Automated Imagination

New Breeding Records for Iqaluit

2011-09-20T11:01:00.000-04:00

Tonight I'm making a short presentation to the Brodie Club, a naturalists' club that meets once a month to hear an invited speaker and observations made by its members. The September meeting is traditionally given over entirely to short presentations by the members about things they've seen over the summer (field-work season for many professional biologists). Over the course of three days in

Remote Outpost

2011-08-24T10:54:00.001-04:00

Nunavut has an area of two million square kilometers. If it were a country, it would rank 14th largest in the world, just ahead of Mexico and Indonesia. Yet it has a population of only 33 thousand. Iqaluit, the capitol of and largest population center in Nunavut, has a permanent population of less than 7 thousand. In places that are more connected to civilization we take a lot of things for

Iqaluit Signage

2011-08-18T09:55:00.003-04:00

The North-West Territories introduced a unique bear-shaped license plate in 1970. When Nunavut split off in 1999, both territories opted to keep the design. Recently, the NWT announced that the machinery used to manufacture the plates needs to be replaced, so both territories are taking the opportunity to update their designs. The bear-shape is popular, so it seems likely that at least one of the

Architectural Quirks

2011-08-07T21:44:00.004-04:00

Many of the buildings in Iqaluit, especially the newer houses and apartments, are built on raised foundations, which allows the bottom of the house to be insulated and out of contact with the permafrost, and is easier than digging a foundation in extremely rocky ground.Many of the buildings are also painted in bright and cheery colors. The school in Apex. A colorful house. I'm not quite sure why

Northern Wheatear

2011-08-04T20:49:00.002-04:00

Here's a banded male Northern Wheatear, posing nicely in front of some tidal flats. Normally it's more difficult to spot them: they look like this before you get binoculars on them, and like this afterwards. It's a good thing they make loud alarm calls as soon as they spot you, or we'd hardly spot any.

Windy = Good, sometimes

2011-08-02T19:55:00.002-04:00

There were rainy windy days (bad), rainy calm days (not so bad), sunny windy days (good), and sunny calm days (mosquitos!).

Iqaluit Quarry

2011-08-01T19:48:00.002-04:00

Just to show that my trips to Iqaluit aren't always sparkling weather and stunning vistas, here's a photo of Iqaluit's quarry, junkyard, and industrial zone, on an overcast day. You can see the airport runway in the background. Taken June 25th, 2010.I'm going to try to post a photo every day for a while, along with a couple of longer posts explaining what I was doing in Iqaluit.

Iqaluit Panorama

2011-07-28T15:28:00.002-04:00

I've been sorting my pictures from Iqaluit, and experimenting with Hugin (open-source software for stitching together photographs into panoramas). I present to you the first result of my efforts: Iqaluit Panorama #1. Taken July 18th, 2011 (a day with really nice weather), from the end of the point on the other side of Koojesse inlet from Iqaluit proper.

First Impressions of Iqaluit

2011-07-25T07:49:00.002-04:00

I've just returned from a week and a half in Iqaluit, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. It's the capital of Canada's territory of Nunavut, with a population of only 8 thousand. It's below the arctic circle, barely, at about the same latitude as Reykjavík, Iceland. While I was there, there was continuous light from 2am to midnight every day, temperatures ranged from 5 to 20 °C (41 to 68 °F), and

Saying no

2010-07-30T17:59:00.002-04:00

Paul Graham's essay The Acceleration of Addictiveness points out that the internet, when used to procrastinate, is a waste of time enjoyable enough and dangerous enough to be compared to addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine.What should you avoid doing, because it feels good despite having no tangible benefit? The obvious ones are easy: drugs like methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine, which

Color Combinations

2010-06-03T08:42:00.007-04:00

Ever wondered what the difference between yellow-green and yellowish green is? Or yellow-green and green-yellow? Maybe the XKCD color survey data can tell us something.Here are some combinations of green, blue, and purple with other colors (click to view full size):The hyphenated forms aren't present in the XKCD color names, even though they're often more common in the raw data than any of the

