Welcome to Eddy's home page

This web-site is essentially a note-book that I don't mind other folk reading – its real purpose is to be a place: in which I can record my thoughts and explorations of various topics; that I can access from anywhere with a web browser and an internet connection. Parts of it may, none the less, be of interest to others; I'll let you be the judge of that. The major entry-points are:

mathematics and physics: I did my degree in mathematics, specializing in theoretical physics; I still dabble in both. My writings here use a notation designed for plain text (via a cruder precursor) and the mathematics is divided between an older area which is more chaotic and a newer area in which I aim to be more disciplined. The former contains more material; the latter is somewhat more focussed on the needs of theoretical physics.
thoughts of the moment: and book reviews, organized chronologically, along with a (very sporadic) diary recording what's changing on this site. Similar thoughts sometimes end up as project sketches, ranging from space travel and software engineering to tools for theoretical physics.
software engineering: I earn my living as a computer programmer (see my curriculum vitae – or, to North Americans, resumé – for details) and am in favour of Free Software. When I'm learning new web technologies, I add toys to this site as examples; and sometimes I write essays about how I think the software industry might be improved. Some of my experiments and experimental ruminations are also available.
ramblings and witterings: Like many a vain fool with a website, I have recorded some of my opinions about politics, life in general and the mind, of which you can make what you will. As my opinions change, I might even update these pages, but some of them are very old, so might be out of date.
miscellanea: on various topics, with no particular structure.

If I ever have material worthy of peer-reviewed publication, I (as a signatory of The Budapest Open Access Initiative) am committed to offering it to open-access journals for publication. I agree, with The Cost of Knowledge and other Open Access groups, that the advancement of knowledge is better served by more open access to the fruits of research; and that, in particular, the public should have free access to the results of publicly-funded research.

I endeavour, on this web-site, to conform to the world-wide web consortium's relevant standards: consequently, it should work with all user agents (including the ones described as web browsers) in so far as they support those standards. On the other hand, particularly when I'm exploring new web technologies, I do use some modern standards (e.g. SVG and XHTML) which are not as widely supported as plain HTML; so you'll get most out of this site with a modern standards-compliant browser (such as FireFox or Opera [Get Opera!] ). I personally recommend (and routinely use) the cross-platform Opera web browser. I was, for a decade, employed to work on making it better and getting it to work well on diverse devices – not just desk-top computers – the versions that run on mobile 'phones are built from the same source code as the desktop version, so improvements we make in either are naturally available in the other.

My adopted nick-name is four letters long: any other spelling lacks the meanings (and synonyms) for which I chose it. Where used, I consider it to properly be a replacement for the whole of my name, not only my first name; combining it with my surname always strikes me as odd – why shorten my first name by (at best) two letters when using my nine-letter surname ? If you're going to be so formal as to use my surname, please use my full name, Edward Welbourne, which I inherited from my grandfather (born 1894, died 1966) – if you came here looking for information about a historian, I encourage you to visit the home page of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and their page about him.

I have had several abodes on the 'net: however, most of these may sensibly be expected to have expired. So if you have any other e-mail address for me, please revise to just eddy@chaos.org.uk. This is now my definitive home (and e-mail address) on the InterNet, although I also have an outpost on my.Opera.

Maintained by Eddy.