Bill Cheswick's Home Page
I am interested in visualization, user interfaces, security
and security
usability, typography, tinkering, and science,
medicine, and technology in general.
Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough
determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against
the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be
purchased in this way—and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the
pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard
to pay.—C.A.R.Hoare
I love living in the future! (But I wish the software was better.)
Here are various things I am working on these days.
Recent appearance on TWIT
with Leo Laporte. It has been a long time since I was on Screensavers.
Lorette and I live
on a lovely farm in Flemington, NJ, where we have about 30 beehives, half
a dozen chickens, two cats, good WiFi, lots of birds, and woodland creatures,
and good WiFi.
I am working on
various bee-related projects, including improving the
Broodminder app for their
excellent hive-monitoring hardware.
The Mentor Project.
Bringing the technical knowledge of aging cold-warriors into elementary
schools. Can I teach quantum mechanics to a second grader?
(Hint: probably not, but the rocket science talk shown here, and others, have
gone really well.)
Presentations.
I do love to give talks and travel quite a bit doing so. Some of
my recent technical talks for grownups cover
Passwords and authentication (PDF, 52MB) and
An argument for eventual optimism in security
(Keynote, 52MB). I
am open to suggestions if you have another topics in mind.
You should check my speaker info if you
want to invite me to speak.
ChesHaz, a
free educational iOS app for looking up placards on vehicles transporting
hazardous chemicals. It is easy to use, and works off-line. If you are
a professional first responder, you should probably use an official app.
Melissopalynology,
the study of pollen in honey to figure out where the bees got their nectar.
Why? Because in August 2016 our bees made honey that tastes like butter!
But was it from
Verbena hastata
(swamp verbena),
or Lythrum
salicaria (purple loosestrife),
both found in our wetlands in abundance that year, or something else?
Here are the Keynote slides (287MB) from a recent talk
on the subject.
I hang out at the
Digital Systems Lab
at the University of Pennsylvania from time to time,
where I am a visiting scholar. I try to get there on Wednesdays for the
literature review.
Biographia
CV, includes patents and stuff;
Publications;
Talks;
Bio and short bio;
A nice movie about me;
If you'd like me to speak at your conference,
speaker information;
My blog.
Recent Projects
- I taught at Cape Kennedy summer of 2018 as part of a launch
of CyberSpace Camps for training in CyberSecurity.
- I am practicing my budding DSP skills on audio from passing trains
on the Norfolk Southern Lehigh Line, which mostly handles intermodal
freight.
The raw data and analysis are
online and updated hourly.
- It's back, the passphrase
generator, featuring probably work-safe insults from some old code by
Ron Hardin.
- Better passwords, a problem that is likely to plague
us for a long time. I would like to make authentication easier,
stronger, and more fun. Current approach: trying to convince users
to memorize one passphrase to rule them all, protecting a smartphone
wallet. Also, trying to convince authentication providers to ease
up on the world: the eye-of-newt password rules aren't helping
anybody.
- Can redaction (especially bad redaction) be used as
a typographic tool to
enhance interest in a document?
!
Hal Burch and
I ran the Internet mapping project while at Bell Labs and
Lumeta Corp.
The thumbnail reveals more information, data, and a gallery
of some interesting visualizations of the Internet.
- ,
a very wide panorama I made with Carlos Scheidegger. The technique
uses orthographic projection, but the film industry calls it
slitscan. There are a number of terrific examples
here.
There are even some air travel-based images though none, I think,
capture the distance across the continental US.
Recovering a stolen iPhone
. There are at least four
ways to locate a stolen iPhone.
Movie visualizations:
I've developed a
new way to see movies, and I
am looking for movie owners interested in seeing their movies
visualized this way.
Web page redesign:
Some of the web pages on this site
have not been updated since 1995. It was time to explore
style sheets
and some typographic options.
Passwords:
Have ten insults from
Ron Hardin,
and a hundred bits of
fresh entropy, using words that are iPhone
spell checker friendly.
Medical:
The Open Source Hearing Aid Project.
Rimonabant - the first in
a new class of anti-obesity drugs, and maybe the last.
Hacking eyewear for aging folks.
Movies and Visualizations:
Time lapse movies.
Internet layout algorithm visualizations.
Hacks:
MythTV HDTV notes.
Emergency power for the home heater during a power outage.
(1995-).
Building the house of the future, one Saturday project at a time.
- :
A cool effect and an interactive science exhibit.
Tech:
Electric commuting bike.
Fiction:
How to Trisect an Angle With a Chainsaw,
by Arjen Lenstra.
Bug, a very short story.
Science Museum Exhibits
.
I have worked on several science museum exhibits
over the years, starting with the original Digital Darkroom
at the Liberty Science Center,
something I developed with Gerard
Holzmann in the early 1990s at Bell Labs.
There are several new exhibits
now, mostly debugged, and available for the asking, including
What Does Sound Look Like?,
How Long Does it Take to Win the Lottery?,
an upgrade for the Chattanooga Children's Discovery Museum,
and a color blindness simulator.
Others:
Many other projects over the years,
including some favorite projects
from early in my computing career.
The Second Edition is available in several languages.
Details available at
http://www.wilyhacker.com/
It is more fun to have written than to write.
Hal Burch and
I ran the Internet mapping project while at Bell Labs and
Lumeta Corp.
The thumbnail reveals more information, data, and a gallery
of some interesting visualizations of the Internet.
These Internet maps have appeared in dozens of books, magazines,
posters, and papers worldwide. Our technology remains at Lumeta,
so you should contact Lumeta if
you wish to use the images. I am
always willing to discuss them with interested parties.
Recently, AT&T put up
Internet maps at
the Washington airports for the 2009 inauguration. These
versions are not available outside of AT&T.
I am still interested in the visualization challenges these kinds of data pose,
but am not working on it much.
Miscellany
- Some useful notes to myself on
how to do things, that might be of interest to others. I use
these things rarely enough that I forget the details.
- An and an even
.
- ,
family time lapse and
animation experiments.
- various
old project queries for which I invited specific feedback.
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Misc
This lock is your assurance of security.
Brian Clapper is a boofhead. Arden is a
boofhead as well.
