These links include my notes on why I think the link is interesting. On this page you'll find annotated links for the following topics:
Here is a link to a lot of words
Geek and techie
Mathematical Fiction.
A list of fiction, novels, classics, and others, where mathematics is relevant to the plot or which contain interesting references to mathematics. The list is compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston). This is a lot of fun to review and remember the works I had read before and how math figured in the stories...(Click to Go).
Jay Garmon [dot] Net.
The (in)famed "Trivia Geek" Jay Garmon sent his weekly "Geek Trivia Newsletter" from TechRepublic for about eight years. He left TechRepublic and issued an independent "Truly Trivial" column for a year or so, and then semi-returned to TechRepublic for periodic Trivia Geek newsletters. He also posts his material at his website...(Click to Go).
The Jargon File.
Arguably the best reference website for techie jargon and the underlying culture. Here is how the site describes itself: "This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate"...(Click to Go).
Take “The Geek Test” at innergeek.
This is an entertaining test that takes about thirty minutes and asks you everything you ever thought might expose you as a geek...(Click to Go).
Sentimental Ode Upon a Hungry H4x0r: Poetics Qua Geekdom.
This is poem that integrates obscure and esoteric Geek Computer History events, milestones, quirks, and other forgotten lore ...(Click to Poetics Qua Geekdom).
DOS Command Index.
Information about all current DOS commands—essential for anyone who hasn't memorized them yet...(Click to Go).
Best of "Our Take" at StickyMinds.com.
My software-quality column "Our Take" appeared twice a month in STQe-Letter, a subscriber-based publication that had a circulation of 30,000. Many columns were selected and published in this "Best of" collection...(Click to Go).
People of Interest
Also see:
Interesting People Pinterest Board
Literary Personalities Pinterest Board
John Gielgud (14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000).
Actor Simon Callow wrote an exellent article on John Gielgud and the authorized biography of Gielgud by Sheridan Morley. Drama aficionados will certainly recognize the 19th-century name Ellen Terry—she was Gielgud's aunt. He had strong drama provenance on both sides. He achieved a stellar career on stage by age 23, and reestablished his impeccable genius of histrionic refinement with every new role for the next seventy-three years (he lived to be 96). A typical quote from the Simon Callow article: "His seemingly instinctive ability to speak verse was widely perceived to be an inherited gift ('the Terry voice'; like Ellen he spoke Shakespeare 'as if he had only just left him in the next room')" ... and ... "when he speaks a line you hear Shakespeare thinking." There is also a lot of good information about Gielgud on Wikipedia.
The Bloomsbury Group (Fall 1899 – ???).
The Tate Gallery in London devotes a corner of their website to profiles of the Bloomsbury Group, which flourished from the early 1900s through 1930 or so, although the members continued to work and to be identified with Bloomsbury the rest of their lives. The earliest meeting of sorts took shape first in 1899 as the Midnight Club at Cambridge where Thoby Steven, Lytton Strachey, and Leonard Woolf met in their rooms and pursued intellectual discussions of all sorts. These meetings flourished later at the Steven home on Thursday nights, and could last several hours or all night, and included Thoby Steven's two sisters, writer Virginia (Steven) Woolf and artist Vanessa (Steven) Bell, who then became central Bloomsbury Group members. Unfortunately Thoby died young, even before the Bloomsbury Group became known or identified by that name. Other central members included Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, and Maynard Keynes (who in 1918 as WWI ended, predicted the inevitability of a WWII to follow in about twenty years based on economic conditions in Germany, which was spookily accurate).
Eddie Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890 – July 27, 1973) was the WWI top
American flying Ace.
From acepilots.com—Eddie Rickenbacker: "In March, 1918, he was assigned to the newly formed 94th Pursuit Squadron": He was the WWI top American flying Ace (26 victories in just two months, never shot down), a racecar driver of deusenbergs before the war, then after the war, owner of Indianapolis speedway, and owner of Eastern Airlines. He led an adventurous life and was lost in the pacific for 24 days in the 1940s.
