Greetings, virtual wanderer!
May I, Frank C. Langbein, a lecturer at the School of Computer Science at Cardiff University, bid you a warm welcome to my personal WWW site. I invite you to follow me along a journey into the dark guided by the desire to explore the unknown and the joy to share. Please register, if you have not already done so, in order to participate in the forum discussions, projects, etc. Contact me if you would like to contribute to any of the projects hosted on this site or if you have any other query.

Research

Driven by the desire to know, explore and understand, science and research form the essence of my existence. While Gödel and Turing show that science has its limits, it is the only method that may at least partially succeed. My main research interests lie in the areas of mathematics, computer science and sometimes physics. I am maily working in geometric modelling, computational geometry, numerical analysis, quantum information, and artifical intelligence. But I am really interested in anything which relates to explaining the universe, what is in it and maybe beyond it, and any abstract underlying concepts, which makes me mainly a theoretical scientist with a bias towards geometry.

Free Projects

Computers and networks create a fascinating `virtual world', implemented on top of the physical world, to explore, control and evolve. Besides the obvious relation to my research I also enjoy writing software. Whenever possible, I write and support free software as this is the best way of distribution software for users, research and innovation. Instead of limiting the rights of others, I prefer sharing my work. This refers to all of my work, not just software, as commercial interests always limit the usefulness of ideas and artefacts. So I host this as a general project site which besiudes sofware also provides other free content.

Teaching

Teaching should enable students to learn and understand concepts such that they can apply these on their own to solve problems and ultimately develop new concepts. Presenting well-organised content is important, but enabling students to form their own understanding of these concepts is at the core of good teaching. Feedback is essential in this interactive process. However, evaluating students for future careers based on marks causes serious problems as it limits teaching to a career preparation mechanism. I am currently teaching Graphics and Artificial Intelligence.

Sidelines

The little spare time left I spent on photography, astronomy, science fiction, fantasy, horror, music, travelling, etc... anything interesting, weird or strange which comes to my mind. Careful readers may also notice that I have some connections to paganism, witchcraft and magick, especially their darker sides. But I do not believe in anything transcendental. It\'s mainly related to exploring myself and how the universe relates to me; complementing science and refering to the things science cannot talk about. I do not impose this onto anyone else nor claim that it contains any element of truth (by its nature it cannot), and neither should any belief system.

Blog

This is a mixture of news about this site, other sites and events that I find interesting and anything else that I intend to put on this site without any specific support.

Forum

Once you registered on this site you can fully access to contents of the forum and post messages there to discuss anything related to the contents of this site. You can also leave comments on some of the pages after you created an account and logged in.