Dave Blair / Red Planet Comics

Hello! If you are at this site, but meant to go to information about Cassie's and my wedding, please follow this link.

• CV

I'm a PhD student at Purdue University, studying planetary geophysics. I started in 2009, after having spent a few years realizing that I need to actually use my brain to be happy.

I grew up in Mt. Airy, a little neighborhood in northwestern Philadelphia, and attended Quaker schools through 12th grade. I developed a keen interest in space exploration, and decided to be an engineer - you know, so I could build the spaceships that would let people colonize Mars. So, after high school, I moved to Cleveland and started my studies in aerospace engineering at Case Western Reserve University. After about a year, I realized that Mars was interesting as a place, and not just as a destination. I'd taken a geology class on a whim and loved it, so I changed my major and, in 2007 (technically 2008 thanks to administrative foibles), I recieved a B.S. in Geological Sciences.

My current research involves finite element analysis of the Raditladi impact basin on Mercury. I use the commercial modeling code Abaqus for my research, which is really powerful, though sometimes I wish it were open-source so I could change things here or there.

I have more hobbies than you can shake a stick at: biking, baking, programming, reading (mostly sci-fi lately), and music (I sing and can play guitar, bass, and piano, though none of them terribly well). I also do some web design and programming for fun (like this website), and I'm a big nerd in lots of other ways, too - D&D, video games, you name it.

Equipment-wise, I tend to use either my iMac running Mac OS 10.5 at home, or the 32GB-of-RAM beast in the lab, running Linux. I used to use Windows a long time ago, and I can still do the basics, but I find a *nix environment a lot more comfortable and practical. I've installed a bunch of different Linux distros over the years, but I really like Arch these days for just about everything. I like to set it up using DWM - it's a great way to either save screen space on small machines like my old 12" PowerBook G4, or save you the trouble of arranging everything manually on a billboard like the 24" screen I use at work.

Enjoy the site! If you want to contact me, I'm at dblair AT purdue DOT edu, or on Facebook, or (often) #purdue_eas on irc.freenode.net.