Tony Hammond's new(er) web site
--- Thinking ---
When a band of ambitious mediocrities, who do not have a chance in times of solidly united democracy, have penetrated, in times of a damaged social structure, with a hysteric device in the centre of power, for which they have no competence, the structure cannot regenerate itself. And thus the usurpers are more and more forced, in the first place, to persecute the independent ( i.e. those who think for themselves, who are honest and candid and do not belong to a clique ), and to hinder their emigration; in the second place to extend state interference to dumb automatisms, because they are not fit for intelligent official positions, and to suppress the instinctive spiritual opposition ( or criticism, at least ) of the non-thinking masses, by propaganda ( schools for politics, state information service ), and curtail the freedom of speach, ...
- L.E.J. Brouwer
Taken from Dirk van Dalen's biography of Brouwer, the above quote was one
of Brouwer's draft responses to a series of events which occurred within
the University of Amsterdam, at which he resided, directly post World War
II. Given the tumult of the social-political systems of Europe as a whole,
specifically Holland and the University of Amsterdam as a microcosm, and
with this tumult being fed upon by the surreptitious, ambitious
and opportunists, this
quote carries metaphoric significance to me from multiple perspectives.
The biography, both volumes, are excellent reading. I recommend the
biography to anyone interested in mathematics and philosophy, the history
of mathematics, or anyone purely interested in the life of an original
thinker. The necessary reference information can be found in my book
readings.
What you have stumbled upon
This is my latest attempt to create something resembling a real web site, a work in progress or possibly regress. If I take the time and orthogonally twist my mind, this may even become aesthetic.
What you will likely find here
A plethora of spelling and grammatical mistakes. I make use of spell checkers only on a very marginal basis. Why make proper use of the English language anyway, when most writing is moving towards a dearth of vowels, misuse of conjunctions, overuse of contractions, abuse of punctuation and sentences which tend to predominantly begin with "I"?
As time goes trends towards infinity, a summary review of past projects. Rephrased: this will happen if and when I get to it.
Possibly exhibits of current work in progess along with any known or suspected future plans.
What you will likely not find here
For reference purposes, THIS IS NOT A BLOG. I refuse to join the throng of drag-and-drop and point-and-click losers. I used to run something closely resembling a blog before the term was even coined, but not anymore.
Having little interest in publishing my entire life on the Internet, and with little time as things go anyway, this is more of a semi-professional/semi-private exposition of my interests. I am not conceited enough to run an entire blog anyway. Besides those reasons, my life is not that terribly interesting anyway, going nowhere as someone once put it, extreme and unaccepting.
If I desired to become a trend chaser, then I might join some space, book or page. As an alternative, becoming linked to some conglomeration of obsequious social climbers, living my life as a first order Markov process, might help to advance my personal agenda; this works for some. Why become concerned about the path towards the goal, when that goal is all that matters? Ever consider whether or not life is a path independent process?
Very few pictures of me will be found here. A challenge: can you find them?
A bit about who I am
As the above heading should indicate, my name is Tony Hammond. A brief description of my background is that I grew up in Madison, WI. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, BSME with a second major in computer science and substantial coursework in mathematics. After graduating, I took a position with the UW - Madison College of Engineering, where I still reside today.
... and what I do
--- Doing ---
My official occupation is Systems Programmer for the University of Wisconsin at Madison. My unofficial, and considerably more descriptive, occupation is HPC cluster administrator for the same institution. I am responsible for all aspects of a small HPC cluster which goes by the acronym ECCO.
My second duty is as advisor to the University of Wisconsin Robotics Club, a small undergraduate projects group.
Below there should eventually be links to some of my projects. Most of my work centers around HPC, distributed systems, artificial neural networks, data collection/processing systems and robotics. There are numerous other areas in which I have done varying amounts of work as well, but primarily as a hobby or as the part of a larger goal.