Color Adjectives

2010-05-31T08:50:00.008-04:00

Ever wondered what the difference between a light color and a bright color is? Ever wanted a systematic way to name variants of a color? Well, now we have data.First, a bit of terminology. Intensity is the total quantity of light. In the RGB system, this is easy to calculate: just sum the three values, since each represents the intensity of one component of a color. Saturation is the distance

XKCD Color Name Maps

2010-05-25T10:10:00.006-04:00

All of the colors named in XKCD's list of color names:Here's a new projection, with light intensity on the X axis, and saturation (distance from the nearest grey) on the Y axis:Black is in the bottom-left corner (though it can't be seen against the background), and white is in the bottom-right, with the greys running along the bottom edge. Colors with different hues but the same intensity and

XKCD color maps

2010-05-20T08:45:00.006-04:00

Gissehel made some maps from the XKCD Color Survey raw data. (Via XKCD; I don't know who Gissehel is.) It's quite difficult to see the grey dots on a white background, and it's difficult to see which color(s) each dot represents. In short, I was unimpressed, so I made my own.RedOrangeYellowGreenTealBluePurpleGreyThe projection is just a rotation of the RGB color cube to put the black and white

XKCD Colors

2010-05-13T13:34:00.011-04:00

Randall Munroe (creator of XKCD) recently ran a color name survey. Roughly 150 thousand people responded, naming ~3.4 million colors, an average of ~22 per respondent. ~180 thousand unique color names were given, although only about 4% of these were given by ten or more different people. Munroe analyzed the list of names given by more than 100 different people (1228 names), and produced a

Christmas again...

2009-12-25T13:40:00.004-05:00

Well, it's that time of year again. The chocolate coins I got this year were more prosaic loonies and twoonies (all from 1987 and 1996, respecitvely) rather than the fascinating euro coins I got last year, but I still like them. The rest of my gifts are the usual stuff: chocolate and books. Two copies of one book this year, but I'm sure I can exchange it for a gift certificate.I'm not planning to

More Modern-day Alchemy

2009-07-28T15:21:00.002-04:00

The Codex of Alchemical Engineering (Flash). This game may eat all your free time if you're into optimizing things. I think I might hold the world record for Brimstone (level VIII, 25 cycles). If you'd like to see my solution for any particular level, leave a comment.

Quantum Mechanics: Modern Alchemy?

2009-01-29T09:19:00.006-05:00

Quantum mechanics (QM) has a serious jargon addiction. On the theory that if thousands of university students can get degrees in QM, then I should have no trouble understanding the basics of what they study, I've been trying to decipher some of the jargon from this infamously confusing field. Here's what I've come up with so far:When a quantum physicist says a particle is 70% one thing and 30%

American Euros

2008-12-25T11:38:00.003-05:00

One of my family's traditions is receiving chocolate coins in our stockings on Christmas morning. They're wrapped in shiny foil of an appropriate color (usually gold or silver), and made of a lousy quality milk chocolate.This year we got chocolate Euro coins; €2, €1, and €0.50. Now, real Euro coins all have the same design on the front, but different designs for each country on the back. (

Reading List

2008-12-03T21:39:00.002-05:00

The Republic, by Plato. I ran across an English translation of this book, originally written in Greek around 380BCE, and decided to read it out of curiosity. The translation was done in the UK on or before 1852 (when the first edition was published), and my copy was printed in 1943 (the 40th printing). I've noticed "shew" where we would write "show", but no other differences in spelling.The

π = 3.14159…

2008-11-06T15:45:00.003-05:00

π is wrong! (PDF) argues that π should have been defined as 6.28319… (2π). Some think it should be 0.785398… (π/4) and others argue that changing π would be "disrespectful" and "outright wrong".So who's right?Originally, π came into use as a sort of greek acronym. Early mathematicians working on the properties of circles and spheres frequently had to write 'perimeter', 'diameter', and 'radius'.

