Matthew Turk's Homepage - About Me

(...and what is there to say about me?)

Well, let's start out with my professional interests. I'm a graduate student at Stanford, and I graduated from Northwestern University (which, despite their protestations to the contrary, will always be nwu.edu to me!) in 2003. I started out my graduate studies at Penn State, and then transferred to Stanford in the fall of 2004. I'm a grad student in Astrophysics (I majored in Physics and Math in undergrad, working on a senior thesis on the interstellar medium) working on simulations of the first stars and other early-universe objects.

As for my early life, I remember at a young age entirely missing the point of the transition between Twin Pines Mall and Lone Pine Mall in Back to the Future. At one point I even wrote a letter to Michael J. Fox to inform him of this 'goof.' At some point I went to high school in Rockford, Michigan. (My brother designed the original website for our school district, but it has long since been redesigned. I liked his version better.)

I love taking photos. I'm still developing my skills, but I think I am making good progress. My primary camera is a Nikon D50, which meets all my needs -- it has enough dials to twiddle to be fun to play with, and it helps me stand back and think about a shot before I take it. I post all of my pictures on flickr, divided into sets (including a set of my "best" photos). One thing I love about flickr is how easy it is to explore other people's photos, and stumble across great stuff. The little star at the top of each picture is great, too -- you just click it, and it "bookmarks" a picture for you. I tend to do this a lot. (Also, as long as I'm plugging other people's photos, I can't help but mention my brother who's a pretty awesome shutterbug. Plus, he tends to have some pretty cool adventures.)

I am a bit of a geek. I like hacking around, writing an analysis toolkit as well as playing with Python for other fun stuff. I keep most of my bookmarks on del.icio.us, where I am user mturk.

Anyway, I think that's about it. Why not drop me a line via AIM or email?