Welcome. I am Daren Scot Wilson, artist/physicist, and you to your delight or regret, have arrived at my personal website.
My formal education is in physics, electronics and video & radio production. My bachelor's degree in Physics is from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Next, if things slow down enough to permit it, I'd like to earn a Master's in EE, Optics/Photonics, or perhaps the M.S. in Physics with Specialty in Instrumentation at New Mexico Tech. That is, if I don't get a more advanced formal education in 3D graphics and animation, or film production. In any case, it's all about photons, electrons, pixels and bits for me. In my career, I have worked with brain surgeons, astronomers, high energy physicists, and planetary scientists studying Saturn and currently Mars.
It's not just scientists and engineers I hang out with. I also hobnob with artists, musicians, and belong to or participate in several groups including Unitarian Universalists, Dances of Universal Peace (video on youtube in Fort Collins with Grace Marie), Mensa, and POSA which is an artists' group in Oakland County Michigan.
I loan small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in far-away places through Kiva and occasionally fund art and film projects through Kickstarter.
Though I'm not a big church-goer, I have volunteered at or been involved with First United Methodist in Boulder, the Episcopal Church in Socorro NM where I played in the chime choir, Spirit of Joy Lutheran (ELCA) in Orlando, and the same-named Lutheran church in Fort Collins, the Church of the Holy City which is a Swedenborgian church in Royal Oak, danced Zikr in Boulder, danced Hebrew dances and songs for Dances of Universal Peace in Boulder, meditated and studied metaphysics with Rev. Rebecca Nagy, meditated Buddhist-style with and attended an entreprenurial workshop with Geri Larkin (in Ann Arbor at the time), and played an especially interesting game of chess at Church of Today (during the Marianne Williamson era) which has since morphed into Renaissance Unity. I helped plant a Peace Pole at A Place for Peace in Fort Collins in 2002.
It would be fun to start a micro-brewery and make an interesting lively beer with flavor, no wimpy drip-water, but a beer that _is_ what it is, like Arrogant Bastard, or a great dark beer, a porter like Planet Porter which shows a telescope on the label but I have bigger ideas on themes...
Blogs:
Wiggle Wave about physics and math of anything wavy or cyclic.
Toys I Had with posts of 3D images and other artwork of toys I remember
(not always accurately) from when I was a kid.
Jeffcott-Wilson covering my adventures exploring the San Diego area, and other areas, with my friend Teresa.
Facebook including plenty of photos of Boulder, Orlando, Socorro, objects, bugs, etc
I'm active on several StackExchange sites including Electronics, Physics, Programmers, StackOverflow, Graphics Design, Photographers and others. Interesting - my top-rated answers for StackOverflow are for a feature of C++ I rarely use (though I used it just yesterday), a Java tool although I'm not a big Java expert, and a feature of C++0x (as they call it for now even in the year 2011). It's fun and builds good karma to answer questions, to solve problems and pass on hard-won knowledge. Several people liked my explanation of Runge-Kutta integration
Over 100 photos I took of buildings, roads, landscapes in Orlando, Titusville, Boulder, Encinitas, Socorro and other places are up on Panoramio, where they are used for Google Earth and Google Maps. Most of these aren't fine art or magazine cover material; just photos of what places look like, suitable for way-finding.
In 2010 I took some photos of the sign for El Camino Family Restaurant. One appears on page 2 of roadside signs in New Mexico at Roadside Architecture, a site covering 20th century architectue, statues and signs.
NMSeen has my profile, but since I moved to California, I probably should close that.
Jeffcott & Wilson - Fine Art Photography. Also includes works by Teresa Jeffcott and Nick Stocking.
I have some images available on Zazzle which anyone can have printed on a t-shirt, coffee mug, greeting card or fine art print. If I spend some time on marketing it, and had a bunch more images, maybe I could earn a small extra stream of income. So far, I am my own biggest customer - that Cold Road mug was great but it vanished during one of my many moves across the country.
Many artists have works on Deviant Art. My account has only one work at the moment, Electron Farm, a digital art piece made from a photograph. Someone pester me and I'll put up more one of these days.
These are unfinished pages from my site a few years ago, left on the server for now. There's much more artwork, presented better, in other places, but you may find certain pieces only here, until my new site design is up. Old Gallery Pages Beware of broken links, antique contact info, missing images.
Stereoscopic 3D dot display, a graphics electronics project from an idea one summer between semesters. Result is an 8x8x8 grid of spots seen in perspective, right and left eye views, on an oscilloscope in X-Y mode. Obsolete and low-powered for today, but fun. Might make a decent science fair project for some high schooler. New schematic made in 2009 using Postscript and Ruby - making that was a bigger project, and just as much fun. Source for that is included. See Sterescopic 8x8x8 Scope Display
Electronics project from 1987 when I designed and built a Perfect Sine Wave Generator. The output is a sine wave at 1KHz with extremely low harmonic distortion.
Ancient high school electronics project: Digi-Dice
For 3D modelers - how to make a curve like the seam on a baseball. bbseam.html. See how you can go from a sketchy curve to math to a parametrized curve with objects placed along the desired curve. Done with POV-Ray
Overexposed Moon article on HDR photography, not deep or comprehensive, just some observations and ideas.
The Goat and the Car - an article on the Monty Hall Paradox, a popular brain teaser on probability that often fools even Mensans and university professors.
Pointless little demo of AJAX-based image fader demo page - but a cheap quick way to see three of my digital art pieces, and some junk. Not suitable for publication in snooty high-brow art catalogs.
Some books and info on cob construction, Earthships and other natural/solar housing-making, and architecture in general. My personal favorite title: "Thermal Delight in Architecture". I try to use the phrase "Thermal Delight" at least once every day. Favorite books besides that: Dan Willis' "The Emerald City" and Chris Alexander's Nature of Order four-volume series.
Jeffcott Designs - Interior Decorator Courtney Jeffcott in Florida.
CICLOPS - the imaging operations group for the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn. We provided zillions of fine color and grayscale images of Saturn for the public to enjoy, and high quality calibration data and software for the imaging team scientists.
