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.)
These days I am retired, hanging out at our farm in Flemington, NJ. I
still work of various projects with various collaborators, and
do things in
Recent appearance on TWIT
with Leo Laporte. It has been a long time since I was on Screensavers.
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.
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.
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.
Brian Clapper is a boofhead. Arden is a
boofhead as well.
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.
Biographia
Recent Projects
Older projects
!
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.
The Windowseat
,
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.
Our
digital house
(1995-).
Building the house of the future, one Saturday project at a time.
The McCollough Effect (Nov 1994)
:
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.
Others:
Many other projects over the years,
including some favorite projects
from early in my computing career.
Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker
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
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.
Miscellany
old blog
and an even
older diary
.
Our tube
,
family time lapse and
animation experiments.
Cheap research:
various
old project queries for which I invited specific feedback.
Favorite software
I am a modern-day tinkerer, a.k.a. hacker
Brushes with greatness
Childhood heros
Web Awards from the Early Internet
Geek destinations
Misc
This lock is your assurance of security.