Pedro Fortuny Ayuso

Blog

Algunos amigos quisieron que comenzara a escribir mis reflexiones.

Professional and personal interests

I am currently a 'Profesor Titular' (lecturer) of Applied Mathematics at the Universidad de Oviedo. I have taught all the available topics at the School of Engineering at which I work: Calculus, Linear Algebra, Advanced Calculus, Numerical Methods, you name it. There are quite a few lecture notes and problem sets at the specific page.

Research

I keep list of my mathematical musings (which may be right or not) for further reference and in case anyone is interested.

I am an algebraic geometer focusing on singularities of ordinary differential equations, vector fields and their relations to valuation theory. This is my list of publications as shown by MathSciNet.

And this is the list of Reviews I have written for the Mathematical Reviews database (you may be unable to see it if you are not subscribed).

Writings and research on CS

I have written a book (Spanish only by now) on semi-advanced techniques in C. It uses the Hamiltonian Circuit Problem as a guide to introduce makefiles, structures, recursion, dynamical memory management, threads...

I have started some security projects together with a friend.

I keep a Command Line Blog with a couple of friends.

I used to work as a network consultant and deployer: Linux/Windows mixed networks, samba services, all kind of network servers, firewalls...

You can watch a video of a talk on social networkds I gave at the Club Deva, in Gijón, Spain.

Software Development

I (used to, I am now a full-time mathematician) focus mainly on Perl development, but know C, Ruby, Java, C++ and have done some Lisp. Work I have done includes:

• Reduction of singularities of plane differential forms: this software (whose instructions are included in the files) computes the dual graph of the resolution of singularities of a plane differential form. There are two versions: one for Maple, and another one for Maxima. Please contact me (fortunypedro at uniovi.es) if you need any help.
• Web development (Perl) for academia: on-line self-assessment of students, used for example here.
• Data Analysis (Perl): filtering of financial data for proper later management.
• I have (for fun, in C) helped develop a simulation of particle heating in a pipe, for a BSc thesis in Physics. The code is MIA (this happens when you work with a physicist). +I have also done some for-fun development. For example:
  • SPA for OpenBSD's pf: an implementation of the Single Packet Authorization 'protocol' for OpenBSD's packet filter pf.
  • partitions a little utility in C++ for computing the 'partitions of size k' of an integer. This is mostly an exercise on 'vector', 'iterators' and recursion (and recursion elimination, by the way).
  • A justification utility in Perl. You input a text file and it outputs a fixed-width version of it.
  • A standard solution in C to the classical producer-consumer problem, using threads.
  • The solution to a job-interview problem, a filtering program, so to speak, which finds matches between lists of words and lines of text (finds lines of text containing specific lists of words).

That may give you an idea of my abilities: both fast, ad-hoc solutions for a need (which is what script languages are mainly for) and detailed, complete software development for long-term use.

I have also done the casual patch of a piece of software for my own (or my employers') needs.

Resumé and Photo

You can get an old version of my resumé in pdf form, or in case you are more text-prone, in text (specifically, UTF-8). I do not own any MS-Office licence, so I cannot offer it in Word format as yet. By the way, if you want it in Spanish, the pdf and the text files are available. If you need the references' e-mails or phone numbers, I may share them with you, but you will understand my not keeping them on-line. Here I am. The photo is not quite recent, but my general aspect has not changed that much (I hope).

General info

I am a 1971-born Mathematician (some people would say I am an Algebraic Geometer); got my degree from Salamanca, which I am quite proud of, and my PhD from Valladolid -also proudly, but the place is less famous, even though the two Universities are almost the same age- and spent some time as a Post-doc (as a Marie Curie fellow) at Queen Mary College, in London. Specifically, I have studied singularities of foliations on the complex plane and their relation with valuations. I have published some papers and given some talks on the subject.

While in London (what a fruitful experience), I developed a taste for Financial Mathematics: Brownian motion, Itô, Black-Scholes and so on.

In case you are wondering, yes, I use LaTeX as my typesetting tool and emacs as my editor. As of vi, I prefer nano.

I have done some Wikipedia stuff (I am even a sysop still). However, as you may see in that link, I am not quite happy with the result. I have strong feelings on the subject.

Finally, I like English literature a lot. To give you an idea: T.S. Eliot, E. Waugh, H. James, ... are the usual suspects whose books are to be found hanging around on my nightstand.

What follows is related to the past, but still relevant

IT tasks I have performed:

• Network and Security Consulting and Deployment I used to work as a freelance network/security consultant and deployer for small sized organizations (tens of computers at most). Typical jobs I consult for are:
• Full network deployment. Setup a computer network, routers, servers, firewalls. From scratch. A good design prevents many problems.
  • Server installation/migration. The update your company needs.
  • Network security: consulting, assessment, firewalling, policy development and implementation. Security is not about being or feeling safe but about improving your defenses (it is an ongoing process, not a state).
  • Net use filtering, management and control. Because you want your network free from inadecuate content or because you want it to be used properly (at the proper time by the proper individuals). I focus on the firewall+Dansguardian+Squid combination.

Contact Info

1. E-mail: I've got two addresses. For professional-technical matters, please write to me at info AT pfortuny.net.
2. For friends/family, I use pfortuny AT gmail.com. Obviously, you have to change the AT for an @.
3. Snail-mail address: C/Anselmo Cifuentes 11, 3-Izda 33205 Gijón, Asturias SPAIN

My webmail