Paul Morphy (1837–1884) was one of the greatest chess players who ever lived.
From Jeremy Silman's chess history: "During our game's long history, the two most talked about and legendary players are, without a doubt, Paul Morphy and Robert Fischer. Their careers were oddly (and sadly) similar: both were prodigies, both dominated the other players of their time, both were American, both quit in their primes, and both suffered from mental 'abnormalities'." Another good link: Chess Poster: "Paul Charles Morphy was born on June 22, 1837 in the city of New Orleans. ... He was fluent in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German ..."
Aaron Bank (23 November 1902 – 1 April 2004), the "Father of Special Forces," was the founder of the US Army Special Forces (the Green Berets).
From militarymuseum.org: Aaron Bank began his special ops career with the U.S. Army as a Captain in the Office of Strategic Services during WWII. After years of special operations via intelligence (OSS and CIA), he formed the "first Special Forces unit, called the 10th Special Forces Group (hoping to confound the Russians with suspicions of nine more), in 1952."
Tom Van Vleck was one of the || Original Multicians.
He has been working on computers since his high school days in the 1950s when he participated in a basement computer-building project. He later went on to MIT and then Multics fame (fame coming later and being a relative term). http://www.multicians.org/thvv/tvv-home.html: Tom is a multitalented computer guru and a very good writer. There are links to about twenty-four software engineering stories on his homepage. When I was the editor of the software publishing portal stickyminds.com, Tom was kind enough to allow me to post a few of his stories there. Here is a link to one of them, which also contains links to the others: "Hellandizing: Using Test Points in Server Programs"—Tom is now an independent consultant for web applications and programming.
Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was never a great popular success, suffered abnormally advanced intelligence and perspicacity, and despite those liabilities, he managed to eek out a living writing novels, stories, travel pieces, and, notoriously, plays.
Good link: Henry James scholar's Guide to Websites. Henry James wrote endless novels, stories, and articles as he lived and traveled throughout Europe, with his homebase usually in London. He acquired his donnée for each work through the cultural settings, social scenes, and the complex psychological conditions of the personalities he encountered, all refined through the alembic of his rigorous and infinite imagination. Click here for another good Henry James reference with list of his works.
Jaakko Hintikka (12 January 1929 – 12 August 2015): Ph.D., University of Helsinki, Finland, professor of philosophy.
Jaakko Hintikka is one of the greatest minds in the philosophy of language in history. From Boston University's website: Jaakko Hintikka is the "main architect of game-theoretical semantics and of the interrogative approach to inquiry, and also as one of the architects of distributive normal forms, possible-worlds semantics, ... and the present-day theory of inductive generalization" among other areas. ... The honors Jaakko Hintikka has received include the John Locke Lectureship at Oxford (1964), the Hägerström Lectureship at Uppsala (1983), the Immanuel Kant Lectureship at Stanford (1985), the Wihuri International Prize (1976), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979-80), and honorary doctorates from the University of Liège (1984), the Jagiellonian University of Cracow (1995), and the Universities of Uppsala (2000), Oulu (2002), and Turku (2003). Most recently, he has been awarded the Rolf Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy (2005) for his pioneering contributions to the logical analysis for modal concepts, in particular the concepts of knowledge and belief."
I studied game-theoretical semantics, the interrogative model of inquiry, possible-worlds semantics, and epistemic logic under Professor Jaakko Hintikka. I was sad to learn Professor Hintikka died in August 2015. Click here for the Wikipedia Entry for Jaakko Hintikka.
Maxwell Perkins (20 September 1884 – 17 June 1947) was a literary genius without peer. He used his highly organized and creatively astute mind to identify and develop the up-and-coming writers of his time.
