About Robert I'm Robert Walker, inventor & programmer. I have had a long term special interest in astronomy, and space science since the 1970s, and most of these blog posts currently are about Mars and space exploration. I'm the programmer for for Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome, Virtual flower, Lissajous 3D, and Activity Timer.. I trained as a mathematician originally. Received a high first class honours degree in maths. Went on to study philosophy (second undergraduate degree completed with two years study instead of three, which they called an M. Hum) then to do post graduate research into set theory and foundations of mathematics. Then got involved in inventing board games, one of them was accepted for publication by Gibson's Games, large UK games company, but they were unable to publish it because of technical difficulties, unable to make the pieces at a suitable price, major disappointment. I then got involved in programming music after I invented a particular type of fractal tune based on self similar sloth canon sequences. It's related to the Danish composer Per Nørgård's "infinity sequence" though not identical. Through these tunes I got involved in music software programming, first in order to hear what the tunes sounded like myself - but then added more capabilities and began to sell the software commercially. I added microtonal capabiliies originally just to explore more tunes, but then got a lot of interest from microtonal composers, as it gave an easy way to compose and play microtonal music on many synthesizers and computers. At present my main focus is on Bounce Metronome, another music program valued by musicians for its ability to play complex polyrhythms, rhythm cycles etc, and for its visual "bounce" effect inspired by the motion of a conductor's baton. I have also researched into cellular automata, recreational mathematics, and non periodic tilings, etc This column could be about any of those topics, or more.

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Robert's Articles This is a list of the latest articles and blog entries that Robert has written. Could High Quality Masks Solve China's COVID Problems? Idea For A Randomized Control Trial Of Masks In Households To Find OutWhy Doesn't NASA Respond To Public Concerns On Its Samples From Mars Environmental Impact Statement? (short Version For Experts)Why Doesn't NASA Respond To Public Concerns On Its Samples From Mars Environmental Impact Statement?This Is Your Opportunity To Tell NASA You Want To Keep Earth Extra Safe During Their Samples From Mars MissionDear Space Explorers - Yes We Do Need To Protect Ourselves And Earth From Any Microbes In Mars Rocks As We Explore Click here to read all of Robert's articles.

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