about me
keeper, He/Him
20 year old Minnesotan
Nuclear Engineering Student
I'm Tristan, but around these parts you can call me Keeper. "keeperofhoney" is the frame in which I interact with the internet - it's my blog, my portfolio, and my collections all in one place. I've tried to make a place where you can see the world through my eyes.
In real life, I'm a student of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Wisconsin.
personal links
Nuclear Engineering
Nuclear is so sick, isn't it? I think I'm so drawn to it due to its fundamental nature - we can have the ability to not only manipulate these building blocks of nature, but to make it do stuff we want! I love everything that plays with little particles and waves, like the electron guns in CRTS, HAM radio, and evidently nuclear reactors.
At school I'm in a lab doing research on novel control rods for high temperature gas cooled reactors (Read my article about it.)
For this I have learned how to use Serpent2 & effectively code in Python. I would like to learn OpenMC as well, just because I'm about that open source life.
For work, I'm a criticality safety engineer - a not often talked about career path. People most often associate nuclear materials with radioactivity, but forget about what I think is the coolest part: its reactivity, how willing it is to fission and reach criticality. Day to day, I use tools like SCALE to analyze the burnup and reactivity of spent nuclear fuel assemblies stored in the spent nuclear fuel pool to ensure that at no point the nuclear material is, or ever will be, close to reaching criticality.
People I like
half-life
The Half-Life series is one of my favorites of all time, with its first entry
being the best of them all (though Half-Life Alyx gives it a run for its money). Like many Valve games, its setting acts
as the most important character - and Black Mesa is quite the character. A mysterious research facility is just the perfect
place to explore, to peace together the various experiments that have been going on in the shadows (or really, under bright
florescent lights). However much I love the following games, City 17 does not hold a candle in my eyes to the beauty that is
the tunnels and chambers of Black Mesa. This is further helped by the GoldSrc engine - I have a special place in my heart
for this era of graphics, and the GoldSrc engine just is a dream to play in.
Cosmos
This book means a lot to me. Carl Sagan brings such a strong reverence for the Cosmos that moves me - he doesn't pretend that understanding the world makes it any less amazing, but shows that there is so much to be amazed by. He doesn't stray from criticizing (then) contemporary politics because its "outside his realm", he faces it head on with the same reasoning he has been using throughout the book. This is the perfect book for exploring the cosmos.
ax-man
The most common dream I have involves me discovering a store in a new location, filled with surplus electronics, parts, clothes and gadgets. I walk through the store, looking at all the things and reveling at the experience. No matter where the dream takes place, I know where I am: Ax-Man.
Ax-Man is a real place. I've been going there since I was a kid, located just blocks from my childhood home. My first halloween costumes were from there. My holiday money would be spent there. When I started learning electronics, I could walk there in the afternoon and have a project in the works by evening.
As I move around the US, I'm realizing just how special a place Ax-Man is. I carry it with me not just in my dreams, but on my clothes, and inked on my skin. A reminder of home, of Midway Saint Paul, and what made me what I am now.
Survival Research Labs
"You have to bite the hand that feeds you really, or else you just become another lap-dog."
