Horticulture

I compulsively collect plants. When you spend your work days typing on a keyboard and then being rewarded when your code spits out the right numbers, it's nice to also do something with more tangible results. Taking care of plants is a very sensory activity that helps clear all of the numbers out of one's head. All five senses are covered. I enjoy touching leaves to gauge their health or just feel the texture, tasting and smelling herbs, smelling and seeing greenery around the apartment, hearing the rustle of a breeze through leaves, and so on. Here I've cataloged 32 of 48 distinct genera in my home (I have more than one species/cultivar of some). I don't know exactly what all of them are.

Cycling

In some sense it has made me lazy because now I feel that walking anywhere takes too long. On the other hand I rarely use the subway anymore, especially now that the temperature outside is comfortable for exercise. My bike is mostly custom-made. When I started I had no idea what kind of bike I wanted so I just bought a used cruiser, which, as far as I can tell, was made in the 1970s. I soon realized that I wanted a road bike but I didn't want to spend a lot more money. So I learned about the mechanical side of things from Sheldon Brown's web site (may he rest in peace) and did the conversion myself. Now I have a road bike with a huge steel frame, which is actually very comfortable and well-fitted. Obviously it's heavy but I figure that just gets me more exercise.

Cats

My cats are named Takuan (right) and Takana (left). I'm not a big fan of people dressing up their pets, but these guys had to be shaved for medical reasons and now they get cold easily. Hence the sweaters. Or socks, if I'm being honest.

I originally chose the name Takuan in honour of a Japanese monk who taught the famous samurai Miyamoto Musashi. My wife, however, who is Japanese, only recognized it as a type of pickle (foreigners tend to be far more concerned with samurai lore than any average Japanese person). As a result, Takana was named for another type of pickle.


If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be Lawrence C. Washington's Introduction to Cyclotomic Fields.

I am a carefully written exposition of a central area of number theory that can be used as a second course in algebraic number theory. Starting at an elementary level, I cover p-adic L-functions, class numbers, cyclotomic units, Fermat's Last Theorem, and Iwasawa's theory of Zp-extensions, leading the reader to an understanding of modern research literature. Many exercises are included.

Which Springer GTM would you be? The Springer GTM Test