Welcome & About

Welcome to my blog! Thanks for stopping by.

Does the world really need another blog? Well, probably not, but I’m starting this one anyway. Why? Several reasons:

  1. I’d like to keep in touch with friends and family, but I have a really terrible track record at correspondence by email (nevermind old-fashioned paper and stamp…). I’m hoping maybe this blog will improve the situation, at least by providing a structure for me to write updates more frequently.
  2. I have at times in the past aspired to be or fancied myself a Writer — they say the best way to become a better writer is to write more, so I’d like to get in the habit. It’s been years since I kept a journal — perhaps this will be more successful. There’s something about having an audience (or at least a theoretical audience) that forces one to write a bit more conscientiously.
  3. I’m always picking up on trends long after they’ve stopped being trendy.
  4. I need another way to procrastinate. (Like I need a hole in the head.)
  5. I’m a geek.

My intended audience is mostly friends and family, though the nature of a blog is that anyone can read it if they know how to find it. I hope to write things that will be interesting in their own right — I am mindful of the blogging admonition that “no one cares what you had for lunch” (not even my friends and family).

I’ll probably blog mostly about events in my life and my reactions to events in the world. The topics will obviously reflect my interests, and as such will probably include synthetic (artificial) intelligence, life in graduate school, politics and current events, music, computing, and the other things I’m a geek about.

I aim to update several times a week, but it will probably be less often during crunches at work/school and more often when I’m procrastinating over some unpleasant task.

Fair warning: I will generally write informally on this blog, which among other things means occasional profanity and vulgar expressions (usually when I’m worked up about something). Perhaps at some point in the future I’ll decide that a greater level of formality and self-censorship are warranted, but for now I hope readers sensitive to such language will excuse my occasional (OK — frequent) lapses.

This blog is run using the WordPress blogging software, and hosted on my own personal computer (please don’t tell Comcast). Although it’s nothing exceptional, I’m mildly proud of having configured my own web server, WP installation, DNS setup and the like, on a computer I built myself from components. (I told you I’m a geek.) Running my own blog and webserver means that I have total control (which is largely why I did it this way, instead of just getting a free site from any of the numerous blog sites on the net), but it also means I have total responsibility. A corollary of this fact is that this site might occasionally be unavailable, if for some reason my computer is unreachable (power outage, playing SimCity in the other operating system, failed hardware upgrade, etc.). I’ve moved to a professional hosting company, to avoid downtimes and blockage by my ISP.

I’m trying to anonymize this blog…Stephen Byerley is not my real name.  But in case you traveled here because I just commented on your blog and you’re wondering who the hell I am, I’ll provide some general biographical information, so you’ll know me if you know me and you’ll know a little about me if you don’t.  I’m a graduate student in intelligent robotics at, let’s say, a university in New England.  I grew up in the Midwest and went to college in Pennsylvania.