ACM Programming Contest

2008-11-01T13:21:00.003-04:00

Live scoreboard for the East-Central North America region.Final Standings (Carnegie Mellon is strong this year)The Problems and Solutions (Nobody solved problem A. Can you?)

I love the world

2008-09-21T21:08:00.003-04:00

I never thought I'd say this about any commercial, much less one for the Discovery channel... but this commercial is awesome.Update: The versions currently playing in Canada (featuring Jay Ingram, among others), can be found here (60 seconds) and here (30 seconds).

Rogers employee fails

2008-05-23T14:35:00.008-04:00

I currently have a cellphone and cable internet with Rogers, but on separate bills. Because of this, Rogers insists on calling me about once a month to offer to bundle the services together onto a single bill (along with cable TV and home phone). Alright, fine. I tell them, politely, that I don't want a TV or a home phone. I'm content with computer games and a cell phone. Whoever I'm talking to

The Fermi "Paradox"

2008-04-28T19:56:00.003-04:00

If you haven't heard of it before, Fermi's so-called paradox asks why, if the universe is billions of years old, and contains billions of billions of star systems, we haven't found any evidence of alien life elsewhere in the universe. In theory, even if an intelligent civilization only colonized one new star system every thousand years, they could have colonized the entire galaxy in a few tens of

Ways Words Can Be Wrong

2008-03-07T09:15:00.003-05:00

You may recall a previous post here, Misthoughts. Since then, I've started reading Overcoming Bias, a blog that's entirely about misthoughts. A particularly great post there is 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong. I particularly like #23, explained in more detail in Replace the Symbol with the Substance, which I've been calling "Don't think in words" for a long time.

Colors Your Monitor Can't Produce

2008-02-25T11:45:00.022-05:00

Background:Light varies in intensity (the number of photons arriving per unit time) and wavelength (the amount of energy carried by each photon). We perceive light intensity as the brightness of colors, and wavelength as the hue. We also perceive saturation, the range of intensities present. Low saturation colors, like white, gray, and black, have roughly equal intensities at all wavelengths,

Macros: what are they good for?

2007-09-04T11:13:00.000-04:00

Paul Graham wrote an entire book about the uses of Common Lisp macros. In it, he lists the basic things you can do with macros (pp 107-109). Here's my condensed version:Transformationtreat argument as a syntax tree data structure rather than code to be evaluated argument can be transformed before being compiled (example) Bindingif you want to pass an argument to a function that doesn't evaluate

2007-08-31T19:58:00.000-04:00

I was reading various articles linked to from science.reddit.com last night, and posted a comment which people liked. Someone else submitted my comment as a link, which turned out to be somewhat popular.Yay me!

How much do I actually read?

2007-08-21T19:21:00.000-04:00

The last time I kept track of how many books I read was Feb.-Aug. 1994, a seven month period during which I read 83 books, an average of 2.73/week. I was 15 at the time, and during university the amount I read went down, so for a while now I've used 2 books per week as my estimate of how much I read.When I put that factoid in my profile, something in the back of my brain insisted I get more

Haskell

2007-08-17T18:00:00.000-04:00

Video of a talk given by Simon Peyton-Jones (one of the Haskell language designers) at OSCON 2007 has been making the rounds, and I finally got around to viewing it.Part 1 (Flash video, the basics) Part 2 (Flash video, the interesting stuff) Slides (7.1MB PDF)I had a "Holy shit!" moment on slide 54, regarding Haskell's type system. (Sorry, you'll just have to see for yourself. I haven't

Configurations and Portability

2007-08-12T10:31:00.000-04:00

I've begun to worry about my browser. I've configured Firefox so much that using a fresh install is painful. The lack of my shortcut bookmarks (which, I've discovered, don't import properly) is just the beginning. I've set lots of options. I've customized my toolbars. I've installed a couple of plugins. I've installed Adblock and customized its filter list. I've used about:config to set dozens of

