Since I've graduated, I've copied my web pages over to http://www.geocities.com/dronak to keep them on line and available once I leave school. I don't intend to update the pages here any longer, but will leave them here as is. Sorry about the ads on Geocities, but this was the easiest solution for me right now.

Welcome to my home page! I hope you enjoy your visit. You'll find a variety of stuff here including a lot of links to other sites, but some of my own documents and such are right here (near the top) and I've also included two pages about myself: an about me page that contains my biography and description and my school related info and another page all about my interests, hobbies, etc. Since the majority of my links are on the hobbies page, be sure to check it out otherwise you'll be missing out on a lot of stuff. The info is in two pages to make it a little easier to get through and to help speed load time by reducing the file size a bit. All of the awards my pages have won are on my Awards Page, but there aren't any new ones and a lot of the links back the awarders have died, so they've been removed. My favorite social activity is ballroom dancing and here are two relevant links I'd like to keep here to help promote ballroom dancing: my school's club, Ballroom At Maryland and My Ballroom Dancing Page.

Next, some minor notes: most counts are really from 10-Sep-96 and not 13-Oct-96, the HTML pages have little text menus at the bottom to help ease navigation (I don't think I need them on the text only pages), changes to this intro are in italics, my pages conform to HTML 4.01 Transitional standards as verified by the W3C HTML Validation Service (not strict because I didn't want to mess with background images and junk) and they are also Lynx Enhanced so they'll work perfectly fine in a text-only browser. Please only send me plain ASCII e-mails. For one, my reader can't view them, but here are six good reasons not to send HTML or MIME in e-mails along with ways to configure your mail program to send text only messages. I haven't heard any complaints about my simple e-mail obfuscating scheme, so I'm going to assume it's fine. Just in case though, my e-mail address is marshall [at] astro [dot] umd [dot] edu -- change the words in brackets to the appropriate symbols in order to send me an e-mail. Check out the Piled Higher and Deeper web site for a humorous (and accurate) look at life as a grad student. Granted, current/former grad students will relate to it better (I think it's a riot), but at least some of it should be amusing to most people. And for a fun site with lots of games to play, check out Neopets, a virtual pet site; it's pretty cool. A few more simple inventory and wish list files have been added, in case anyone's interested. I have simple lists for anime and manga, gamebooks, old time radio, and professional wrestling tapes. This is linked to below, but here's my Amazon.com wish list where some other assorted items I'd like to get are listed. Naturally there's other stuff I hope to buy/get eventually, too, but you can ask about that if you really want to. These should cover things pretty well for now.

I'm finishing up my PhD this summer (but the diploma will officially be for December) and I'm now in the hunt for jobs so I've finally put together a curriculum vitae (CV) and linked it up here. It's subject to change (of course), but should cover all of the most important points. If you know of any job openings that I might be suited for, especially if they're non-research and/or non-academic, or have any type of leads at all, please let me know. I've been looking and applying since fall 2003 and haven't been able to get a single offer yet. I haven't applied for positions abroad because I don't really want to go through the trouble associated with living and working in a foreign country for a few years, but might have to do so if no one in the US is willing to hire me. In any event, I need to find a job and soon, even if it has to be a hold-over type job while I keep applying for astronomy positions. If you can provide any help at all, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

That's about all I have to say here for now. So stay for a while, check out my lists, poke around some other sites, send me your comments, etc. My pages really only contain some of my own files and things and lots of links to places I like to visit. It's also pretty low on graphics (except for the awards page) using little beyond background images. I never really wanted to have a high-graphics site; I like it the way it is, it loads pretty quickly and gets you right to the information without having to wait for lots of images to load. Still, I hope you enjoy what my pages have to offer.

