Ryan grew up in Ohio, graduated from the Ohio State University with a B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering in 2000, and then moved to Santa Cruz, California, to work in the field of graphics programming. Some of his hobbies include backpacking & camping, cooking, gardening, mountain biking, running, swimming, yoga, snowboarding, and showshoeing. He also seems to have an endless thirst for nature's visual and structural patterns, as well as capturing them on film, and attempting to recreate them using computer graphics. He reads a book here and there, and spends a lot of time researching stuff. He likes gin & tonic, dark guinness, and applesauce. He's also a big fan of music. When in Santa Cruz, he plays with a few percussion groups - a gamelan orchestra and a trash orchestra.

Ryan strongly believes in good environmental stewardship and the humane treatment of animals. He tries to spread knowledge about how poorly food animals are often treated, and encourages others to boycott factory farming and pay a little more for free-range meat and cage-free eggs.

While soapboxing, he'd like to mention that he believes spirituality is something one discovers by exploration, not by being told what is sacred or how to connect to it. No one shirt fits all... at least, not well.

Don't worry, though, he doesn't normally talk about himself in the third person.


Work

I am now a graphics and programming consultant and programmer-for-hire. Most of my contracts are related to my expertise with shaders, and ability to write creative, efficient special effects for games and demos.

Here is my resume.

My most recent full-time job was at NVIDIA (August 2003 to April 2007), makers of those ridiculously fast 3D graphics chips. While there, I wrote demos and special effects that showed off the cutting-edge technology in our chips. Check out Cascades (requires a GeForce 8000 series and Vista) and GeoForms (requires GeForce 7000 series).

Before that, I worked for NullSoft, makers of the dandy little Winamp music player. I had an R&D position. Check out some of the fun music visualizers I wrote while working there: MilkDrop, Geiss 2, Monkey, and Smoke. If you want to write your own audio visualization plug-ins (using C/C++ and DirectX 8), check out VMS, the Visualization Mega SDK, complete with source code.

I am currently available for contract work - please contact me if you are interested.