Bad Design, part 2

2007-08-09T15:16:00.000-04:00

I edited the Rounders 3 template to use available space a little better. After saving my changes, I discovered the actual page was different from the preview given by the editor. That's bad design.The rounded corners were messed up (though they worked in the preview), so I decided that unfixed-width columns are more important than round corners.Now, if I can just figure out a Greasemonkey script

Bad Design

2007-08-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

I recently switched my monitor's resolution from 1280x1024 to 1600x1200. Overall it's been an improvement, but there have been some problems. Windows XP doesn't take hints about minimum font-size seriously. Setting the "Display -> Appearance -> Font Size" control to "Extra Large Fonts" (one of only three choices) improves some things, but not others. Try resizing this image until the text on the

Science, sort of

2007-07-21T21:32:00.000-04:00

I spend too much time reading stuff on the web, especially science news, but occasionally I feel like I'm actually getting something out of it. Two times in particular, I've read different science stories, put them together, and come up with something new.Story #1: Toxoplasmosis, a protozoan parasite that infects a wide range of mammals, but especially cats, is widespread in the US (and

Shortcut Searches

2007-06-13T14:35:00.000-04:00

Firefox bookmarks have a few features that can save you a lot of time, if used to their full potential. For starters, each bookmark can have an associated keyword, which, when typed in the location bar, loads the bookmarked page. For example, if your bookmark to websudoku.com has the keyword sudoku, you can type sudoku and attempt to solve a sudoku.Ok, so that's not so great. I'm

How many could there possibly be?

2007-06-08T08:39:00.000-04:00

I don't know how successful anything that caters specifically to programmer/birders can be, but I'm happy to find a webcomic tailored to my mini-demographic. The Boids

The Discoveries: Summary

2007-06-03T14:06:00.000-04:00

Done at last!Here's a list of the Discoveries posts, with blurbs:The Quantum, Max Planck, 1900.Explained black-body spectra by introducing the idea that physical quantities can be discontinuous, an idea that many other discoveries build upon. An understanding of black-body spectra can help you understand the cosmic microwave background, too.Hormones, William Bayliss and Ernest Starling, 1902.

Genetic Engineering

2007-06-03T11:10:00.000-04:00

David A. Jackson, Robert H. Symons, and Paul Berg, Biochemical Method for Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of Simian Virus 40: Circular SV40 DNA Molecules Containing Lambda Phage Genes and the Galactose Operon of Escherichia Coli, 1972To most people, genetic engineering is practically magic. The wizard, possessed of arcane knowledge, toils in a laboratory and emerges with an organism

Quarks

2007-06-02T17:00:00.000-04:00

J. I. Friedman, H. W. Kendall, R. E. Taylor, et. al., Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering, 1969Ernest Rutherford investigated the structure of atoms by hitting them with various fast-moving particles. The particles came from radioactive substances, and were merely channelled toward the target by heavy shielding around the radiation source. In the years following,

A Unified Theory of Forces

2007-06-01T16:20:00.000-04:00

Steven Weinberg, A Model of Leptons, 1967As frequently happens in physics, the story of the unification of forces begins with Einstein. Pre-1905, the electric and magnetic forces were described by Maxwell's equations, which vary depending on how observers move relative to a postulated cosmic frame of rest, the ether. In the opening paragraph of his 1905 paper on special relativity, Einstein notes

Radio Waves from the Big Bang

2007-05-31T15:35:00.000-04:00

Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s, 1965Robert H. Dicke, P. James E. Peebles, Peter G. Roll, and David T. Wilkinson, Cosmic Black-body Radiation, 1965Science teachers often present established facts and theories about the world around us without giving much information about the observations and evidence that require these explanations.

