My Interests

Go

An ancient board game, played for around 4,000 years now. Very popular in Asia, and slowly growing in popularity in the West.

I am about a 2-dan in strength, although I generally don’t have a ton of time to play anymore. If you are interested, I have some of my old teaching games available for online viewing.

Competitive Programming

As an extension of my interest in algorithms, I quite enjoy competitive programming.

It’s a fun way to find new math and algorithmic topics to study and practice. You can see my profile on HackerRank if you’re interested. I’ve also spent some time on Codeforces, CodeChef, Google CodeJam and Google foobar amongst others.

Algorithms

Algorithms were one of the main reasons that I originally got interested in computer science, and they still facinate me. They’re one of the purest applications of mathematics to the real world, and can really improve our lives in surprising ways. Thankfully, there’s many lifetimes worth of study to do on algorithmic analysis and design, so I shouldn’t run out anytime soon.

Security

Security research first interested me for professional reasons, but its reach certainly streches outside of the world of computer science. I highly recommend Bruce Schneier’s works on the subject. Much of his work is even quite accessible to laymen, including Crypto-gram, his monthly e-mail newsletter.

Hiking

Turns out that there are a ton of great places to hike in and around Phoenix, although it’s a bit tough in the summer. My wonderful girlfriend and I have been taking our dogs with us all over the place and having a great time.

Reading

I’ve had a love of books from a very young age. The first books that I remember really getting into were a collection of classic Sci-Fi from the 1950s and 1960s, known as the Winston Science Fiction set.

I primarily read Sci-Fi and Fantasy, preferably epic stories with wide-ranging worlds. Currently I’m reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.