This is an experiment in trying to make sense of my thoughts on Computing. The incredible thing is that there exists mechanisms that automatically follows instructions with negligable errors. They are all conceptually equivalent to Turing machines but are physical existing devices. There is a fascination with watching them operate. Some get that same kind of feeling with operating model train sets.
I am interested in the history of computing and in computers and computability theory. Visit a site devoted to Calculating Machines. I am interested in the language used to talk about computing. A lecture titled "Metaphors We Compute By" by John H. Lawler is relevant. I am also interested in using computers to assist in mathematical research. The interaction of mathematics and computers is varied and complex. One obvious area is symbolic computing as in a recent article "Viewpoint: The Importance of Symbolic Computing" by Roger Germundsson. I like Mathematica and Maple but I use PARI-GP, Perl and GCC because they are free software.
I have been using Mathematica for a long time. However, it is not completely documented. One mystery is the use of ValueBox[] which is not well documented in 7.0. I have collected a small list of working examples in a small notebook file (ValueBox.nb).