I recently received some photographs from 1997. They'd been sitting in my father's files for 24 years. This takes me back... Although I received my Ph.D. in particle physics in 1996, I didn't formally graduate from Columbia University until 1997. For the occasion, my mother Beatrice and her husband Bob flew from California to attend the ceremony.…
I started reading the Wheel of Time series about 30 years ago. I don't remember much about the plot. When I got to the third book, I felt that the author was spinning his wheels and didn't know how to finish a story. By the time I finished the fourth book, I thought, "Well, at least I'm…
A mini-review: The Matrix Resurrections assumes that you are familiar with all the previous Matrix movies. If you haven't seen them, this movie will be meaningless to you. The movie is filled with call-backs, flash-backs, and fan service. This is absolutely deliberate on the part of the director, Lana Wachowski, because... This is the most meta and…
In 2012, I lost a ring that meant a lot to me. I spent most of the following year learning enough about 3D software and 3D printing to recreate the ring from photographs. I decided to use those newly-acquired skills to open a shop on Shapeways, which at the time was the premier 3D-printing service for people…