The Structure of Proteins

2007-05-30T16:41:00.000-04:00

Max Perutz, et al., Structure of Haemoglobin: a Three-Dimensional Fourier Synthesis at 5.5-Å Resolution, Obtained by X-Ray Analysis, 1960The unravelling of the structures of the first proteins is a great example of the way scientific discoveries are built on and interlock with each other. Proteins like Haemoglobin are the workhorses of living systems. They are created by the translation of

The Structure of DNA

2006-10-07T14:32:00.000-04:00

James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick, Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, 1953Rosalind E. Franklin and R. G. Gosling, Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate, 1953The discovery of the structure of DNA marks a branching point in the study of genetics. From then on, one branch studied DNA at the molecular level, unravelling the way it controls

The Movability of Genes

2006-09-18T11:17:00.000-04:00

Barbara McClintock, Mutable Loci in Maize, 1948I often forget just how much research into genetics went on before the structure of DNA was discovered. My education in biology covered the Abbot Gregor Mendel's discovery of dominant and recessive traits, the rediscovery of his work in 1900, and then jumped straight to Watson and Crick. I am not alone in this: many scientists neglected earlier work

Nuclear Fission

2006-09-05T09:11:00.000-04:00

Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, Concerning the Existence of Alkaline Earth Metals Resulting From Neutron Irradiation of Uranium, 1939Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction, 1939Do you feel you have a handle on how atoms behave? So did scientists in 1938. They knew that atoms have a nucleus containing positive protons and neutral

One Death is a Tragedy

2006-08-22T22:15:00.000-04:00

Mood: raging against the unfairness of it allThe body of an aquaintance of mine turned up in the N. Saskatchewan River this morning after he'd been missing for two weeks. This isn't someone I knew especially well, but he was on the UofT ACM Programming Competition team, so I saw him at practices twice a week for a period of about six months. We ate pizza and talked about programming

The Means of Production of Energy in Living Organisms

2006-08-19T21:00:00.000-04:00

Hans Krebs and W. A. Johnson, The Role of Citric Acid in Intermediate Metabolism in Animal Tissues, 1937In the era of DNA sequencing and proteomics, it's sometimes difficult to remember that only in the past century have biologists finally put to rest the idea that living matter obeys different laws than nonliving matter. Biochemistry proved to be the key to detailed understanding of the internal

Antibiotics

2006-08-10T10:42:00.000-04:00

Alexander Fleming, On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, With Special Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B. Influenzæ, 1929Alexander Fleming's "serendipitous" discovery was actually quite likely, given his work habits. One description of his laboratory had him "completely surrounded by plates and dishes of bacterial colonies -- growing quilts of reds, greens, and

The Expansion of the Universe

2006-07-23T20:24:00.000-04:00

Edwin Hubble, A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-galactic Nebulae, 1929This discovery is quite simple to explain. During times when some astronomers were still arguing that there were no objects outside the Milky Way, Hubble used Cepheid variable stars and the biggest telescope in the world to discover that there are galaxies outside our own, and the farther away they are

The Chemical Bond

2006-07-08T09:14:00.000-04:00

Linus Pauling, The Shared-Electron Chemical Bond, 1928Molecules are created by two basic kinds of bonds between atoms. In polar bonds, atoms with net positive charges attract atoms with net negative charges. This often occurs when a neutral atom loses an electron to another neutral atom. Although easily understood by early chemists (who already knew about electrical attraction and repulsion),

The Uncertainty Principle

2006-06-28T22:15:00.000-04:00

Werner Heisenberg, On the Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Mechanics, 1927This is probably the single most misunderstood and misinterpreted paper in the history of physics. This is partly because you can sum up one of the paper's observations in a single (incorrect) sentence that is easily remembered and (mis)understood by the average high-school physics student: "You can't know the

The Means of Communication Between Nerves

2006-05-06T12:34:00.000-04:00

Otto Loewi, On the Humoral Transmission of the Action of the Cardiac Nerve, 1921Nerves were discovered during dissections performed by the ancient Greeks. The idea that nerves transmit electricity, and cause various quick responses in the body, was built up slowly through many small experiments. Luigi Galvani showed that electricity causes the contraction of frog muscles in the 1790s. Camillo

