Philip (flip) Kromer's Homepage

Real Life

I'm building tools to help organize, explore and visualize the massive streams of raw information about our universe that are becoming available. I've always been interested in computers, education, physics and design, and I couldn't be more excited to be working on something which calls on all of them so satisfyingly.

While I make up my mind where I'm concentrating, you may find my work at

• infochimp.org - freely share, organize and download rich datasets
• infinitemonkeywrench.org (not yet active) - simple tools to manipulate and digest huge datasets
• vizsage.com - generic widgets to share and explore rich data.

I'm at the end stage of my grad degree and so I'm not really looking for work right now. Once I am, I'd like to find an interesting opportunity that will let me continue what I've been doing and share it in a largely open fashion. (I got started on the vizsage/infochimp project by considering what free and open tools are available to help schoolchildren explore datasets. The answer: some here, some there, but mostly, sadly, none that are generically simple and useful.)

Nonetheless, here's the portfolio I created for the education portion of my degree, and here's a several-year-old copy of my Résumé (html, pdf, doc, txt) and my vitae.
 

I have a work blog where I post esoteric geeky crap that comes to mind. I also have the twitter/tumblr, am on the facebooks and have a personal blog -- I bet you can figure out where those are if you care.
(Prepending an article to an anarthrous and recent term is good clean irony. "I feel silly that I use this but here ya go".)
 

Please enjoy my Flickr page. The Washington Post used some photos of mine in an article by my mother. So did this interesting Austin guidebook. Some old snapshots: Me - My Family - All.
 

Please enjoy my Library Thing page. I also have a couple-years-old screenscrape of all my Amazon.com ratings. (Is there a good generic tool that lets me reclaim my metadata?)

Resources

Here are some pretty reference cards I made:

• Scale Landmarks: What's something you're familiar with that is about 10 nm big? How do the speed of continental drift, a raindrop, a champion sprinter and an SR-71A Blackbird compare? What is the range between the least massive (electron) and most massive (universe) objects science can describe?
• Periodic Table
• Periodic Table, Flat -- material properties as a table and not as Mendeleev puts it.
• Mechanical, Geometric and Material properties of Screws, Bolts and Fasteners - probably the most useful among these, this gives thread geometry, decimal inch/screw/metric equivalents, mechanical strengths, torque ratings and more. Super handy for machining or general shop use.
• A similar table for AN Hardware (milspec fasteners used in airplanes, racecars and hot rods).
• A flat table of decimal and fractional inch, metric, and standard (US) screw sizes.
• ASCII Chart - easily index up hex, octal, ascii, symbol font/latin font/DOS font values for characters.

A little iPhone-optimized GeoIP-enabled DNS/reverse DNS/whois interface I whipped up.

• I redesigned the Modern Physics (phy453) class required of third-year physics majors. The course confronted students with the central mysteries of Modern Physics: relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos dynamics, and provided their first exposure to independent experimental science. Our redesign (funded by grants from the Hewlett Foundation and National Instruments) focused on emphasizing open exploration and group work, and as a pervasive early introduction to data acquisition and modern experimental tools. I had three groups of students write published research papers on work they did in this course, and the software-only Lock-in Amplifier suite I wrote is still in use all over the world.
  A *lot* of bitrot has happened to this site -- I had to rescue it from the UT servers who decided to require authentication. Hopefully Google can help you find what you need.
• I used to help pre-med students master physics for the MCAT exam.
• Most people report that the moon looks larger -- by several times, even -- when it's near the horizon than when it's in the air. Most folk and artistic depictions of the moon reveal this illusion. What's surprising, however, is that the illusion is not optical, it's psychological, and there's no theory that satisfactorily explains its origin.
• Newton's Method, Fractals, and the design of a good calculator.

Various crap I've written up for one reason or another.

• My friend Chris Wieland and I found some novel insights into the question "What is the value of 'New Car Smell'?" We looked at the Optimal Decision Problem of keeping or selling the car (a depreciating asset with risky maintenance costs), which gives a good estimate for the simple intrinsic economic value of a car over time. The difference between the cost of a new or used car and its intrinsic value captures all the complex externalities, like a better stereo, side airbags or that New Car Smell (Paper [PDF]).
• Why should anyone study Math?
• Basic Differential Geometry and Data Visualization
• The problem of a Bouncy Ball on a trampoline seems simple, but in fact is a useful model for the origin of the cosmic radiation -- and leads to surprisingly rich chaotic dynamics.
• ¿Quién es más Rational, Galileo Galilei o Ricardo Montalban? According to the orthodox History of Science as Presented by Physicists, Aristotle is a pure rationalist, and Galileo, Newton, and the other fathers of modern science are pure empiricists. This story is compelling but mostly wrong: Aristotle's ideas are not only well-grounded in experience, they often correspond with common experience more closely than Galileo's.

Projects

I did the 100-mile Ride for the Roses three times, in memory of my friend Emery Kalinov and in honor of family friend and cancer survivor Elaine Levine. Money raised from the ride (donation info) goes to help cancer survivors and to support cancer research.

I've also completed a number of triathlons, including a half-ironman in October 2006 (one and a half years after my back surgery: thanks Sportcenter and Dr. McAfee). Thanks also to UT's Texas Triathletes club who made getting started fun and easy.

I have a 1968 Buick Wildcat convertible which is a blast to own and drive. Just about every time I fill up in East Austin someone offers to buy it. (Really: it happens more than 3/4 of the time).

I have been building a hotrod from a 1939 Tudor Sedan DeLuxe. For many, many years.

Interests

Other

A rapper also named mrflip.

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