Howdy.

Most people call me T. You can, too.

This site started in early 2002, as a way to keep my family and friends up to date on my shenanigans. This way, people can check in on me, see what I'm up to, and my guilt is eased. J joined me online and we switched the domain name to Johnny's Stew in the fall of 2004.

But if you found this website and don't know me, I'd like to think that you may still learn something, get to know a fellow human being, and laugh occasionally.

I play with fiber. I ride my bike to work when the weather's nice. I love walkable neighborhoods. I play capoeira angola, and don't mind that I stink. I get to play with science all day and get paid for it. I'm fiercely loyal to family and friends. I'm super gullible. I love me a good story. I sing when the house gets too quiet.

Oh, and one other thing. That front-page image with the bundle of fibers? Beautiful, ain't it? Too bad it's not mine. I got it from some prof at RPI, though the picture is attached to a dead link, so I can't tell you who, or what it's made of, or why it's neat. But, to whatever grad student or technician that sat in a dark hole for two hours getting this image just right: I salute you. For the non-nanoscopically minded among you: The 2-micron scale bar (which I accidentally chopped) is a smidge longer than the actual text that says "2 um". Eyeballing one of those little fibers, I'd guess they're about 50 nanometers in diameter. Maybe 10. (One nanometer equals one billionth of a meter.)

For a sense of scale, a single cell of the type I regularly look at would take up about a quarter to a third of the whole image. The diameter of human hair (my human hair, to be exact) is about 30 microns, which makes those fibers nearly 1000 times thinner than that.

We engineering types play with tiny shit like this all the time.

It's a blast.

Love and kisses,

T