I’m getting a head start on my New Year’s resolutions and starting a blog.
Actually it is more of a “sabbatical resolution”, and sabbatical started December 16. One of the things I hope to do is post frequent updates on
my activities and interesting things I encounter in the next few months.
Why write a blog? I’ve always enjoyed writing lecture notes and books,
and even software documentation. A blog seems like a natural extension
of this as a place to share interesting things I’ve learned in an informal manner. It will also be another tool (along with email, Skype, and claw-dev) to keep in touch with my group while I’m traveling (yes, there will be a quiz at the end of
the year).
I also believe it’s important for mathematicians and scientists to
make more effort to explain to the public what we do and why we
think it’s important, and perhaps I can make some modest contributions.
Finally, as an advocate of more openness and reproducibility in
computational science, I hope this blog may be a useful step in
this direction for my own work. Recently Michael Nielsen gave a
CSE colloquium at UW about his new book “Reinventing Discovery”
(which I highly recommend). Dhavide Aruliah was also visiting and
the three of us had a fun meal discussing many things, including
the utility of blogging. I resolved to give it a try, so here it goes…