Zack Booth Simpson

  I am a software engineer, artist, and molecular biology researcher living in Austin, Texas.

Contact

3202 Hemphill Park, Austin TX 78705
(512) 476-6053
zack --at-- mine-control.com
Visit my blog at zacksprojects.blogspot.com
Visit my art company at Mine-Control

Brief Professional History

1987 Dropped out of high-school
1987 - 1991 Quality Assurance lead on a visual database programming language
1991 - 1992 Software Engineer on the RPG video games Ultima VII and Ultima VIII at Origin Systems (a subsidiary of Electronic Arts)
1993 - 1995 Director of Technology at Origin during which time I was very involved with the conversion from DOS to Windows, the emergence of Origin's internet strategy, and managed the prototype of Ultima Online.
1995 - 1998 Co founder of Titanic Entertainment which made one game: "Netstorm" later voted by C-Net as "The best game of all time that nobody bought"!
1998 - 1999 Research Fellow for Electronic Arts.  Among my research projects was the first paper written on the in-game economics of a MMORPG a subject that has since gained a lot of attention.
1999 - present Founder, chief artist of Mine-Control, Inc.  I have created dozens of interactive full-body exhibits for museums and other institutions world-wide.  [Complete listing of exhibits]  [Listing of artwork]
2000 - 2001 Lived in Barcelona Spain working on my artwork and learning Spanish.  Worked with La Fura dels Baus for various large-scale theatrical installations.
2003 - present In 2003 I began hanging out in various molecular biology labs at UT, Austin.  In 2005 I officially became a Research Fellow in the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology.  I am engaged in a large number of diverse projects ranging from molecular kinetics to biological amorphous computing.
2008 - present Co-founder of Traitwise, Inc. a startup bioinformatics company
2008 - present Co-founder of Genetic Art Design, Inc. a startup art company specializing in mass-customization of ornamental objects using genetic algorithms.

Published Papers, Conferences, Patents

Other Work and Links of Interest

Source Code Archive (last updated in 2002)

Description Source Portability
Assert Wrapper Version: 1.0
      An improved assert handler that does stack tracing and emailing [zassert.cpp]
[zassert.h]
 win32 unix
Fiber Wrapper Version: 1.0
      Provides a wrapper around Win32 fiber API [zfiber.cpp]
[zfiber.h]
 win32
File Specificaiton Parser Version: 1.0
      A portable filename & path parser [zfilespec.cpp]
[zfilespec.h]
 win32 unix
WIN32 Open GL Window Toolkit (!GLUT) Version: 1.0
      A glut-like window interface for OpenGL and windows. Written because glut had an unclear license status. [zglwin.cpp]
[zglwin.h]
 win32
Simple Hash Version: 1.5
      A simple, fast, and decoupled hash table using string keys. [zhashtable.cpp]
[zhashtable.h]
[zhashtyped.h]
 win32 unix
Hash-based Message Dispatcher Version: 2.0
      A hashtable based method of passing messages around. Allows for a header-free method of passing a message from one module to another via direct and indirect dispatching. Includes features for queing messages [zmsg.cpp]
[zmsg.h]
 win32 unix
Socket Wrapper Version: 2.0
      A portable, simple, flexible socket fascade. Uses string based addressing for greater simplicity, portability. [zocket.cpp]
[zocket.h]
[zaddress.h]
 win32 unix
Perl Compatible Regular Expression Wrapper Version: 1.0
      Provides a nice c++ facade around the Perl-Compatible-Regular-Expression (PCRE) SDK. (www.pcre.org) [zregexp.cpp]
[zregexp.h]
 win32 unix
RGB to HSV conversion Version: 1.1
      Conversion from RGB space to HSV and vice-versa [zrgbhsv.cpp]
[zrgbhsv.h]
 win32 unix
Serial Wrapper Version: 1.0
      A simple serial I/O interface [zserial.cpp]
[zserial.h]
 win32
Direct Sound Wrapper Version: 1.0
      A fascade for DirectSound. Provides basic caching and the ability to play a sample more than once without reloading. [zsound.cpp]
[zsound.h]
 win32
Win32 Stack Tracking and Symbol Decoding Version: 1.0
      stack tracking for win32 [zstacktrace.cpp]
[zstacktrace.h]
 win32
Perl-like String Splitter and Manipulator Version: 1.0
      A Perl-like string/list class. Perl-like functions such as split are provided Very handy when you are doing text file processing. [zstr.cpp]
[zstr.h]
 win32 unix
Telnet Server Version: 2.0
      A telnet server which can plug easily into an application and listen on a port. You may have more than one and it can be non-blocking. A simple callback function API is used to alert the app of incoming messages. [ztelnetserver.cpp]
[ztelnetserver.h]
 win32 unix
High Precision Full Scale Timer Version: 2.0
      A portable time system that keeps track of time with high precision and UTC range as a double. Includes handy framework for real-time systems and games. [ztime.cpp]
[ztime.h]
 win32 unix
Simple Inline String Constructor Version: 2.0
      This is a convenient class for creating inline strings using the familiar printf style without having to declare a separate buffer. Originally written by Ken Demarest [ztmpstr.cpp]
[ztmpstr.h]
 win32 unix
DirectShow Video Capture without the Horrible Grief Version: 2.0
      A simple C style interface around the abysmal DirectShow video capture API [zvidcap.cpp]
[zvidcap.h]
 win32
Wildcard Enumerator Version: 1.0
      A class for traversing filename wildcards. [zwildcard.cpp]
[zwildcard.h]
 win32