About

I’m Erik Dunning, a dude living on planet earth in Madison, WI with my wife Carrie and our two dogs Luci and Samson.

I like to learn, teach, and build stuff!

Interests

Traveling

I think traveling is crucial for broadening people’s perspective about others and the world at large.

My wife and I love traveling around the United States and experiencing other cultures around the world. We’ve been to Japan, many places in Europe and tropical places near the equator like St. Lucia and Mazatlan, to name a few.

More affordably, we also enjoy taking “random” vacations to places we’ve never been to on road trips determined by a the roll of a die. Every morning it’s rolled and the number it lands on indicates the direction we’re headed (so long as it isn’t directly back from where we came). We find restaurants to eat at, things to see, and interesting places to stay the night as we drive.

As a result, we’ve ended up going to some beautiful and historic locations that we’d never have expected or thought to visit.

Hannibal, Hermann and St. Joseph Missouri all stick out as exceptionally beautiful places off the beaten path that have a strong connection to history and were genuinely neat to see. I’m thankful for a lot of places we’ve discovered, even though we hand’t deliberately intended to.

Art & Computer Science

I’ve always been interested in the intersection of art and computers in general.

Growing up watching movies about robots like “Short Circuit” or more advance synthetic life like the replicants of “Blade Runner” were very inspiring. Furthermore, seeing the realism of the CG dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” at the theater as a kid was mind blowing. I still draw from those and more contemporary works when I dream things up today.

In my work, I frequently sketch out or write down ideas on paper first to organize my thoughts and keep composition in perspective. I really enjoy seeing things come to “life” digitally though. They can take on a level of interactivity you can’t do as easily with other media.

This extends to artwork that I’ve created on the side as well, like the example below:

Music, video games, posters, film production and other media can all demonstrate a lot of overlap between art and computer science (especially nowadays). Originality and communicating a message requires nuance and patience no matter the tools you use though.

Quality websites, web applications, or services require a lot of creativity and process, just like working with physical media. Naturally, it’s easy to see how the visual side of FE work falls in to that, but the mental imagery of backend / networking infrastructure work has its own beauty too.

In this way, I feel the work I enjoy doing is not unlike woodworking (something I also dabble at).

It’s part engineering, and part art.

Form and function intertwined to make beautiful, useful products.

Nature

Respect and admiration for nature is a big part of what I enjoy while traveling or even in artwork.

I think I owe a lot of my appreciation for the outdoors to Scouting and the people who supported me in it. I even became an Eagle Scout while in High School because I enjoyed all the camping, hiking, biking, climbing and exploring despite the bugs & weather.

Now, while walking our dogs around a wooded area with several parks, I find a lot of inspiration in observing the natural world’s systems and mechanics. The tremendously complexity of it is awe inspiring when you take a minute to think about how it all works in harmony.

Plus, getting out and going for a “jiggle” helps keep you healthy and reduce stress!