ABOUT US

HISTORY

I spent 30 years at NASA writing shuttle simulation software, building web sites, and an iPad app. Now I’m doing what I want to do. Yes, I know, it took me long enough.

This site is my app portfolio and a way to promote myself for contract work. Here you’ll find out what I’m working on, and what I’ve finished…although finished is not the right word because I can always look at an app and find ways to improve or enhance it.

I live in Houston, Texas with my wife and son...and a dog and cat. Being at home affords me the luxury of working whenever and however I want. It also means I cook, shop, clean, do laundry, run errands, and tend to my son's needs. This is, and continues to be, the most rewarding period of my life.

KERBINK?

My wife and I met and began dating in college. We were together a lot, so people would refer to us as KRBNK, which was a play on our initials. So while nobody calls us that anymore, I thought it was a fitting tribute to my wife's insistance that I "find what makes you happy and go do it". So here I am.

GEEK STUFF

For anyone who may want to hire me or want to know about my training, I graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University with a degree in Computer Science. Back then, the languages of choice at school were BASIC, Fortran, and COBOL. I programmed in Fortran for about 7 years at NASA until we started building user interfaces for a Space Station simulation. We switched to UNIX-based Silicon Graphics computers and wrote in C and OpenGL.

Some time later, our web developer left so I took up PHP and PostgreSQL. Toward the end of my NASA career, I was doing work in Windows, Visual Studio, and Kinect, using C++ and Processing (language).

I got my feet wet in iOS programming by building an iPad program at NASA that allowed a user to be in an area without windows, and be able to see what's outside by pointing the iPad to externally mounted cameras. We called it the Portable Virtual Porthole. This was done in Objective-C.

APPLE

I've always loved Apple. I've always been impressed with their ability to take a very complicated piece of machinery (computer) and make it simple and easy to use. I applaud their creativity. In college, I worked on an Apple IIe. I later owned one. I've always owned Apple products, although I did allow my son to have a Windows computer.

I started my Apple programming using AppleSoft, Lightspeed C, and Think-C. My app development started with Objective-C, but when the Big Nerd Ranch boot camp came along and they switched the class to Swift, I switch along with them. All my development today is done in Swift, but I am familiar enough with Objective-C to handle that if necessary.