List Of My Documents and Other Things

Canonical Smiley List
Quite possibly the largest list of its kind you'll find and thus probably one of the best sources of information on emoticons (as they are also called). It contains just about every single smiley and one-line symbol I've come across in my travels on the Internet. The list now contains over 2220 smileys! The file size is up to about 108k as an HTML file and something like 122k as a plain old ASCII file. If you're going to use this list for something other than a quick look-up, you should be prepared to save it or print it out. I'm sure that most of these smileys aren't generally used, but they're certainly fun to look at. :) If you're interested, I've listed every 100th smiley (assuming I counted correctly) and some of the update history of the list in this smiley list info file. This list has won an award.

Warning: File may contain material that is inappropriate for some readers (particularly younger ones) -- caution and discretion is advised!

Canonical Abbreviation/Acronym List
Another good list, although I don't know how this one compares to others of its kind. It now has over 1090 of the more common abbreviations and acronyms that are used on the 'net (like IMHO and BRB) along with some not-so-common ones that are still amusing. I've tried to keep the file to commonly used over acronyms and some of the more amusing acronyms and this is naturally a matter of opinion, so it is possible that you won't find some of your favorites on the list which is about 48k long. This list has won an award.

Warning: File may contain material that is inappropriate for some readers (particularly younger ones) -- caution and discretion is advised!

Canonical Astronomy Abbrev/Acro List
This is from a few lists I found containing the more commonly used abbreviations and acronyms in astronomy. If you've ever wondered what something meant, here's the place to find out. Check out the over 800 abbrevs/acros in this 42k long list.

By the way, all three of these lists were recognized as canonical lists on the Wrecked Humor Collection page mainted by Derek Cashman, but the site seems to be gone now. Also, if you have any new smileys, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. that you think might be worth adding to my lists, please feel free to e-mail me at marshall@astro.umd.edu and let me know. If I like it, I'll put it in.

Professor Quotes
This is a list of some of the more memorable quotations my friends and I have heard from professors here at school. Some of them may be out of context, so they'll sound strange, but that just makes things more interesting. :) I hope you like them; there are now over 400 quotes in the list.

50 Fun Things to do to Annoy Your Physics Professor
After seeing quite a few of these style lists, such as things to do in a computer lab, things to say when ordering pizza, things to do in an elevator, and probably lots of others, I decided to try my hand at creating a list of things for my field (physics and astronomy). I got some help from one of my friends at Villanova in order to complete the list (thanks, Joe!).

Some Astronomy (and Other) Programs
This will lead you to the source codes for a couple of astronomy related programs I wrote. There's a simple star modeling program as well as some programs that can be used in binary star work. If you think you might want copies of the programs, feel free to check them out. Most are in BASIC but a couple are in C. I've also included the codes for two programs I wrote for my TI-85/86/89 calculator (in its own particular programming language) that convert from calendar date to Julian date and vice versa. You might find some other non-astronomy programs there, too, just because I didn't want to make a separate page for a couple other programs.

Honor Societies Information Page
This page contains some information about Sigma Pi Sigma, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa, the three honor societies I was inducted into while an undergraduate at Villanova University. It also contains links to other pages on the societies; they should go to official pages now which hopefully all work correctly.

And don't forget to check out my about me page and my interests, hobbies, and links for additional info about myself and for lots more links to some of my favorite places on the web.

Science Links

UM Astronomy
New school, new addition to the web page. Here's the page for the astronomy department at the University of Maryland.

V.U. Astronomy
The page was created by the class of 1996 (my year!) and is periodically updated by the students still there. I assume that they are going to try to keep the page fairly up-to-date, so if you're an alumnus of the V.U. astronomy department and find out that the information listed on the page is not correct, please e-mail the department so that they can update it when they have a chance. We'd like to get as many e-mail addresses and home pages on there as possible because we think it's a great way for V.U. astronomers to keep in touch with each other, so if you know of a way we can get in touch with someone on the list, let us know. Thanks.

