Xavier Silva's Website

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About Me

Hey there! My name is Xavier Silva. Currently I'm job seeking to start my career in technology with a focus in software development and IT.

I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Computer Science graduating summa cum laude from Kalamazoo College in 2024. Some notable projects of mine include my senior thesis on icosahedral virus transformations and the HornetHQ 2.0 prototype from an advanced software development class.

Beyond the academics, I am involved with numerous music ensembles, though the one the stuck with me the most is the art of English Change Ringing. In fact, it's such a big part of my life I have a whole page on this website dedicated to it! Even after graduating, I am still an active ringer at Kalamazoo!

I also have a hobby in photography, which I picked up from taking a couple of photography classes during college. I've put up a few of my best works on this website under the photography page.

Blog Posts


Resume

Click here to view my resume.

Projects

Links to GitHub pages for my notable projects:

Photography

Here are some of my best photos.

Photo of Bellevue Pl, Kalamazoo, Michigan in January 2024. Photo of Xavier Silva drumming during Kalamazoo College's 2024 production of 'Be More Chill'. Photo of the drumset used during Kalamazoo College's 2024 production of 'Be More Chill'. Trial by Celery Flats in Portage, Michigan, April 2024.

Change Ringing

Kalamazoo College's Stetson Chapel is home to a set of eight English Change Ringing bells. Unlike most church bells within the United States, these bells are meant to rung by a team of people, each person with their own bell. The bells are also connected to a wheel, so they rotate a full 360 degrees. The gif on this page neatly shows how these bells are rung.

Because the bells must make a full rotation between blows with a set a period, traditional melodies cannot be rung on these bells. What we can do is slightly shorten or length the period of each bell. This leads to ringing changes, which are described as a series of mathematical permutations that follow a particular set of rules. These rules can be described as follows:

One convention we make is that we start and end in the permutation 123...n, where 1 is the highest pitched bell (known as the treble) and n is the lowest pitched bell (known as the tenor). The permutation 123...n is known as "rounds" and sounds like a descending musical scale. On 6 bells this is described as 123456. An example such a sequence of changes on 6 bells known as plain hunt. The image below visually shows the plain hunt, with each row being a permutation.

This is an example of "method ringing", where names are given to a sequence of changes. In a plain hunt, the changes are created by alternating between swapping pairs of bells and swapping the inner pairs. We start with 123456, then swap the pairs creating 214365, and then from there swap the inner pairs creating 241635. Alternating between these two kinds of swaps gets us back to rounds.

To see some bells in action, I recommend watching these two videos, one by University of Chicago (click here) and another by the Simons Foundation (click here) which features the National Catheral.

More complex methods and slight variations in methods can allow us to ring all possible permutations.

One of the most challenging things for ringers to achieve are what are known as quarter peals. Quarter peals consist of at least 1,250 permutations such that no permutation is repeated (or is at least repeated the minimal number of times). A typical quarter peal takes about 45 minutes of consecutive ringing to complete! A list of all quarter peals I've ever rung is hosted on the BellBoard: https://bellboard.uk/search.php?ringer=Xavier+Silva

For more information on change ringing in North America and to find a tower near you, see https://www.nagcr.org/.

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