Contact

My name is Ryan Kinnear and I like math. If there’s anything on this blog that interests you, or you would like to connect personally or professionally, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn , or email me at <my_first_name>@<my_last_name>.ca. I’m not exactly worried about this blog generating any significant traffic and filling up my mailbox, so don’t be shy!

Motivation

I like to learn and to exercise my creativity, and writing is an effective and fun way to do that. I follow the Zattelkasten note-taking method for my personal notes, and while this blog does not follow that format (yet?) much of the content is drawn from my own Zattlekasten (which I organize with org-roam ). Though most of the content of this blog (hopefully not all!) will be largely “known” facts, I re-derive (or, if I am lucky, even re-discover!) more-or-less everything, and thus fully own any of the mistakes here. I am also not likely to fill in every detail, as I trust and encourage the Intelligent Reader to take their own inspiration: apply pen to paper and find joy in the process of exploring their own ideas!

About me

I was born on the west coast of Canada in 1992 and took a rather circuitous route through life to complete a PhD in electrical engineering in early 2022. Aside from math, I play the guitar (kinda okay) and sing (kinda badly), learned to make soap during the COVID lockdowns, have been vegan since around 2019, enjoy the outdoors, and love to read . As of February 2023, I’m located in Chicago – here’s a killer photo of myself posing with the Wings of Mexico when they were visiting the Windy City:

About this Website

This website is constructed using the HUGO theme Luna and is hosted on GitHub pages . I write posts using GNU Emacs with the help of org-mode and export the content to HUGO with ox-hugo . I know less than nothing about web-development, so it is a testament to the ease of use of these wonderful tools, and the skill of their authors, that I was able to host more than a 404 page!

Tracking and Monetization

I have zero interest in keeping track of this blog’s readership, or who visits this website. I collect zero information about visitors (indeed, I really don’t even know how to). I also have very little interest in trying to monetize this blog. That being said, links to Amazon will be affiliate marketing links. Still, I can promise the reader that I make no attempt to simply shoe-horn these links in (some posts are likely to not contain any at all), and I only endorse books which I have myself read, and which I would recommend, affiliate link or not. I also endorse obtaining books from free sources whenever possible. But, if you are like me and enjoy collecting paper copies of some of what you read, and if you’re going to take any of my recommendations, you might as well let some of that money go to me instead of Amazon’s shareholders.