Erik Halvorson


Engineer, Software Developer, Amateur Photographer


I've been programming for over half of my life. Originally I aimed at games, but found that some parts of the game creative process required more than just programming skills (difficult things like 'art' and 'music'). However, when I'm curious about something, or need a tool to do something specific, my first instinct is to write it myself. Sometimes (not as often as I'd like), I end up pursuing the idea until I get something that another person could actually use. These are not finished products by any stretch of the imagination -- rather, they're something that I think could use a good home with a less flighty developer.
When my wife and I purchased a new car a couple of years ago, we spent quite a bit of time deciding how quickly we wanted to pay it off. GnuCash came with a calculator for simple-interest loans, but it wasn't accurate, nor did it answer all the questions I wanted. I was learning Qt at the time (for work), so I decided to throw together a quick program that computes the effect of different repayment strategies on a loan, or different investment strategies. More details on the website. This program runs on Mac OS X and Linux, and with a little work, could probably run on Windows as well. Released under GPL.