Welcome to my homepage! If you made it this far, you must really have an interest in who I am for some odd reason, and if you don't, you might as well just hit that back button right now because you're about to get an earful! My name is Andrew John Wittrock and I am currently a graduate of Iowa State University with a B.S. in Computer Science. However, programming is not the only area I am focusing on. I also enjoy Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy, and minored in those three subjects as well. In the evenings, I take HapKiDo and TaeKwonDo with Master Yong Chin Pak. I currently hold the rank of 1st Degree Black Belt in both. I also met Andrea, my wonderful girlfriend of 3 1/2 years, who is also now my wife as of June 27, 2004, through martial arts.

I originally come from the town of Waseca, Minnesota and grew up way down in the southwest corner of the town. I was born in Mankato, Minnesota about 25 miles to the west, but moved to Waseca when I was less than two years old, so Waseca is the only home I have memories of. My family consists of me (duh), my parents (Dan and Maribeth), two younger brothers (Jeff and Scott), and two younger sisters (Tracy and Cindy). During my life at home, I was involved in such activities as Cub Scouts, MathCounts, Science Olympiad, cross country, and track.

Interests

Although I majored in Computer Science, my main interests lie in the areas of Mathematics, Physics, and digital art. The reason that I am majoring in Com Sci instead of one of those subjects is that I find programming skills extremely useful in all of those subjects. I want to be able to use my skills in programming to build complex mathematical and physical simulations of the world. There is so much more that can be done on a computer than just on paper. My ideal job would be working in the area of computer animation or simulation for a company like Pixar studios. You can criticize me for having a God complex if you want, but I really like creating my own little worlds.

Of course, I do also enjoy programming just for programming's sake(even though programming classes couldn't be more boring). Two areas that I am particularily interested in are Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. It's truly amazing that algorithms that use random mutation can actually create programs that are relatively intelligent, but I guess that just shows the power of evolution. Ray-tracing and fractal programming are also things I enjoy, and although I haven't done much programming in those areas lately, I do enjoy playing with software such as Fractint and POV-Ray in my spare time (if I ever have any). I don't know what it is about them, but fractals grabbed my attention way back in junior high, and I've been fascinated with them ever since. I've been creating ray-traced pictures for almost six years now, and I really enjoy creating my works of art, even if the voters at the IRTC don't think they're worth better than average (blatant favoritism, obviously).

Although my interest has been waning of late, I also enjoy playing computer games. I especially like first-person shooters such as Half-Life, and real time strategy games such as StarCraft. I also enjoy flight simulators and racing games.

Another pastime that I like is reading. My favorite genres are science fiction, fantasy, horror, and philosophy. In science fiction, I read Star Wars, Star Trek, and the works of Isaac Asimov and Orson Scott Card. Fantasy authors I like are J.R.R. Tolkien, and Terry Brooks. I also occasionally read horror novels by Stephen King. I have also been doing some extensive reading lately on religion, philosophy, and science (Amazon.com must love me by now). In this genre, I have read books by Richard Dawkings, Daniel Dennett, Michael Martin, Richard Swinburne, the Dalai Lama, and Stephen Hawking, among others. If I had to choose my favorite book of all time, I couldn't, but it would be a close toss-up between The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov, IT by Stephen King, or Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

I'm not into pop music very much and didn't really listen to music much at all until college, but there are a few artists that I do like. Some of my favorites include Enya, Enigma, E-Rotic, Yanni, and Loreena McKennitt. I also think that the songs of Tom Lehrer and Weird Al Yankovic are hilarious.

Well, thank you for visiting and enduring this rant I call a web-page. If you feel like returning the favor (or torture, however you saw it) and telling me your life story, feel free to e-mail me.