StratosSystems.com
I founded this startup in 2011. Stratos Systems offers web hosted maintenance software for businesses who maintain anything from aircraft to golf courses to oil containment facilities. There are other web-based maintenance services out there, but this one has a clean, uncluttered user interface that beats them all.
I did all the development for the site, including web page designs. It was a great opportunity to plumb the depths of django, which is beautifully productive framework for building web applications in my view.
Using django, python, nginx, apache, mysql, html, css, AJAX, jquery, sass.
paperfeed.org
This is a completely robotic site that pulls RSS feeds from over 5000 science and engineering academic journals and makes them available blog-style, in categories. It’s a great way to discover new academic journals and to search for articles across publishers.
It was my second time building something non-trivial with Drupal, and required extending the RSS modules that were available at the time. The site now gets about 20,000 uniques per month, with no attention on my part. Frankly I’m not sure what to do with it…
Using Drupal, PHP.
CEET repository server
Emirates Airline operates a fleet of evacuation trainers built by TFC (Germany). The software driving these machines runs on a distributed network of 71 Linux PCs. My project was to set up a revision control system for the whole system.
The system is mostly accessed through a web interface, consisting of old-school cgi-bin bash scripts generating the pretty output. Features include:
- Basic status check of the network
- Master software repository
- Software change submission/approval/deployment workflow
- Disaster recovery functions
- Best practices training and documentation
Using Linux, bash, ssh, rsync.
Printronix printer replacement (emulator)
My previous employer (Emirates Airline) had a faulty old Printronix dot matrix printer. This was connected to an old IBM AIX mini-computer; not a good candidate for installing modern printer drivers.
So I wrote a Printronix emulator for Linux. Instead of connecting the old mini-computer to the Printronix, you connect it to a Linux PC with a laser printer. The best thing about this solution is we didn’t change anything at all in the mini-computer.
Thankfully, those old Printronixen came with fantastic user manuals describing the printer codes and graphics language that get sent over the serial cable. I didn’t have to reverse-engineer anything at all – just re-implement the Printronix specs. Here’s a page of sexy printout captured on its way to the laser printer (click on image for full-size):
Using Linux, C, ImageMagick, bash.
SOCNet Maintenance Software
When I first started working at Flight Training Facilities at Emirates Airline, they were looking for a maintenance management tool to use for the day-to-day operation of their flight simulators. In the mean time, they were using a mix of internally developed tools; Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, paper forms, etc. I set out to build a better replacement for their bug tracker only.
I bought a few of those Microsoft Access bibles, brought them home and started hacking. Why MS-Access? I needed to make it run on a locked-down corporate network, so I didn’t have my choice of tools.
Over seven years, this project grew into the full-fledged CMMS solution for their operation. It saved them an estimated 1 million US, from not having to source it from an external vendor. I was honoured with the Emirates Group Chairman’s Najm Award, handed to me by High Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum:
Using Microsoft Access, VBA, Windows XP.
Flight Simulator Maintenance
I worked for seven years at Emirates Airline’s flight training center in Dubai, as a simulator engineer. This involved an incredibly wide range of tasks from vacuum cleaning the cockpits to Linux system administration to hard-core software development. I remain grateful for the incredible opportunities I was given there to develop my skills and get involved in projects.
Each simulator has a QTG test package that needs to be run successfully every year in order to stay certified for training. My most important task was to oversee these test packages for the whole fleet. That involved everything from detailed reviews of new packages, to debugging test failures, to creating a course to teach other engineers about simulator testing.
Flight Simulator Development
In my five years at CAE Montreal, I worked on more than a dozen flight simulators as an aerodynamics software specialist. I was one of the systems engineers who built the B767-400ER prototype, which meant software implementation of aircraft specs using FORTRAN, C and proprietary tools. I traveled the world to install these simulators, usually in training centers operated by airlines.
Numerical Simulation Research
My undergraduate thesis for my Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at McGill was a study of modal testing for non-linear mechanical systems, with applications to the CF-18 flight test program run by the Canadian Department of National Defense.
I wrote the simulation in C, analyzed it using MATLAB, and came out with a single useful result: if you run frequency sweep tests upwards and downwards and then take the average, your results will be at least an order of magnitude more accurate than if you had just gone in one direction. That’s the frequency of wing deflections (think flapping).
