Bill Cheswick's Home Page

Photo of ches

I am interested in visualization, user interfaces, security and security usability, typography, tinkering, and science, medicine, and technology in general. I've been a science guy since Sputnik.

Lorette and I live on a lovely farm in Flemington, NJ, where we have a number of beehives and half a dozen chickens, decent WiFi, numerous woodland creatures including a major infestation of deer and deer ticks, and over 150 species of birds that come through, spotted by birdnet software from Cornell . running on a couple of dedicated Raspberry Pis. The reports are not public---I don't trust the software security of the implementation---but here is a sample.

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.) I have had great fun teaching tech to kids.

I have been investing in the stock market since the Eisenhower administration, and as a result we are quite comfortable in our retirement. If you think that Social Security and Medicare are going to take care of you i your old age, you are not paying attention.

By saving regularly, and making long term investments in quality growth stocks, you can use the power of compound interest to save for old age. We are talking a million dollars by age sixty five.

This talk, What My Dad Taught Me About the Stock Market explains how he made his secretaries into millionaires. It is about 45 minutes long, doesn't require that you be a financial genius, and, with long term patience and a little discipline, you are very likely to beat the pros. I welcome comments and questions.

This is the most important part of my mentoring efforts.

For about the past 30 years I have been invited to give an evening talk to the amazing teens in the science part of the NJ Governor's School, at Drew University. The talk is not recorded, but I include here the rough notes I used (PDF). As usual, I didn't hit all my points, but the talk was a great success. notes I used during the talk and a collection of some samples from my old talks I showed the students, in Keynote and PDF. There are some videos in the Keynote version which obviously are not available in the PDF version.

I love living in the future, and recently gave a two-hour(!) fireside chat at SCaLE 21x in May 2024 about that, discussing life and a career over the past fifty years. One kind person said it was like Garrison Keilor with science. It is quite long, and a bit disorganized, but most of the audience sat through all 2 hours!

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.

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, not updated in a couple of decades.

Recent Projects

Older projects

Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker

cover of the second edition of the firewalls book 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.

Internet Mapping

small Internet map 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

Misc

ticket stub for United flight 93 on 10 September 2001

lot's of small images of locks This lock is your assurance of security.

Brian Clapper is a boofhead. Arden is a boofhead as well.