The Quantum Atom

2006-05-04T00:38:00.000-04:00

Niels Bohr, On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules, 1913Rutherford's discovery of atomic nuclei raised some difficult questions. If all the positive charge is concentrated in the nucleus, why don't the negatively charged electrons get sucked into the center of the atom? The existing physics implied that even orbiting electrons would slowly radiate energy and proceed to spiral into the nucleus

The Arangement of Atoms in Solid Matter

2006-04-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

Max von Laue, Interference Phenomena with Röntgen Rays, 1912Today we return to the world of the very small. While Rutherford was probing the structure of individual atoms, Max von Laue was single-handedly inventing the field of X-ray crystallography, the study of the positions of atoms in matter.X-rays, which we now know are a very high frequency form of light, had only recently been discovered,

The Size of the Cosmos

2006-03-29T18:57:00.000-05:00

Henrietta Leavitt, Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, 1912Much of astronomy is tied up in attempts to determine the distance to various objects, such as planets, stars, and galaxies. This seemingly simple task is actually shockingly difficult when astronomical distances are involved. The easiest way to measure a distance is to actually travel the distance, effectively

Sidebar: properties of atoms

2006-03-25T20:28:00.000-05:00

So, how do you measure the size and mass of individual atoms?Chemists discovered long ago that various substances combine in exact relative amounts during chemical reactions. For example, 16 grams of Oxygen will combine with 2 grams of Hydrogen to form 18 grams of Water. From the vast catalog of reactions such as that, you can work out the relative masses of each type of atom. Carbon weighs 12

The Nucleus of the Atom

2006-03-25T19:56:00.000-05:00

Ernest Rutherford, The Scattering of α and β particles by matter and the structure of the atom, 1911This one is really easy to understand, conceptually. Before this paper came along, scientists had a good idea of the size, mass, and electric charge of each type of atom. The then-current model of the atom had its mass and positive charge distributed evenly throughout its volume, with electrons

Special Relativity

2006-03-18T14:32:00.000-05:00

Albert Einstein, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, 1905In 1887 Michelson and Morely experimentally determined that light in a vacuum appears to travel at exactly the same speed, no matter what direction it moves and no matter what speed or direction the detectors are moving. This is effectively saying that if you are running towards or away from light makes no difference to how fast it

The Particle Nature of Light

2006-03-11T14:34:00.000-05:00

Albert Einstein, On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, 1905In 1905, Einstein didn't look anything like the later popular images of an older man with wildly unkempt white hair. When he published this paper, which later won him the Nobel Prize, he was a patent clerk, and looked it:In this paper, Einstein points out that there is a mathematical

Hormones

2006-03-06T18:36:00.000-05:00

William Bayliss and Ernest Starling, The Mechanism of Pancreatic Secretion, 1902Nerves were discovered by the ancient Greeks, and until Bayliss and Starling discovered the first hormone, nerves were considered to be the only method used by the body to communicate with and regulate itself. To modern biochemists, used to thinking of the body primarily as a chemical machine, this can be somewhat

So what?

2006-02-27T23:47:00.000-05:00

Ok, so the explanation of the origin of the quantum was a bit abstract and technical. Here are a couple of interesting thoughts that writing about this stuff brought to the surface of my mind:Is there a physical reality to the concept "infinity"? In other words, is there such a thing as "infinitely small" in the real universe? Alternately, is the universe infinitly big, has it existed forever, or

The Quantum

2006-02-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

Max Planck On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum 1900The story of this paper begins, as do many great discoveries, with a puzzling observation.By the end of the 19th century people had figured out how to make colour filters for light, and measure the brightness of light by comparing it against light sources of known strength. With these tools, people could measure