V.U. Physics
The physics department got their site up on their own server before the astronomy department did and for some time allowed the astronomy pages to be hosted on it as well. They're now on separate sites, but I'm still keeping the link to the physics page; astronomy majors take lots of physics courses anyway. If you want to check out some of the physics-specific stuff that goes on at VU, this is the place to look.

American Institute of Physics
The AIP is probably the biggest physics group in the US. One of their great services is the Physics News Updates. The web page is for the archive; it's actually a mailing list that sends out messages about once a week giving some info on the latest happenings in the physics and physics-related community. You might also want to check out the Physics News Graphics page which contains figures and stuff related to topics in the updates. It's a good way to know what's going on. If you're looking for a particular topic, why not try searching (or browsing) the archives at http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/ and see if that helps you find the physics news updates you're looking for.

Science from Yahoo
The Science section of the Yahoo page.

Astronomy from Yahoo
The Astronomy section of the Yahoo page.

Physics from Yahoo
The Physics section of the Yahoo page.

For more astronomy links, check out my school related info containing a bunch of astronomy related links.

My Friends' Pages

Cinthia's Garden
Cinthia's another good friend of mine that I met through ballroom here at Maryland. She's got a very nice web page with some thoughts, nice quotes (love and inspirational), various pictures, and other things. It's a nice place to visit. :)

UM Astronomy Grad Students
This page lists many of my fellow astronomy grad students here at College Park. All the grad students may not be listed on that page though because you normally have to send the information in to someone so that you can get added to the page. But since you can get to my most of my classmates' pages from there, I'm not going to link to them individually here. Except . . .

Donna Pierce's Homepage
A grad school classmate of mine and another very good friend so I'll list her page specifically. :) Make sure to check out her Minty Fresh Planet section for her personal home page information which includes a number of very humorous links and files.

A Few Favorite Sites

Google Groups
If you remember Deja.com, this is what it is. Google took them over. If you want to access Usenet newsgroups, this is a good place to do it.

Google Directory
I usually don't go here directly, opting to run searches instead, but this is a topic sorted list of web pages and can also be helpful.

Yahoo!
This is a good starting point for getting around the web, using a topic sorted list like the Google Directory. They also provide a variety of other services though such as a free e-mail address.

Amazon.com
Definitely one of the best on line stores. They stock a huge variety of items in tons of areas. I generally buy books from them, but have purchased other items as well. I also have a wish list set up there so if for any reason you're looking for something to get me, this is a decent place to start. I have some items, mainly reprints of old gamebooks, on my Amazon.co.uk wish list.

Barnes & Noble
Primarily a book store with some other sections, it has a smaller overall selection of items than Amazon, but I have seen them beat Amazon's prices on books now and then, so I always check them when looking for books to buy. Don't miss the on line university they have, too. Things changed now, the set of courses changed and some charge a fee, but there should still be free courses you can take.

eBay
While generally thought of as an auction web site because you bid on items that are for sale, they're really more of a mediator for person-to-person transactions. I finally joined up in order to get some hard to find items I was looking for (out of print books). They have a huge variety of things for sale and because items are only listed for a limited time, the supply is constantly changing. I think that just about everything in existence shows up here sooner or later. Check out Half.com by eBay for items being sold at a fixed price (i.e., no bidding).

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I actually don't use this site a whole lot myself, but it does tend to come up in my web searches so I thought I'd give it a link. One thing you should note though -- the site uses a system where visitors can edit the pages. This can be either good or bad, depending on your viewpoint and how people use the feature. So I'm just mentioning it as something to keep in mind about the information on the site.

Last Update and Disclaimer

The views expressed on this page, all its subpages located on this site, and all its parent pages located on this site (when applicable) are solely the views of myself, James Marshall, and in no way, neither explicit nor implied, reflect the views of the administration, staff, faculty, or student body of the University of Maryland, the astronomy department of UM, or any other group, organization, society, etc. of which I am a member. All external sites linked to from my site are the responsibility of their owners. Some pages on my site may have additional disclaimers that apply in addition to this one.