Mario Wolczko's Home Page

This page is not so much under construction as under active neglect. Every once in a while I add something to it, but it's not often, and there are many things that could be added...

Ukraine - A short list of resources

On Tyranny

These are dark times, and the spectre of tyranny again haunts the West. This excellent book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, illustrated by Nora Krug, will tell you all you need to know: how to recognize emerging tyranny, and how it can be defeated.

On Tyranny

In May 2022 Prof. Snyder released an audiobook version of On Tyranny with an additional 8 hours on the war in Ukraine. This is the best material on the war I have seen, highly recommended!

Virtual Machine course

Material from my 2015 UC Berkeley graduate class on Virtual Machines is here.

Professional biography

(In reverse chronological order)

Fom August 1993 I worked at Sun Labs (part of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) which morphed into Oracle Labs (part of Oracle) in 2010. I retired in June 2022. I held the titles of Senior Staff Engineer, Distinguished Engineer and Director at Sun; Research Director and Architect at Oracle.

My Oracle home page is archived here (PDF). Look here for more details.

Before that I was a post-doctoral researcher and research fellow at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Manchester, where I worked on the Mushroom research project, investigating hardware and software implementations of dynamic object-oriented languages. I also developed and taught industrial courses, in Smalltalk, C, UNIX, object-oriented methods and other topics for the PEVE (Post-Experience Vocational Education) Unit.

From 1984 to 1987 I studied for my Ph.D. in the Semantics of Object-Oriented Languages, also at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Manchester. Here's a list of my publications from that work.

From that era, here's a story I posted on USENET which has been extensively circulated (html version here).

My M.Sc., obtained in 1984, was about Implementing Smalltalk-80 on the ICL Perq.

Social media

You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter (mwolczko) -- I'm no longer on FaceBook.

Other interests - Astronomy

I've been interested in astronomy since I was seven. I have a bunch of telescopes, try to read Sky & Telescope magazine when I can, and keep up with what's going on (with varied success).

Video of the annular solar eclipse of May 20, 2012.

Here's an account of a trip to the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in 2008.

In 2004 I tried a little webcam imaging of the planets.

Here are some photos of Comet Hyakutake from 1996.

Other miscellaneos astrophotos will eventually appear here...

Here are the results of a USENET survey I conducted some time ago on which 35mm cameras are best suited to astrophotography.

Other interests - Flying

I flew small planes from 1996 to 2001. Here are pictures of planes I have flown: Most of these planes are based at Palo Alto Airport (PAO) or San Carlos Airport (SQL), and are operated by the West Valley Flying Club.

Here are some aerial photos taken by Doug Simon, more by Bernard Horan, Ole Agesen and yet more by Bruce Badger.

Family

I am married to Julie Newdoll, the artist and proprietor of Brush with Science. My one and only art project with Julie is described here: Pioneers Hitchhiking in the Valley of Heart's Delight.

Our son, Lorenzo, is a jazz musician currently studying at the Manhattan School of Music. Most recent performances on youtube: Just Majority.

Our daughter, Sophia, is a physics grad student at Columbia University with a fellowship from the Flatiron Institute.

RIP Lew Wolczko (1954–2014)

Mario Wolczko