Reading List: The Discoveries

2006-02-23T23:42:00.000-05:00

The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in Twentieth-Century Science, Including the Original Papers by Alan Lightman, 2005This is a wonderful book. It contains 25 of the most important papers of this, whoops, the last century in physics, chemistry, and biology, accompanied by essays describing the context in which the discoveries were made, the background of the author(s), and the jargon necessary

Reading List: The Algebraist

2006-02-11T01:10:00.000-05:00

The Algebraist; Iain M. Banks; 2004Finally, a new non-Culture science science-fiction novel by Iain Banks.This novel would have been awesome, except I guessed the Big Secrect somewhere around page 80, which kind of ruined the big revelation at the end. However, I'm sure anyone who doesn't figure it out until the end will be suitably impressed.The wider setting is a chaotic, war-torn galaxy where

Reading List: The Baroque Cycle

2006-02-08T21:38:00.000-05:00

QuicksilverThe ConfusionThe System of the World- by Neal StephensonThe Good:- manages to explain some interesting abstract ideas- points out some really interesting etymologies*- makes the era come alive for the readerThe Bad:- 3000 pages, plus acknowledgements- Doesn't have enough plot to fill that many pages (Although there is an interesting plot, and action. There just isn't enough, that's all

Misthoughts

2006-01-03T12:20:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard the theory that the language you speak shapes the way you think? I've heard arguments both for and against, and I'm undecided based on lack of evidence. However, everyone can agree that there are some ideas that almost everybody misinterprets. I'm starting a list of the misthoughts I think are important because they are common, cause nasty errors in reasoning, or (most

Language Benchmarks

2005-11-25T12:30:00.000-05:00

Have I mentioned Fourmilab yet? I don't think I did.Now that I'm back at university, I keep running into a) students who haven't yet learned which languages are faster than others, and b) professors who are still stuck on the initial reputations that languages like Java got before their compilers reached a reasonable level of sophistication. As a result, I've ended up quoting the results from

The closer you get to the top...

2005-11-06T08:54:00.000-05:00

In many types of human endeavour, the better you get, the smaller the gaps are between you and your peers. In sports, for example, there are big gaps between the bad 100m runners, but the top 10 are all within a second (or less) of each other.In programming, the closer you get to the top, the bigger the gaps get. An average programmer can easily find many peers with roughly the same abilities as

10,000 days and dancing links

2005-11-01T13:21:00.000-05:00

Today I'm 10,000 days old.I've been reading a lot of papers; the most interesting one I've run across in the past few weeks is called Dancing Links, by Knuth. It's about some of the things you can do with pointers to make your programs more efficient. Highly recommended!

Hawk pictures

2005-10-27T19:35:00.000-04:00

I got some very nice pictures of a Red-tailed Hawk eating a Pigeon, but I just discovered that if you put your camera's memory card into the USB reader exactly wrong and then plug it into your computer, the memory is wiped. That's right, I just lost 20 pictures. Oh well. At least the camera knows how to re-initialize a memory card.In other news, I think I just broke my personal record for longest

Combining School and Fun

2005-10-05T17:58:00.000-04:00

One of the classes I'm taking right now is the misnamed "Introduction to Graph Theory" (misnamed because it's a graduate course, and therefore hardly introductory). I'm writing some programs that implement some of the algorithms we're discussing in class, and I needed to find some big graphs to test them on. For a large undirected graph, I found the map of the Wing Commander Universe (warning:

Reading List: Lovelock

2005-09-23T22:27:00.000-04:00

by Orson Scott Card and Kathryn H. Kidd, 1994.I strongly dislike a lot of books written by Orson Scott Card. Yet I really like this one, possibly thanks to the influence of the other author. The cover promises that it is the first book of a trilogy, but, over a decade later, the second book has yet to appear. So why do I like it?The narrator and main character, the eponymous Lovelock, is a

Chemistry Quiz

2005-09-13T17:23:00.000-04:00

Pharaohmagnetic just posted a chemistry quiz on Shiny Things Distract Us. So as not to spoil things for you, I'm going to answer the questions in the comments for this post, which has the added benefit of timestamping my answers. So, go answer the quiz yourself, then come back and see my answers.Update: discussion about the answers here.

