This page is self-indulgently all about me.
Anyone looking for news of my recent exploits should maybe look at my main page (although that only gets an update about once a year).
Or just email me.
A Real-Life Adventure
Well, how come you only want tomorrow - with its promise of something hard to do?
A real-life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
Blue skies above, sun on your arms, strength in your stride, and hope in those squeaky-clean eyes
- David Bowie, "Teenage Wildlife" (Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)) (emphasis mine)
Why do we fall, Bruce?
So we can learn to pick ourselves up.
- Thomas Wayne, in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins
I'm a Sydney boy. Usually.
I'm Bowie's dreamer.
Most of my works have involved Mathematics and/or Science - in teaching, research and writing.
I like getting things right, and I do think there is usually right and wrong, even where that classification seems out of place.
I write code mostly in matlab/octave and python.
Other names I've been called by (that I can repeat) include Spaceman Smithy, Agent Smith, Sir Smithalot, Antonia, Bird Man, Blackman (that's like Batman but not quite) and Mr. Staplehead.
More than most, my life is defined by my academic pursuits.
The page you read now was originally at the School of Physics, Sydney University.
I have a thing for space, so at that place I played with algorithms to quantify the galaxy distribution with my supervisors, Andrew Hopkins and Richard W. Hunstead.
My honours thesis was a study of Extremely Red Galaxies (ERGs) in Phoenix, and here's the paper in which we also introduced an multiscale structure identification algorithm.
After much testing and development, we applied this algorithm, Multiscale Probability Mapping (MSPM), to the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Our paper is here, and we made it pretty!
My MSc thesis is my best work to date, but I hope to do much better!
With godlike vision, a large patch of the Universe looks like this:
Click on these images for animated three-dimensional spins!
These images tell a story of their own, part of the thread about the struggle with pragmatism that I mention below.
Was it necessary to write all the code required to visualise and animate the galaxy distribution and cosmic superstructures?
No, but I wanted it to make the research look cool, and once I'd set myself the task, I had to follow it through.
It's a pattern characteristic of everything I do.
Part of what fuels this is a reluctance to drop cool tangents, and another part is a desire to add flair.
I can remember being stung by feedback on a history essay I wrote back in high school.
I hadn't done badly, but I wanted to do better and all I was told was that my essay lacked flair (what was I to do about that, take a class in "flair"?).
It isn't a reaction to feedback on that essay (or at least, I don't think it is), but now I'll often find myself spending time on things that aren't really necessary, but which add a dash of style to a project.
'Sure I can do X, but can I do it in style?'
I say these things aren't really necessary because they're not, but that isn't to say that they aren't useful (it usually isn't necessary to do awesome things, but who doesn't want to be awesome?).
Usually whatever vision I originally had in mind for these things was worthwhile, I just don't always accurately estimate how long they will take to realise.
But of course, I'm aware of this and know to balance stylistic touches with real-world requirements.
Another example of a style-motivated side project is a virtual reality environment I created (using Freedoom) that allows one to climb Olympus Mons, on Mars.
Research is great and all, but sometimes a bit of pragmatism is a Good Thing.
I say a little more about what I am if not pragmatic below.
Pragmatism is a concept that has proved especially difficult for me to grasp, but I think I'm beginning to understand.
I started helping people to learn at Sydney Uni, where I worked as a tutor in Physics labs and tutorials.
This later became more serious when I did a Bachelor of Teaching at UTS.
I was a high school Maths and Science teacher at various schools, including Masada College, Epping Boys, Asquith Boys, North Sydney Girls, Clement College, Mosman High, Wollemi College and Kingsgrove High.
I have also worked as a notetaker, and in a call center.
I now find myself an educator working with primary, secondary and tertiary students at various places teaching a range of subjects.
I am fortunate to enjoy everything I do, which is a mix of teaching, writing, research and programming.
I'm getting better at all of these, which sometimes seems enough of an end in itself.
Now, more than ever before, I am living life at a pace that I choose, and feel quite privileged to be doing so.
I like to have fun with things along the way, and don't really have much ambition in the usual sense of the word.
