About

About

What is Esoteriic.com about?

The main theme of esoteriic.com is the deciphering of reality. I am, of course, going to stick mainly to topics that I enjoy and have read about. This is chiefly going to be along the lines of maths, philosophy and physics with some dabbling in logic, cosmology, computing, technology, economics, information security, hacking, cryptocurrencies and so on….

Favourite topics include symmetry, geometry, number theory and computational cosmology. When I use the term esoteric I generally mean esoteric knowledge rather than occultism (or similar). While the latter is mildly interesting I believe there are far more interesting topics that conspicuously display ‘hidden’ patterns: all we have to do is look, yet we don’t always see (or know to look for) something which could be obvious.

At esoteriic.com, article content has been given a higher priority than website design (content > beauty). The original design of this website (in 2009) was incredibly simple, infact it was one of the default Joomla templates, but has since been ‘upgraded’. The previous design (June 2012 – late 2016) was a vast improvement in terms of visual niceties, all credit goes to whoever designed the template. After a brief period of being down in late 2016 the website is back up with a new design (also now HTTPS 🙂 ).

All views are my own and not that of any employer (past, present, or future).

My creative writing efforts are held on a separate blog.

Website Author — About Me

This is a website created and maintained by one person that has a love of knowledge, and a love of seeking further knowledge and understanding of the universe. This site is presented in a blog format but concerns pretty much nothing of my personal life. I’m not desperately fond of blogs but the newsfeed functionality provided by CMS software is useful. The word, and the notion of, ‘blogging’ has (at least it did in the mid 2000s) negative connotations: blogging conjures up images of online drama vis-a-vis online diaries. Learning about someone’s personal life generally isn’t that interesting (for me) and I’d be more interested to read articles than diary pages.

I’m originally an Astrophysics PhD graduate but decided to make the switch to Information Security. Job security is far better (no pun intended). The industry is growing and has a wealth of interesting problems. I did an MSc in Information Security at Royal Holloway University of London and now working as an information security consultant. I’ve mainly done penetration testing of web apps and infrastructure. I hold the CPSA and soon to take the practical CRT exam. In addition I also hold the ISO 27001 Lead Implementer certificate and will soon take the Lead Auditor exam.

My personal frontpage is here: edthomson.com

 

Caveats

All articles should be treated as a work in progress as I will doubtlessly edit them as I go.

Some of the pages and links are not really supposed to be rich in content, but are rather experimental as I test various website apps. These pages are not the norm but they do appear and may leave you thinking “WTF?”.

Sometimes I’m lazy with SEO, it is a dark art which is often sold by snake oil sales people, so don’t expect everything to link perfectly although I do try to make sure that navigation is not obnoxious.

Physics vs Maths: Despite being a astrophysics grad I actually find I enjoy doing maths more but reading about physics, worse still is that I prefer abstract (“pure”) mathematics over applied maths. The logical nature of structures and patterns is more satisfying that digging into messy data. That said, the latter is real life while the former is almost purely idealistic structures.

Music: Taste is varied across many genres but then focussed within the genres; my time is limited and my desire to explore every new band is low. I tend to only take recommendations only sources (people) I know have similar tastes. Likes: Classical, metal, rock, electronic.

Fiction: Mostly Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’m fairly typical in that regard, I “only” like books with swords or laser guns. Total escapism? Sure, but it is far more fascinating than real life. I find that thinking about the unlikely or impossible stirs my mind and leads me to ask “What if?”, “How could that problem be fixed?”, “Will it always be like that?”. Which I think goes very naturally with studying physics.

Non-Fiction: Most of what I read is related to what I posted about here, mainly maths, physics, economics, computing. Sometimes the two cross over and we get computational cosmology or cryptography.

Information Security and hacking
I have a few articles on this blog that pertain to information security and hacking; however, going forward I will host these articles on separate blog: Odinn Security.

Social Media

I can be found at various places on the web. Generally, I don’t object to random messages from random people. If I have the time then I will reply. That said, I tend to ignore direct messages on Twitter since the majority of DMs are auto-generated. Random friend requests on LinkedIn or Facebook may be ignored too since these places are more private, while Twitter / G+ are public.

  • G+: https://www.google.com/+EdThomson
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/edthomson
  • LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/edward-thomson/19/ba5/80
  • Facebook: Not worth adding. 😉
  • Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/pdp/profile/A2OF2RS9NKC5IW
  • Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=68391

Website Structure

Updating soon ™.

 

Archive Structure

The following list is the structure of the old website. This was the structure from 2009 to 2016. Going forward from early 2017 the structure is as above. Some of the content may no longer be available as the website may not be fully ported to the new server.

  • Thoughts: The main articles of the website. You no longer have to register in order to comment.
  • Creative Writing: This is my seperate blog for creative writing. I caved and started to use WordPress.
  • Cryptocurrency: A starting point for learning about cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin). I provide some explanation along with a bunch of useful links. Look at the sub-links and find out the popular alternatives to Bitcoin and the latest prices.
  • Links: A compact/concise list of places this site links to.
  • Contact: Send me a message. [No longer functioning in the archive]

To forum, or not to forum

From experience I’ve noticed that forums tend to act as social hubs where people gather to chat. Which can help to build a community; however, discussion is often forgotten while insults and petty bickering are embraced.