I’m a British literary historian and computer scientist. My main research interest is early modern culture, especially the life of Shakespeare.
The Gallimaufry of Whits is my weblog, mainly about history.
As a computer scientist I've written books on HTML, XML, Javascript, and Python. I've made several open source software packages, of which my IRC bot phenny is the most popular.
Collectanea
One of things I pay most attention to is putting historical tidbits online. I write up many of my findings and group them into collections of notes and essays on themes such as Shakespeare, the Voynich MS, and so on.
My favourite online work is probably that on the Earth's Anomalous Lightforms, which is a trove of information about earth lights, Will-o'-the-wisps, ball lightning, and other such luminous phenomena.
To enrich the commons I contribute to Wikipedia and occasionally upload photos to Flickr, one of the few Web 2.0 sites that I abide.
Software
Theorists may find Pluvo, the programming language I designed and implemented in 2006, of interest. Some relatively more practical bits of code I've written include:
- archive.sh - a quick 'n' dirty way to archive files
- charguess.py - guess the character encoding of the input
- moonphase.py - reports the current phase of the moon
- randline.py - print out a random line from a file
- put.py - a simple HTTP PUT interface in python
- shellbot.sh - very simple IRC bot using only shell
My software often uses the open source and free software Eiffel Forum License 2, a permissive license like the BSD or MIT licenses. I can explain why I made and recommend this obscure choice.
Personal
I write songs and poetry, but I don't publish them generally. Sometimes I make interesting art that I do put online, like my eclipse art. One striking prose piece I made is entitled “Sean B. Palmer’s 115th Semantic Dream”.
Socially I'm very involved with Swhack!, the cultural forum that I founded with Aaron Swartz in 2001. Some other interesting social connections:
- I have an Erdős number of 8 or smaller, the same as Schrödinger.
- I can be codepicted with Homer Simpson in five photographs.
I have an Amazon Wishlist. Buy me things! Whoo!
Miscellany
I've antedated several words in the OED. Submitted 2006: purdonian (1847), geremumble (1592), terlerie (1592), fairy lamps (1863). Submitted 2007: sublunary (1604), seasonal (1651), aerolite (1809), meteorite (1818).
Colophon
I make this document using TextWrangler.
Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com