About me.

I spend a lot of time writing code. I enjoy it, but the part I like most is working out how to solve a problem. Software is where I’ve had the most practice. In most other things, I’m happy to be learning.

Physics, astronomy, maths, computers—I’m interested in all of them, and in the things that connect them. I don’t really have favourites. Almost anything becomes interesting once you look at it closely enough.

I’d probably call myself a jack of all trades. “Interest trumps experience” sums up how I feel about that. Not knowing much about something doesn’t put me off wanting to understand it.

Away from code

I like riding my bike and listening to music. My taste in music is fairly broad, but I’m especially drawn to good lyrics. There’s something beautiful about expressing a complicated feeling in just a few words.

I write as well. The subjects vary: national anthems, the stories we tell ourselves, space, a letter from Feynman to his wife. My essays are probably a better introduction to that side of me than a list of interests.

My favourite painter is Leonardo da Vinci. I admire his art, but also the fact that he was good at so many other things. That breadth of interest is a big part of why I like him.

As for things that get on my nerves: a lack of common sense. I wish it were a little more common.

Feynman says this well

There’s a passage about a flower that captures something I believe. You can appreciate how beautiful it is and want to understand the cells, the colours, and the processes behind it. Learning about one doesn’t take away from the other.

That’s how I feel about a lot of things. Understanding them gives me more to enjoy.

Read the passage +

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes.

The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic?

All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

Richard Feynman, on the beauty of a flower

You can find my writing on Substack, my code on GitHub, and my work history on LinkedIn.