Stuff of Jiří Lebl (or George)

Simplicity is a virtue. And so there isn't much stuff here. What is here has a tendency to be somewhat out of date. See also my OSU (work) page, which is likely to be more current. Or just see my CV.

I guess this should be about me. I was born in Prague (CZ) and live in Stillwater, Oklahoma. After being a postdoc in the Math department at University of Illinois (UIUC), in the middle of cornfields in Urbana, I was a Teaching Visitor at University of California at San Diego (UCSD), then a postdoc at University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW). Now I am faculty at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Here is my GPG key if you're into that kind of thing (though I'm not really, so it could have happened that I don't remember my passphrase anymore). Sometimes I write stuff on my blog. I used to write my blog on advogato but you can't do latex math there. I used to write a blog before it was called a blog.

I got my PhD from UCSD in the spring of 2007. Here is the thesis. There's a pdf of the thing and a link to lulu if you really really must go kill some trees. If you really want something useless to read, see my masters thesis from SDSU, 2003. Better to check my published papers at my OSU page or see my papers on arXiv. I've also written a free online differential equations textbook (introductory undergraduate level), a free online real analysis textbook (introductory undergraduate level), a set of notes for a minicrouse on several complex variables using Hermitian forms, and a semester long introduction to several complex variables.

In a past life I've worked for Eazel, before it went horribly bankrupt. I've spent a summer working for Red Hat. I've also done some software consulting in lab automation. I'm a big supporter of free software and if I do work on free software it is mostly on GNOME, or related. Nowadays my coding is restricted mostly to the Genius mathematics package or to math experimentation.

Here is some of the stuff I wrote that is currently maintained and is of general interest:

• Genius Mathematics Tool - Very capable free software mathematics tool. A cross between Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab in some ways, but not as capable. I'm always looking for help with this.
• Notes on Diffy Qs: Differential Equations for Engineers - Undergraduate differential equations textbook freely available online (and as a cheap paperback).
• Basic Analysis: Introduction to Real Analysis - First course in real analysis textbook freely available online (and as a cheap paperback).
• Guide to Cultivating Complex Analysis: Working the Complex Field - First graduate course in complex analysis textbook freely available online (and as a cheap paperback).
• Tasty Bits of Several Complex Variables - A semester-long course on introductory Several Complex Variables from a more traditional point of view. Freely available online.
• Hermitian Forms Meet Several Complex Variables - half-semester course in CR geometry using Hermitian forms, freely available online.
• GOB - GObject Builder, a preprocessor that spits out GObject C code so you don't have to write 10 tons of boilerplate code for every class you wish to define, and thus avoids lots of bugs and headaches.
• buildpdftexwatch - A zsh script to automate editing a document and running pdflatex. Just run "buildpdftexwatch file" if your LaTeX file is called file.tex. The script will run xpdf and vim. When you save in vim, pdflatex runs and xpdf reloads the pdf. You might have to probably edit the script to fit your needs, I didn't try to make this user friendly.
• buildsketchwatch - Like the above script but for sketch and pdflatex. Works as above but on file.sk, and runs sketch with the -T option to create a template. If sketch is successful runs pdflatex and displays result in xpdf. You might have to probably edit the script to fit your needs, I didn't try to make this user friendly.
• quickpres - A presentation tool script for scrolling mathematics lectures using a web browser created for online courses using zoom. Presentations are created in a simple markdown-like format and converted using the script to html which is then used in a browser to show the presentation.
• WeBWorK Story Problem Maker is a way to quickly generate simple WeBWorK problems with draggable proofs, radio buttons, check buttons, and simple number and formula input, without having to type all the boilerplate. I used it to quickly create homework for my undergraduate real analysis class. The perl code for this is in my webwork repository, where you can also find the real analysis problems I created with it.

Pictures and galleries and that sort of thing:

• Our newer gallery
• Sort of a private gallery with our sort of photo album (though most comments on there are in Czech)
• My brother's page with pictures from my wedding April 2003

Some old pages, probably not of interest any more are:

• Math hacks - A few math hacks for random things. Of interest could be the arithmetic operations written in sed (decimal arithmetic using regular expressions). But there are some other things there.
• my very out of date Linux page
• Pictures from Linux Expo '99
• Pictures from Linux World Expo and Conference '99
• Pictures from Linux World Expo and Conference 2000
• Pictures from Ottawa Linux Symposium 2000
• Pictures from the first GUADEC (2000)
• Talks I and Maciej Stachowiak gave at linux.conf.au 2001

At GUADEC 5 in Kristiansand, Norway (June 28th - 30th, 2004), I gave a talk on security and the desktop. The paper to accompany the talk was not finished for the proceeds so here it is. It's semi longish (10 pages), full of unsubstantiated claims and no bibliography. Hopefully the grammar is not too horrible and it's semi readable and useful. Enjoy...

At one point I bought one of those Agenda VR3's because they seemed cool. It's kind of a piece of crap, but nowadays you can get them incredibly cheap from various surplus stores and some company even makes ones with more memory (which was one of the many reasons why they were crap). Setting up software on these is not easy. You can get my current romdisk root-1.2.6.2S-jirka.cramfs and try that. That's the last official 1.2.6 snow release (much faster then what originally shipped with the thing) updated with gnuchess, gnuplot, prescribble and goVRec (go recorder). The fltkChess gnuchess frontend is somewhat more fixed in this version (source). I'd recommend the newest kernel and pmon (if you need to) from AgendaWiki.

This page has been seen 1590903 times since Mon Sep 29 21:53:48 1997