Hi, my name is Ethan Patterson! I created this webpage so you could learn a little more about me. That and to practice a little HTML and CSS. Front end work is not something I do very often, so it is good to practice with occasionally.
I grew up in a small town in North Eastern Oregon near the Eagle Cap Mountains. To give reference to the size of the town, my high school graduating class contained approximately 30 students. This was a gorgeous area to grow up in. I highly recommend visiting Joseph Oregon and spending some time at Wallowa lake if you are in the area.
During my free time I enjoy exploring new hiking trails. I recently moved to the Puget sound area in Washington and am looking forward to seeing what this part of the state has to offer. I also enjoy exploring new programing problems/topics. You can see some of the projects I have created on my GitHub page. I am also planning on adding a blog page as a place to discuss what I have worked on.
I recently graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in computer science (CS) and with a minor in in actuarial science. Oregon State allows CS students to pick a specific focus in the CS field. This can be quite the range of topics, as CS intertwines with just about any other field. My focus was on artificial intelligence. I chose this option as it had a stronger focus in math and algorithms. I feel this gave me a good breadth of knowledge in this sector. However, I am no where near an expert in the constantly evolving field that is artificial intelligence.
I have always had an interest in technology, but I found my interest in CS in elementary school after taking an after-school programming class. This class used the Java programming language and focused on basic syntax and scope. After this introduction I continued to explore more of what was possible with programming. At this time, I algo branched out and began playing with different languages, such as C++.
In high school I participated in a program called First Robotic Competition (FRC) which was offered as an afterschool club. In this club we worked in teams to manufacture a robot to meet different challenges that would change yearly. The compaction’s objectives I was in always required the machines to work in teams of three, participating in both offensive and defensive roles. In this program I learned important skills ranging from software development, electrical systems, and mechanical fabrication.
In high school I also participated in an organization called Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). Here I competed in the computer game simulation challenge. This challenge would change yearly. However, the idea was given some topic make a computer game that meet that desired criteria. In these competitions I would utilized the Unity game engine to create 3D games that utilized, what I now consider crude methods, to engage the player in puzzles and simple E rated combat. My team won first place at the state level in Oregon in 2014 and 2015.
In this program I worked with teams of students from different background ranging from electrical computer engineering, physics, mathematics, and mechanical engineering. Each team was responsible for different tasks which had to effectively communicate their progress as each team’s task relied heavily on one and others. In this program teams build a submersible remotely controlled robot to complete a series of tasks, such as such as stopping a simulated underwater oil leak. My task involved creating a server client program to run on a host machine and the submersible robot. The program on the client machine was responsible for sending controller input the submersible, where the server would interpret the controls and construct pulse width module (PWM) signals and send them to the appropriate motors.