Maxwell Perkins raised writers like a parent raises a brood of children, picking out their strengths and guiding them to become great. He was the editor for writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Jones, and many others. In fact, the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction created the Maxwell Perkins Award for later editors who "discovered, nurtured and championed writers of fiction in the United States" (Mercantile Library Center for Fiction website). More info from Wikipedia: Perkins was descended from King Henry II of England. He was also descendant of Puritans John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton. Perkins was the great-great-grandson of Declaration of Independence signer Roger Sherman, and the grandson of US Senator William Evarts.
Richard P. Feynman (11 May 1918 – 15 February 1988) was one of the most astute, articulate, and expert physicists and thinkers of the twentieth century.
Richard Feynman had a hand in everything from the Manhattan Project (first atom bomb) in 1944/45 to the investigation of NASA's Challenger explosion of 1986. In 1965 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is remembered also in his invention of the mathematical schema of subatomic particles now called Feynman diagrams. He was multi-talented, a musician and an expert in quantum electrodynamics and Mayan hieroglyphics—he relished in any puzzle or unexpected behavior to investigate. More info from Wikipedia: Feynman was "known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium."
What ever happened to Albert Einstein's kids?
Here's a great-grandson of Albert Einstein—he is the director of Anesthesia at the Clavin Center for Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery, Tom Einstein. Here's the lineage incase you want to know:
Albert Einstein > Hans Albert Einstein (professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley) > Bernhard Ceaser Einstein (physicist) > Thomas Einstein (center for plastic and cosmetic surgery in Santa Monica, California).
Conversion/Translation/Dictionary
Temperature Conversion.
- GADGET: Convert one temperature scale to another: Fahrenheit, Celsius (centigrade), Rankine, Reaumur, and kelvin.
- TABLE: Convert one temperature scale to another: Fahrenheit, Celsius (centigrade), kelvin — Plus cold/hot records.
Length/Distance Conversion.
Convert one measure of distance to another: Standard, Metric, and nautical.
Speed Conversion.
Convert one speed measurement to another, such as miles-per-hour to kilometers-per-hour.
Currency Conversion.
Convert dollars to euros, swiss francs to british pounds, or any other currencies. You can even select the date and time of day for the conversion rate now or a date in the past.
Weight Converter.
Convert pounds to kilograms and many other weight measures.
Area Converter.
There are a lot of kinds of area measurements. You can start with acres to square miles, or cubits to hectares.
Number Base Converter.
Why confuse Halloween with Christmas? Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec. That's because Decimal 25 converts to Octal 31.
Cooking Volume Converter.
Compare a dash of this with a cup of that. Note that tablespoons come in U.S., British, and metric, all three different. If you take your bourbon medicinally, you may want to know how many teaspoons in a shot (6).
Standard Deviation Calculator.
Quick-and-easy calculations: enter numbers and get their mean and their standard deviation.
Fabelbish: The Spoonerism Generator.
Quick-and-easy conversion of a normal two or more words to a spoonerized two or more words.
Leet Speak [1337 sp34k] Encoder.
A nonleet techiescript yet classic in its way—a relic of the Ancient Geeks.
Free Translation.
Translate to or from English and several languages.
1. Free Translation English <-> Farsi.
2. Another Free Translation English <-> Farsi.
Plain Text English Dictionary.
A great no-frills plain-text dictionary in English.
Conversion - Convert anything to anything else.
A comprehensive site with conversion tools that convert almost any kind of measurement.
English to pirate translator.
Translate plain old English into exotic Pirate language (in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day).
Webmaster's Corner
CSS hacks.
CSS "hacks" or CSS filters fix browser inconsistencies, but also can lead to complicated side effects. This website gives you some tips to maximize css hacks and minimize side effects.
Webmaster World seems to be populated with intelligent and nice people.
I usually see responses to questions within a couple of hours, so there must be knowledgeable people monitoring the forums most of the time.
W3schools has the best web development tutorials for learning everything fast.
CodeAve has some of the best
basic to advanced css and html reference guides for web builders and webmasters: