About
Here’s more information about me than anyone is ever likely to want to know…
In a nutshell
I am a young computer, maths and physics geek living in suburban South Australia with my wife Kirsty and two cats. I am working on a PhD in computational cognitive science at the University of Adelaide (studying a range
of questions on language learning and use), while doing web application development part-time for Thirty4 Interactive. Before that I did software development and customer data analytics stuff at m.Net corporation, Australia’s leading
mobile solution comapny, which was a very cool place to work.
I listen to heavy metal, read science fiction (cyberpunk especially) and occasionally fantasy, play RPGs (on the PC, PS2, or with pencil, paper and dice) and enjoy anime and manga. I have a strange fascination with abandoned places, like Chernobyl
or Hashima Island, which scales right down to abandoned buildings and cemeteries. I love travelling, but spend a lot more time fantasising about being able to afford it than doing it. I am slowly accumulating some sort of competence at speaking German and (less so) Japanese. Random on-again off-again interests include Buddhism (particularly Zen), genealogy, martial arts (particularly iaido) and associated philosophy (e.g. bushido) and meteorology. If there was an English word that captured the
Swedish concept of Fika, I’d be right into that, too.
Education
I hold a “vanilla” Bachelor of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (B Ma. & Comp. Sci.) in Applied and Pure Mathematics, and an honours B Ma. & Comp. Sci. in Pure Mathematics, both from the University of Adelaide
in South Australia. My main interests were in computational algebra and computational number theory, in particular their applications to cryptography / information security. Just about anything else with relevance to crytpography
is of interest too, with the exception of finite/projective geometry, which I inexplicably seem completely incapable of enjoying (and am lousy at). I’m also interested in, but less well-versed in, dynamical systems
and associated ideas (like chaos, complexity and emergence), the numerical solution of differential equations, and statistical / probabilistic modelling. You can read some things I’ve written on mathematics, including my honours thesis, on
my writings page, and find some mathematical software I’ve written on my free software page.
Computers
I have been constantly fascinated by computers ever since my parents bought a Commodore 64 when I was very young. These days I work almost exclusively with i386 machines (though I casually collect “retro” machines from the days of Commodore, Atari and Amiga), running Unix-like operating systems. My love of Unix started in 2000 with RedHat Linux 5.1 and continues today with my use of NetBSD. I am a firm believer in the Unix philosophy and Unix traditions and stick to there where I can.
I am a self-taught programmer who likes to write code when he can, for both fun and profit. I have varying degrees of familiarity and experience with the languages C, Java, Perl and PHP, but am most proficient and feel most at home with Python. You can download software I’ve written from my free software page – I am a strong supporter of free software (think “free speech”, not “free beer”) and all of my software which you can download from this site is licensed under the extremely liberal BSD license.
As for what I actually do with computers, some of my main interests are:
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning
- IPv6
- Security (network, application and data)
- The Semantic Web
- Numerical methods and simulation
- Parallel and distributed computing
Music, Films and Literature
I listen pretty much exclusively to music of the metal genre, but to be clear I hate the rasping/screaming style of singing most people associate with metal. Most of what I listen to can generally be considered to fall under at least one of categories “power metal”, “symphonic metal” or “epic metal”, with a few exceptions. Themes of fantasy and medieval combat are prevalent. You can find a list of links to band websites on my links page.
I like anime and manga a lot. I tend to be drawn to the more serious stuff, and some of my favourites are Evangelion, Death Note, anything to do with Ghost in the Shell, Hellsing, Last Exile and the Patlabor movies, but I also enjoy a lot of biazrre commedies, like Azumanga Daoih, Excel Saga, Love Hina, Lucky Star and the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. You can find a complete list of what I’ve seen here.
Some of my favourite live action films are Blade Runner, Dr Strangelove, Existenz, Fight Club, Sneakers, the original Star Wars trilogy, and Wargames. I like Japanese monster movies which are so bad they’re good, like anything starring Gamera (everyone’s favourite jet-propelled, child-protecting giant turtle), and also the cult-classic samurai series Lone Wolf with Club.
Most of what I read can be considered science fiction, or more specifically “cyberpunk”. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson are favourites. I have very recently been introduced to fantasy fiction by way of David Edding’s The Belgariad series, as recommended by my wife, and Jack Vance’s Tales of the Dying Earth as recommended by a co-worker. Sci-fi is still number one. Oddly enough, what I probably consider to be my all time favourite book doesn’t fit into either of these categories, that being Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle.
