New Advent Catholic Website
A good starting point for Catholic resources on the web. In February of
1999 I decided (well, announced--I had decided it some time before that,
and
Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine only made a
certainty more of one) to convert to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church. At the Easter Vigil in 2000 I was baptised and entered into full
communion with the Church.
The WWW Bible Gateway
Searchable, with a number of translations (although none of the ones I most
prefer, such as the New Jersualem).
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library
An archive of some of the greatest achievements in spiritual literature.
Google
The search engine I use most often now.
Authors I Admire
A listing (not precisely in order, but not utterly randomized) of writers
that I admire more than words can say.
The CMU
Science Fiction & Fantasy Society
One good thing about CMU is that if I say "Have you read...?" there is
a decent chance that someone will say "Yeah."
North Carolina State University
I received my undergraduate degrees (B. S. in Computer Science, B. S.
in Multidisciplinary Studies with a Concentration in Technology in
Fiction) from NCSU in May of 1999.
The Concurrency Workbench
During the summers of 1998 and 1999 I worked on an ABTA-based
model-checker for
the CWB-NC (and associated systems for translating GCTL* and
L2-mu-calculus formulas
into ABTAs).
Dr. Rance Cleaveland
Dr. Cleaveland directed this research, and has been astonishingly
helpful throughtout my career in higher education.
Standard ML of New Jersey
I still like ML, but don't use it as much these days.
The On-line Books Page
Wonderfully useful. Well, it's neat. Actually reading books on-line
is annoying and stupid, but it's a good way to grab a quote, and if
its online you can be pretty sure it's public domain.
Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe is my favorite writer. At times I suspect that Wolfe is a
genetic experiment, a hybrid of Chesterton, Proust,
Dickens, Flannery O'Connor and Melville, raised by Jack Vance and C. S.
Lewis. His novel Peace is the finest I have ever read.
Ultan's
Library
Another Wolfe site, which also contains some good Laurence Sterne
stuff. Hmm... Are the digressions of Tristram Shandy a precursor
of hypertext, only funnier and more useful?
The American Chesterton Society
G. K. Chesterton is another of my favorites--under-rated, ironically,
because he, unlike so many of his contemporaries in literature, was
actually right about the world.
Chesterton's Works on the Web
A very nice collection of Chesterton material.
The R. A. Lafferty Devotional Page
The crazy old man from Tulsa was one of the great writers, and his
fiction is slowly coming back into print (at least in random
spurts of mad wisdom).
A Few Words About R. A. Lafferty
An interesting essay on the essence of Lafferty-nature.
Laugh with Lafferty
A good obituary by Dave Langford.
Jack Vance
Jack Vance is another justification for the existence of science-fiction
and fantasy.
The Works of Tim Powers
Another of my favorite writers. Count the missing body parts!
Bruce Sterling
Read Schismatrix, Holy Fire, any of his short stories
(many of which are hilarious, most of which are stunningly inventive)
or his multifarious polemics and appreciate the man.
Muriel Spark
The deliciously witty and wise Spark is always worth reading. Wolfe's
joke theory about names sometimes seems to be true (see Castle of Days
for the theory).
Flannery O'Connor
The 20th century's best short-story writer.
Complete Poems of Rudyard Kipling
"The Dawn Wind" is my personal favorite.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I've read The Brothers Karamazov, The Double,
Crime and Punishment , The Possessed
and Notes from
Underground at this time, and I recognize
a writer I shall be returning to again and again.
The Dickens Page
"Wery glad to see you, indeed,
and hope our acquaintance may
be a long 'un, as the gen'l'm'n
said to the fi' pun' note." (Sam
Weller)
Samuel Johnson
Page
I loved Boswell's Life of Johnson--he's definitely worthy of the company I've placed him in. Also, he's such a lovable (in a curious way) character.
His actual writings, admittedly, don't present that illusion of personal
friendship found in Chesterton, or in Wolfe's or Eliot's essays, but have
a charm all their own.
Shakespeare
Another good writer. *grin*
What the Thunder Said: T. S. Eliot
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Or perhaps more to the point...
Who, then, devised the torment? Love.
Russell Kirk
Kirk was a friend of Eliot's, a writer of superlative supernatural
fiction in the allegorical mode, and some other things, as well...
Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis
Lewis is another of my favorites...
Zembla
The best of the Nabokov sites.
The J. S. Bach Home Page
The music of Bach is better than we can possibly deserve. In fact,
it's better than it sounds: the final essence is beyond any one
performance...
The Nero Wolfe Home Page
Sherlock Who? Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are the
greatest creations of detective fiction (sorry, Father Brown).
Rumpole's Home Page
Although John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey isn't far behind.
The Mysterious Home Page
A general guide to mysteries (i.e. detective ficton).
Robert Aickman -- an Appreciation
Robert Aickman was the finest writer of supernatural fiction (more
correctly, "strange stories") of the 20th century, and perhaps of
all time.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Home Page
Excellent resource.
Ansible
My favorite on-line science-fiction 'zine.
Tor SF and Fantasy
They publish Wolfe, Kim Stanley Robinson--and one of my favorite
professors (and a very good writer himself), John Kessel.
John Kessel's Home Page
Dr. Kessel now has a home page of his own at NC State.
Late Night with Conan O'Brien--THE OFFICIAL PAGE
Now that Letterman's off his game, Conan is the best bet for late-night
television. And, of course, Andy Richter was the best sidekick on TV,
outside of The Tick.
The X-Files
The only television show I watch with any fervor. Not that I don't
enjoy The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and the rest of
Fox's Sunday night. It's amazing that Fox, which has been responsible
for so much of the WORST stuff on TV in the last few years, is also
the home of some of the rare watchable stuff. (Ok, so I quit watching the X-Files a few years ago, but once upon a time it was a decent show, before it became a lurching undead monster.)
The Fawlty Towers server at Cardiff
Fawlty Towers was the funniest thing on TV. You can't even find it on
PBS that often anymore. It's a shame. When I studied in Oxford I
discovered that the BBC is still better than American TV--a friend
(Bruce, okay, it was Bruce, so shut up Bruce) and I even saw "The
Blues Brothers", the original Ackroyd/Belushi flick on BBC-3 (I think)
while in York.
(The server, after nearly 6 years, seems to be no more as of now.)
The Dilbert Zone
Okay, I don't intend to be a practicing engineer, but I was
(technically) an engineering
major--anyway, Scott Adams is the "funny Kafka" of the cartoon world.
I read a recent newspaper column essentially saying that Dilbert's a fraud
because Adams doesn't advocated an immediate socialist revolution to save
us from the wicked CEOs and thinks a lot of the idiocy of the workplace
is (gasp) our own fault. A free press is essential, I suppose.
Other cartoons I have enjoyed greatly include The Far Side, Foxtrot, Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, and Sidney's Harris' science and math cartoons.
The Ben Franklin Scholars Program Page
I was a Franklin Scholar. Whee.
Free Compilers and Interpreters
ML is the best language, of course. What do you mean, choose the tool
appropriate to the job? Choose the JOB appropriate to the TOOL, my
friends.