Welcome to "Notes and Queries":" An Occasional Blog."

Perhaps I should begin by saying a quick word about the title of this blog. I spent years in academia, sometimes toiling away over very obscure questions, especially relating to events in 4th Century B.C. Greece. One of the journals I came across while procrastinating was outside my field, but I could recognize kindred spirits in the authors’ love of obscuranta. The journal was called “Notes and Queries.”

When I left academia and started toiling away on computer programming, my work involved another sort of query, namely, of course, database queries. But I have fond memories of academia (though not only fond memories), and I thought “Notes and Queries” was pleasingly ambiguous title for the blog of someone making the transition between these two worlds.

I’ll be writing here about programming stuff; I write about other subjects on my personal (group) blog.