About
I am Charlie Vorbach. I’m an undergraduate at MIT studying computer science and electrical engineering. I love puzzle-solving, mathematics, and elegant code.
This site is latest reincarnation of my portfolio of programming projects and blog posts. It may take me some time to move everything here, but I am hopeful that Jekyll and GitHub pages will ultimately more stable and easier to maintain than an EC2 LAMP stack.
In any case, please bear with me as I learn this new platform. Also, please check out my personal GitHub and my school one for info on the projects I work on.
Semi-Obsessive BlogRoll
A Few Favorite Books
Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Example, Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo
Eloquent JavaScript, Marijn Haverbeke
Make: AVR Programming, Elliot Williams
Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
The Great Explorers, Samuel Eliot Morison
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain
Dracula, Bram Stoker
F.A.Q. (The Original)
I don’t know who you are, but you seem to want to know about me. To save you the trouble of finding my facebook, here is a quick Q & A.
Who are you? What should we know about you?
My name is Charlie Vorbach (Didn’t you read the homepage?). I am highschool junior in the United States freshman at MIT. I mostly pass my classes, although I can’t figure out my class rank because I only get complex number scores. I am firm believer John Cleese is Sun Wukong reincarnated and that Fawlty Towers is his canon. Or is it cannon?
What interests you?
It might be easier to list what doesn’t. In my short career as a student, a.k.a professional learner, I have loved not only mathematics, physics, and computer science but also lingustics, literature, and history. I enjoy learning about snowclones almost as much as quater-imaginary base numbers. Perhaps this is why I love finding the intersection between field - like writing a Python script to analyze Shakespeare or programming a autonomous aquatic vehicle to reenact Atlantic crossings.
What do you do with your free time?
I am one of those people who finds the internet hopelessly distracting endlessly interesting. Usually, I spend my free time reading about the Trans-Siberian Highway or fiddling with hobby programs. That said, you wouldn’t believe how productive one can be with one’s free time.
What are you currently reading?
I am in the middle of finished The House of Rothschild by Nial Ferguson, Geometry and the Imagination by David Hilbert and Stephan Cohn-Vossen, and Nuclear Radiation Physics by Ralph Lapp and Howard Andrews. I (even more) vaguely recall a happy time before these books.
What is something few people know about you?
For some reason no one can get over the fact I have a sense of humor.
Do you have any pets?
I am now sadly separated from my rambunctious English cocker spaniel, two birds, and partridge in a pear tree. Except that last one.
What is this nuclear fusion I keep hearing about?
A few years ago, I ran a fun research project in plasma physics. I built an Inertial Electrostatic Confinement fusion device. It uses high voltages to accelerate deuterium ions and produces a small, but detectable amount of fusion. It was a lot of fun to build and I got to learn about high vacuum apparatus, high voltage transformers, TIG welding, flanges, flow regimes, nuclear chemistry, and lots more. You can google ‘fusor’ for lots more info about the design of the device I built.
Also here is a picture and the research paper I wrote.
Tell us a joke.
I am pretty sure this whole questionnaire has been one.