travelocity, Ultrashock.com, and Voyager Learning.
News
AS3 Parametric curve library
The library now has quadratic and cubic Bezier y-at-x methods.
Online Demos
The TechNotes page now has a section with online demos (Flash 9 required).
FiTC Conversation
My conversation with Ben Fry is now online - open video player here.
AS 3 Rigging Classes Now Online
The alpha version of the AS 3 Rigging Classes is now available for download.
New Personal Blog
My new personal blog - The Algorithmist - is located here.
Projects
This section is reserved primarily for ongoing background projects that may be of interest in the Flash/Flex community.
as3MathLib
I'm very happy to offer my numerical anlysis skills to help out with the AS 3 Math Library project.
Papervision 3D
Currently doing some work with path animation in PV3D, with kinematics to follow some time in the future. See the TechNotes page for online demos.
Parametric Curve Library
Authored in AS 3, the parametric curve library is an ongoing project to illustrate applied computational geometry in Flash and Flex. Check it out here!
Dynamic Skeletal Animation
The alpha version of the AS 3 rigging classes (2D Characters) is now available here.
Twitter - What am I doing now?
Contact
Legitimate business inquiries are welcome. For jokers who think it's cool to submit trash or a completely blank form, the server-side script filters all these out and never forwards the form data. Have fun wasting your time, not mine.
