Welcome to my site.

What’s here?

Well, in the beginning, I will mostly be posting random personal stuff that probably won’t interest anyone who does not know me. Later, however, I will be pulling together some of my technical documentation and posting it here. So, eventually, there might be something useful here.

One thing you will find here is a record of my glass projects. I’ve been doing stained glass panels for a few years now and have recently branched out into fused glass, which is the art of fusing bits of glass together to make a single piece. I’m just starting out with fusing, so I am bound to have a lot of disasters as I learn the ropes. I figured it would provide amusement to the assembled eyes to post my embarrassing screw-ups. Besides, all my friends and family are asking for pictures of what I’m working on. What better way to track my progress than in a blog?

Who is this guy?

I work as a systems analyst for a large tech company, which will remain nameless (I do not speak for my company and won’t be discussing my company’s business or practices, so it does not really matter who I work for). Basically, I act as a translator between business and developers: I write requirements, specify designs, explore design alternatives, and so on. In the past, I’ve worked as a developer, so I’m quite the little propeller-head.

I went to college at Williams College, a small liberal arts college in the beautiful Berkshires that unwisely handed me a Bachelor’s degree. I then went to grad school at Indiana University, where I got a Master’s degree and a deep loathing for basketball. Indiana was also where I was bitten by the programming languages bug and learned about… well… tail recursion.

By the way, if you want to send me e-mail, you can reach me at “pjw” at this domain (tailrecursive.org).

Wherefore “Tail Recursive?”

“Tail recursive” is a term from computer science. When a function in a program calls itself, that call is termed “recursive.” When that recursive call comes as the last thing the caller does, it is a tail recursive call (the call comes at the tail end of the function’s execution). Tail recursive calls are interesting because smart compilers can optimize them so that they are practically free.

A note on copyright

Why anyone would want to use anything posted here is beyond me; but in case someone does, the majority of this site is covered under a creative commons license (click on the “CC” image in the side bar for specifics). Certain sections of the site (as it expands) will be covered under different licenses as appropriate and will be marked as such.