John Sturdy's home page

Here are some of the things that are most important and interesting to me; I hope that the may be interesting to others. Some of the links point to old and complicated pages, that I plan to revise as I go along.

The abstract

In the abstract world, I enjoy ingenuity, and finding simplicity beneath apparent complexity, and commonality under apparent diversity. Specific abstract things that I find interesting include:

• Lisp, interpretation, and reflection
• Languages
• Research and inquiry

The physical

In the physical world, I enjoy creativity and vitality. (I believe, however, that it is my non-physical soul that is experiencing the enjoyment.) Specific physical things that I like include:

• Being outdoors
• Exercise, particularly cycling, mostly on a recumbent
• My Land Rover
• Making, mending and experimenting with things in wood, Lisp, metal, and other materials

The meta-physical

I believe that there is more to life than the world that we can directly sense and measure. I believe that:

• We are souls, linked somehow with our physical bodies
• The universe was created, by a Great Soul, who existed before and outside the universe
• There appears to be a form of soul-to-soul contact, not mediated by any means that we understand scientifically; and that this includes contact with the Great Soul, who has told us that his name is ``Yahweh''

In the non-physical world, I enjoy tranquillity, simplicity, and friendship. I am fascinated by thought, and am interested in the way we move around our mental terrain. I value personal space, and privacy.

Other things about me

• I work as a software developer at ARM.
• I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computer Science, also at the University of Limerick.
• Bhí mé Cúntóir Taighde agus Dearthóir Cursaí ag Ollscoil Luimnigh, freisin (I was also a researcher and course developer at Ollscoil Luimnigh / The University of Limerick). More recently, I worked there as a Research Assistant (programmer) working on Genetic Programming..
• I have a degree and a PhD in Computer Science (see my thesis, A Lisp through the Looking Glass or as PDF), and worked for over a decade as a professional programmer, mostly in C, Lisp and PostScript. I also have a truck-driving licence, and have worked (during a career break from programming) as a trucker.
• I support Free, Libre and Open Source Software. I am a serious GNUemacs user and extender.
• I respect law as a concept, and so approve of obeying the individual laws -- even for silly laws that I don't actually respect. For example, I don't pirate music; but I very rarely buy it, either, and so do very little to support the recording industry.
• I used to be a keen change-ringer.
• I live in the countryside.

Software available for download

These are all things I wrote myself, and have released under the GPL.

• Versatile cursors for GNUemacs
• Sidebrain -- a programmer's memory aide
• A large and varied collection of Emacs-Lisp
• Emacs ringing software
• Multi-lingual vocabulary system
• WikiRoads

See also my tabular introduction to being more than a basic user of Emacs, Emacs: beyond the tutorial.

Other things I want to tell the world

• Emacs' org-mode is wonderful --- I'm using it more and more, along with Getting Things Done (GTD) and the pomodoro technique.
• Darcs is excellent too.
• Some advice for those with depression (which I used to have; the good news is that it is curable, which is why I mention it here)
• Although I avoid large cities such as London anyway, I, as a geek, have specific reasons to avoid it as much as possible: see David Mery's article Innocent in London. Of course, it may be that my avoiding the area is just the kind of effect the government and Met seek anyway: to keep away non-standard, educated or intelligent people? In fact, as a British emigré, I'm inclined to say the best thing to do if your passport is British is to live somewhere else.
• A few recommended products; as I try to ignore advertising and go by personal recommendations, here are a few recommendations from me, for the few things I think are good enough to recommend.

Notes on various things

I am starting to collect up my notes on various things in one place, and making them available rather than hoarding them.

Older pages

Years ago, I had a spate of creativity and produced a large tree of web pages. In intervening years, I failed to maintain this, and I now find that it is no longer presents accurately what I would like to share with the world. Accordingly, I have started a fresh top-level look at my web site (starting with this page), starting with much less in it, and am gradually incorporating old material that is still relevant.

Site map

These are the top-level directories of my web tree. Many of them contain out-of-date material.