Author on Syntopikon

Ben Street

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m an art historian based in London. I teach, lecture, and write about art, usually the art of our time.

How did you get interested in that?

I began by making art myself, then transitioned into reading about it, then writing about it, and I’m trying to get back to making it now. I’ve been working in this field for over two decades, and I’ve not much to show for it, but it’s an enjoyable life. I can’t believe I get to do it.

Jay Hoffmann

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Jay Hoffmann and I’m the creator of a newsletter called The History of the Web which pairs posts and segments about the web’s history with an ongoing timeline, a project I’ve been running for around five years now. I’m also Director of Web Development at Reaktiv, a WordPress agency that works in enterprise and higher-ed.

How did you get interested in that?

Web development and history have been two interests of mine for a very long time. I had a computer relatively early, and was on there building websites even in high school. So it’s something that I’ve really always had my eye on, and being able to participate and contribute to writing its history has been such a great opportunity for me. That’s kind of what it’s all been about for me, just in some small way doing my part.

Mickey Peterson

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Mickey Petersen. I live in London, UK.

I’m a professional software developer, and I have been programming since I was around 10 years old. I did not have friends or family who knew much about computing, so I had to learn everything myself, from scratch.

How did you get interested in that in the first place?

I cut my teeth programming C in Turbo C for DOS and moved on to Delphi for Windows some years later, whilst at the same time trying to get a grip on this fairly new-fangled thing called Linux. Back then you had to go through all manner of hoops to even get it: I think I got mine from a CD that a friend of a family member had. It would’ve been far too large for my meagre 33.6k dialup modem connection to even attempt to download it from the web.

Nicolas Rougier

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Nicolas P. Rougier and I’m a director of research at Inria which is the National Research Institute for Research in Computer Science and Mathematics. My research is in the domain of computational neuroscience, mostly designing brain models to explain decision making and behaviour. My background is in computer science and mathematics and this is one of the reason that I’m also interested in scientific visualization. I’ve authored many resources on that topic, the latest being an open access book on scientific visualization using Python and Matplotlib (see https://www.labri.fr/perso/nrougier/scientific-visualization.html). I’m also interested in reproducible science and I’ve authored books and papers and co-founded the ReScience C and the ReScience X journals. Finally, when I’ve some spare time, I hacks Emacs.