About Universal Rule

This weblog is a personal notebook. I'll write about working in the information technology (IT) environment: notes and hints on how to survive in this rapidly changing world.

This weblog is work in progress. I'll focus on science, IT, and writing. These are the three topics I have been involved for the most of my working life.

In addition to short daily entries, I'm planning on including longer texts. Here are links to some examples:

 
 
 
 

I have noticed that some of the opinion pieces do not feel like I had written them. That is partly due to my lack of English, and partly due to writing without polishing. Usually I read, edit, and rewrite my texts 4-7 times. Here I'm not doing that, partly because of lack of time, and partly because I don't want blogging to be too serious. So far I have written 4852 postings to this weblog.

About Cellular Automata

I studied cellular automata (CA) for my masters thesis about ten years ago. Now the topic is again popular due to Stephen Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science. However, I'm a sceptic of the promises made by Wolfram.

In any case, the name I gave to this site is from CA terminology, pointing to a cellular automaton which is capable of universal computation. Here is an illustration of a CA in action (using Mathematica software):

About the Author

My science background is in physics and applied mathematics. Since graduating I have worked for about 12 years in the field of computational science: supercomputers, applied mathematics, numerical analysis, programming, and mathematical software.

My name is printed on the cover of about 50 books. I have published about 300 articles in journals, newspapers and magazines. I have also organized about two dozen courses, some short 1-5 day courses, some longer full semester courses and seminars.

Currently I manage a multi-disciplinary group of experts. I also have a small career as a columnist for an IT magazine in Finland.

If you are interested in my background, check the CV in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Or have a look at books available in PDF format.

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