So who am I? I am a former physicist and former programmer, currently preparing to go back into teaching physics. I am also an avid gamer and a happy father. Over the past nine years, I have worked as a programmer at Excite@Home, in EarthLink's San Jose office, and at Yahoo!, Inc. in Sunnyvale. In my prior life, I was a physicist -- specifically a high-energy experimental physicist. I got my PhD in Physics from Columbia University in 1998 working on a neutrino experiment at Fermilab, namely the CCFR/NuTeV collaboration. From 1998 to 2000, I was a post-doc at UC Irvine, working on an experiment called AMANDA, which is a detector set up under the ice of the South Pole looking for sources of high-energy cosmic rays (mostly) from space.

     In domestic life, I am married to the poet and dilettante Elizabeth Henry, and we have a small and charming offspring: Milo Minyong Kim, born in March 2000. My contributions to this genealogical experiment include muppet-ological education, singing him to sleep, and teaching him musical classics such as "We Will Rock You" and "Centerfold".

     In recreational life, I am an avid player of role-playing games. I have a massive website on RPGs which has been steadily accreting material since I started my website in 1994. It is famous for having definitive encyclopedia of print RPG as well as free RPGs on the web. It also has a bunch of RPG theory by myself. I am also an avid movie-watcher, stemming from my best friend from high school, Rolfe Kanefsky.

Home Address: 241 Harrison Ave
              Redwood City, CA  94062
Cell Phone: (408) 230-6121
Email: jhkim-at-darkshire-dot-net
AOL Instant Messenger Username "johnhanjukim"
Skype Username "john_h_kim"

LiveJournal (as "jhkim")

LinkedIn Profile
Orkut Profile
Friendster Profile
Tribe Profile
MySpace Profile

Computer Projects

•  Resume

For anyone interested. I also have a Curriculum Vitae which summarizes my academic and research work.

•  Programming Notes

This is a big collection of thoughts on programming, mini projects, and so forth. The notable projects that I have there currently is my free zip code database.

Physics Projects

•  AMANDA at UC Irvine

AMANDA was my post-doctoral experiment which I worked at for two years. It is a cosmic ray detector which is located deep in the ice under the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. I went to the South Pole for three weeks in early 2000.

•  Siegmund

I was an author of the Siegmund package for 2 years, and in particular the simulation program "amasim2". My main achievement for this year was making amasim2 about 10 times faster by optimizing the processing and implementing a "first guess" algorithm.

•  PhD Thesis Download (Gzipped Postscript: 952k)

My PhD thesis, defended in June 1998. It was titled "A Measurement of Alpha _S(Q²) from the Gross-Llewellyn Smith Sum Rule". In simpler terms, I measured the strength of the force which binds the proton together -- using data from how neutrinos scatter off of it. As an analogy, you can think of it as measuring how tough a type of balloon is by bouncing pebbles off of them.

•  The NuTeV Experiment

This was the experiment I worked on as a graduate student, although my thesis was on data collected from its predecessor experiment, CCFR. Through most of 1995 and 1996, I headed development of a general-purpose fast Monte Carlo simulation of neutrino interactions in our detector. I also documented much of the general software suite, still visible in pages like Software available in CVS.

•  Fermilab's Graduate Student Association (GSA)

From 1995 to 1996, I was one of the four representatives of the Fermilab GSA. During that time, we travelled to Washington with the User's Executive committee, organized a conference at Fermilab highlighting the work of graduate students (New Perspectives '96), arranged for academic and computing classes at the lab, and published a booklet introducing new students to life at Fermilab (the "Guide to Life at Fermilab").

Games, Games, Games

     I play a lot of games. My main hobby is role-playing games, but I also play a number of board and card games. Favorites include the board-game Star Fleet Battles and various German-designed board/card games like Settlers of Cataan and Lost Cities.

•  Role-Playing Games

This is a pretty huge site containing, among other things, my encyclopedia of over 750 printed RPG's and over 400 free RPG's available over the web.

•  Star Fleet Battles

This is my Star Fleet Battles site. Since about 2000, I only rare play SFB anymore and the site is not very updated as a result. However, there is still a lot of material there collected over the 5 years that I maintained it.

Personal Stuff

Description: 6'1", ~195 lbs, black hair, brown eyes, goofy looking

Distinguishing mannerisms: "Hmmm", "Whoops", "Uuerrh", "Howdy"

Distinguishing traits: superior intelligence, creativity, manners, and most of all modesty; rarely lies and never overdoes anything; so overconfident he can tackle any problem no matter how small

•  Liz Henry ... my messier half

•  Movie Stuff

•  Favorite Quotes

•  Soliloquy from A Midsummer Night's Dream

•  Soliloquy from The Actor's Nightmare

•  Selected Poetry

John H. Kim <jhkim-at-darkshire-dot-net>

Last modified: Fri Feb 15 14:23:31 2008