Books, Essays, and Articles by Tanner Helland

Because this site has grown far too large for a comprehensive table of contents (200+ posts last I checked), I have instead chosen to provide this brief summary of my most popular writing projects.

Fiction

As of 2009, my first novel is now available for free download at tealnovel.com.

Teal, a science-fiction novel for young adults, began as an attempt to satisfy my curiosity; as a college student, I wondered if I was physically capable of writing a complete novel, so I spent one hour each day of my junior and senior year plugging away at the project. Much to my surprise, this strategy worked – and Teal is the result.

Rather than go down a traditional publishing road, I made the decision to release Teal under a Creative-Commons license and make it available online free-of-charge. Also of note – an early draft of Teal received the honor of being a semi-finalist in the first-ever Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition (2008). As a result, Amazon has allowed me to make a paperback version of the novel available.

Non-Fiction

Science

• In 2011, I wrote a guide on low-cost ways to access science and medical research. The article is based off techniques I learned as a bioinformatics student, and later as an R&D scientist for a dietary supplement manufacturer.
• Ever wondered how having children affects a married couple? This article discusses recent research on changes in marital quality after the birth of a first child.

Computer Programming

• My comprehensive 5-part programming tutorial has been visited by over 50,000 individuals on this site alone, with another 8,000+ on planet-source-code (follow the link to see its perfect 5-star rating).
• Thirty more programming-related articles can be found at my comprehensive source code directory for this site.  Popular articles include my open source HMM/Viterbi bioinformatics project, or my discussion of image grayscale conversion techniques.

Open-Source Technology and Policy

• My “10 Days of Ubuntu 10.10 Feature Requests” series was discussed across the internet, with analyses and commentary coming from large news sites, international podcasts, and bloggers galore.
• Another Ubuntu-themed article, “The Only Feature Ubuntu 10.04 Needs“, has amassed more than 100 individual comments on this site, while yet another Ubuntu article – Dear Ubuntu: I Have Some Concerns – has more than 80 comments this site and another 110+ over at osnews.com.
• Other open source articles of mine have been cited as Wikipedia sources (not sure if this bodes well for Wikipedia, but hey – I’m flattered! And, just in case you’re wondering – I wasn’t the one who added the reference :)
• In a slightly different vein, my 2011 PCLinuxOS review has become one of the most-visited articles on this site.  It has also been mirrored across Distrowatch, DistroRatings, and other Linux news sites.

Collaborations with Other Authors

• Researchers from York University in Toronto, ON, used my open-source CpG island detection software as the basis for their 2011 paper: Correlating CpG islands, motifs, and sequence variants in human chromosome 21.
• During my employment at USANA Health Sciences, I co-authored several studies on dietary supplementation and human health. One such study is this examination of supplementation’s effects on wintertime vitamin D status in North American adults.