[ maths ] [ reading ] [ languages ] [ personal ] [ Google ]
My name is Damien Warman. I'm a Research Scholar, working in the CFDLab for Graham Carey at the University of Texas at Austin. I am in the process of completing my PhD with Nicholas Buchdahl at the University of Adelaide, where I am a member of the Institute for Geometry and its Applications.
Or "maths". If asked, I call myself a mathematician. Since coming to Texas, unknown or dormant interests in engineering and applications of mathematics have consumed rather more of my attention than, say, finishing my thesis. Maybe I'll be a PhD next year.
The reading lists probably give a reasonable idea of where I'm at. I'll provide more detail on projects and notes here as I go.
I spend a surprising amount of time either drawing triangles or trying to coerce computers to draw triangles.
I was initially trained in differential topology; I then drifted into gauge theory and Riemannian and Hermitian differential geometry, with a side order of algebraic geometry. These days I think mostly about submanifolds of Euclidean spaces.
Including continuum mechanics, elasticity, and really electromagnetism and special and general relativity. The wellspring, the triumph of the nineteenth century, still vigourous and indeed vital throughout the twentieth and into the present centuries.
Reading is probably the one thing that I do particularly well. Here are some things to go look for and then read.
Folks whose work I will invariably look at. Predominantly fiction and mathematics.
Rex Stout. Patricia A McKillip. Ken MacLeod. Iain ["M"] Banks. Ursula K. Le Guin. M. John Harrison. Ellen Kushner. Caroline Stevermer. Nicola Griffith. Bruce Sterling.
Janos Kollar. Miles Reid. Simon Donaldson. Joe Harris. Jurgen Moser. Jerrold Marsden.
I am rather proficient in English. I speak some French, badly, and read (adequately) rather more. Also, a little German. I have velleities for learning several other languages.
I have an interest in linguistics and etymology. Less in entomology and enantiomorphology.
Since failing most of my computer science subjects more than a decade ago, I have become interested in programming. Just not enough to actually do any, and hence not enough to be able to do any.
Having been badly scared and mildly scarred by Fortran, and worried by C, I have drifted off in the direction of smaller but still fairly mainstream languages. My chief requirement is that the language should have some entertaining documentation and an open-source implementation, ideally under Mac OS X and PalmOS.
Thus, I play about with the TeX family, Perl, Ruby, Objective C, Scheme, and Dylan, along with more mathematically oriented languages like Octave/Matlab, CoCoA and Macauley. The idea of semantically-important whitespace probably unfairly scares me away from Python (look at the difference between [[tab]] and eight spaces in make, for example; also, columns in F77); I have mixed feelings about Tcl, but as I no longer do serious web/db development I am free to ignore it. I am a firm believer in ACID databases and the serial comma.
I have been linked with Juliette Woods for a little over ten years.
I was recently diagnosed with cancer.
I identify strongly as a South Australian.
I like to garden.
I am involved with science fiction fandom. I publish fanzines from time to time. I may well mean different things by this than you think; feel free to email me to discuss it.
I use the Dvorak keyboard, usually the one on my TiBook "Mr Tibbs", but I can't really touchtype. Still, my wrists are glad that I made the change.
I like to cook. I also like to eat. I don't drive in Austin, which has curtailed some food expeditions; now that I am recovering from surgery, feel free to offer to drive me to your favourite restaurant. I particularly like mediterannean and asian food, but I'm pretty much game for anything. Except vegemite; perhaps they'll take away my passport. I think the UT area/the drag needs a decent fish and chip shop and a good yum cha/dim sum/Chinese barbecue joint.
I used to fence; I play go tolerably, and chess badly. I like rock-climbing, but heights bother me. I like modern dance music and old baroque, particularly quartets. I can't easily listen to Bach and do anything else at the same time, which limits the amount I can listen to. I'd like to learn to play the oboe, so that people will have to tune to me.
Each week I endeavour to watch Home movies, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The West Wing. When in Australia I also watch Rage; no US music video programme compares. South Park and The Simpsons also draw my attention from time to time, the former more than the latter.