But there is ambition in unusual senses of the word, with other ingredients in this real-life adventure - including intellectual ambitions and artistic pretensions.
I speak about these in generalities below.
I suppose these will probably never be realised, but neither will yours 
But the season is on and I'm blinded by desire, on a search for the truth.
If only I had a million-dollar weapon.
The adventure comes in comic form -
I didn't really plan this, but by updating once a year and naming each post after a Bowie song, I'm compiling a soundtrack to my life, year by year (as often as I might have anything interesting to say, you see). Here's how it looks so far:
The Mysteries
This is the tragedy of life. Because for a few minutes of every day, every man becomes a genius. Moments of clarity, insight, whatever you want to call them. The clouds part, the planets get in a neat little line, and everything becomes obvious. I should quit smoking, maybe, or here's how I could make a fast million, or such and such is the key to eternal happiness. That's the miserable truth. For a few moments, the secrets of the universe are opened to us. Life is a cheap parlor trick.
- Jonathan Nolan, "Memento Mori"
"The Mysteries"
- David Bowie, The Buddha of Suburbia
There's usually quite a bit going on in my mind, and it isn't what one might expect from the sorts of things I'm supposed to be into.
Having studied all the hard sciences and taught them too, my intellectual ambitions could be expected to be that narrow.
In tension with those expectations were personal writings on History and Economics, rearranging the knowledge in ways I thought were more elegant.
Ordered in a manner that suited me, a desire which seems to be one of my vices.
An order that I need even if no-one else does.
These school-age interests in the Humanities were followed by a brief study of Psychology at uni and during Physics Honours I completed a Philosophy unit that resulted in work that would have been published, had I been a little less busy at the time.
The ornate style of my MSc thesis is also an indication of a wannabe artist (more faux artistry here), and the connections I like to make between Science and other disciplines.
Most recently, I have helped school students with their writing, a process that I've found fascinating.
How to entrain the artistry of the written word?
I'm interested in the deep questions of our existence - philosophical and theological questions - and how these questions (and their answers) might be elucidated most efficiently with a combination of art and science.
Ultimately, it's the patterns of our existence that interest me more than their manifestation in any particular context (like Science).
Exactly what I have in mind will have to wait, but solving these mysteries is as important to me as anything else I do.
Because once presented with a mystery, it's hard for me to let it go.
It's part of who I am - call it a flaw if you like, but if I start to work on a problem and don't solve it, I feel like it has defeated me.
It's a lot like like this (thanks xkcd):
Unsolved problems, unresolved tensions and existential mysteries are, more than any conventional pleasure, what I like to spend time thinking about, when I have said time.
These and a quest for order and certainty.
Neurosphere
Dredging the ocean lost in my circle
- David Bowie, "Station to Station" (Station To Station)
That's the curse of being a mentat. You can't stop analysing your data.
- Thufir Hawat, in Frank Herbert's Dune
Everyone has their own psychosis, and everyone has a part of themselves they like to hide.
So I'm obviously not going to talk about mine here, but I can definitely see myself as the hero of my favourite movie, Memento's Leonard Shelby.
He is disciplined and organised, which, with his anterograde amnesia, is the only way his life is possible.
While I don't have that condition, my particular psychosis forces me to do things in certain ways to make my life possible.
Just as Leonard is able to turn his disability into strength, I am able to turn my weakness into strength.
A scene from Memento.
NATALIE: Trust yourself, trust your own judgement. You can question everything, you can never know anything for sure.
LEONARD: There are things you know for sure . . . I know what that's gonna feel like when I pick it up. See? Certainties.
I have what can sometimes seem like two personalities.
One of them is the flamboyant showman who often appears at the front of the classroom, while the other is the obsessive perfectionist who nails every detail.
They may look contradictory, but they're both me - it has nothing to do with moods, I think it's more of an innate discipline that is unnatural to almost everyone else.
If I'm going to do something crazy, it'll be perfectly crazy.
I adopt a Kantian perspective by which I'm sure that the features of our inner space - the neurosphere - and the outer space of our experience - are connected.
Exploring this is part of my intellectual ambition.
On that note, my kind of hero is the intellectually-ambitious kind - just one reason for my adoration of David Bowie.
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