On the subtle art of getting in touch

The best way to contact me is to drop an email to: oscar@randomwalk.eu (click to copy to clipboard).

While I like receiving thoughtful and interesting emails, I am only (one) human. Hence response time, however annoyingly, «tends to be an exponential function of message length.»1 Writing properly helps make the curve less steep.

Before emailing me, please read the rest of this page. Especially if I don’t know you! I may silently ignore your message if you don’t—and I will be able to tell from your message if you didn’t!

Rule number 1. Here is the first rule of the now defunct Email Charter,2 the very first principle:

Respect Recipients’ Time. This is the fundamental rule. As the message sender, the onus is on YOU to minimize the time your email will take to process. Even if it means taking more time at your end before sending.

I expect all my correspondents to honour it.

Two other things to keep in mind:

Sending comments

Just as «I like receiving thoughtful and interesting emails» (see above), I also welcome equally thoughtful and interesting feedback to the things I write in this humble digital abode of mine. The preferred way is penning an email to: comments@randomwalk.eu (click to copy to clipboard). The Subject: field should be the title of the page you’re commenting on.

If you have to be critical of something I wrote, I would encourage you to express your criticism with decorum. For public criticism, you are free to voice it in your own web space, and then email me about it—although if it is not civil, I can’t promise I will read it and/or care about it. 🙂

Or, you can ping me on Twitter (or “X”, as it seems to be now called), which brings us to the subject of…

Social media…

As mentioned, I am on Twitter/X, as @notnotrandom. You are free send feedback that way, of course, but the length limitation of the messages make it somewhat unsuitable to thoughtful discussion… but it is an excellent medium to share links to things written on your own web spaces! (It is, of course, also a good medium to vent out steam when one needs to—so be forewarned! 😇)

I am also on github, where some of the software I develop is hosted, and on occasion, I also put some videos up on youtube. Other attempts to find me on “social media” are, I’m afraid, futile. And while on that topic… Edward Snowden put it best:

Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as “surveillance companies.” Their rebranding as “social media” is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense.5