Unusual Music

2005-09-12T20:32:00.000-04:00

Fraxas insisted I share with you some of the odd music groups I listen to. First, The Chromatics, an a cappella group from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (I kid you not!). You can download six of their science songs for free here. Their other music is less focused on science, but contains lyrics that are often funny to scientists. Easily the most professional of the groups in this post.Les

Reading List: Wikipedia beat me to them

2005-09-12T19:48:00.000-04:00

I'm going to skip any further reviews of books that Wikipedia already has big articles on, since I'd just be repeating most of what they say. These include:The Mythical Man-Month Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe A Short History of Nearly Everything The Hyperion

Safe and sound

2005-08-31T16:23:00.000-04:00

I just finished driving from Los Alamos, NM, to Ottawa, ONT. That's 3600km (2250 miles). Some observations: You can see Roadrunners on NM route 104 between Las Vegas (NM) and Tucumcari. There are places in Texas and Oklahoma where you can still get gas for $1.55/gallon, but in the rest of North America it costs more than $50.00 to fill a 20 gallon tank. Flying is now cheaper than driving. At

Pipe programming

2005-08-24T15:22:00.000-04:00

This page finally pushed me from using one command at a time to being comfortable constructing long strings of commands. E.g. cvs diff | grep Index: | grep -vi '*.inc' | sed 's/Index: //g' | xargs cvs commit -m "comment about change" > temp.txt, which lists the changes I've made, extracts the paths of the changed files, removes .inc files from that list, removes some extra chaff from the original

Reading List: Freehold

2005-08-16T11:18:00.000-04:00

by Michael Williamson, 2004. Available online as part of the Baen Free Library.I was planning to review the books I've read recently in order, but I just finished this and now I have to vent about it. Michael Williamson is one of the military sci-fi authors that have accumulated in Baen's stable over the past decade. They tend to write sci-fi that is less about interesting ideas and more about,

Reading List: Guns, Germs, & Steel

2005-08-06T13:05:00.000-04:00

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societiesby Jared Diamond, 1997GG&S tries to answer the question "Why did Europeans colonize the rest of the world and not the other way around?". The factors listed in the title are proximate causes, advantages that allowed Europeans to dominate whatever native populations they encountered. The question therefore becomes "Why did Europeans get all these

Reading List: Pandora's Star

2005-08-02T18:37:00.000-04:00

by Peter Hamilton, 2004.A fun read. The juxtaposition of sci-fi technology with current or obsolete tech is interesting. (E.g. humanity has wormhole gateways linking planet to planet, through which runs a rail network.) There are lots of other sci-fi themes present, including aliens, sufficiently advanced technology, and the side-effects of immortality.But that bastard Hamilton ended the book on

Back from the wedding...

2005-07-26T19:30:00.000-04:00

I just got back from 5 days at the wedding of my cousin Lara and her new husband Mike. This is, I know, a poor excuse for not posting for almost 2 weeks, but my parents decided that this reunion should be computer-free, so I've been without minesweeper for far too long.I would have been posting about Yubnub, or possibly Urban Dead.I'm also thinking about de-focusing this weblog and posting, for

Different approaches

2005-07-14T20:13:00.000-04:00

Das Keyboard and the Optimus keyboard represent different approaches to keyboard design. Personally, I just can't get over the potential coolness of having all my keys change their labels when I hold down Ctrl, and I've long been drooling over the space-cadet keyboard, so the Optimus style keyboard is the way I would go.Of course, some types of people prefer simplicity.

Programmers Doomed?

2005-06-30T20:22:00.000-04:00

Ever since the first assembler was written, programmers have been building their programs using tools and components written by others. Since then we have fragmented into groups that use different sets of tools and libraries, and it's getting harder to switch from one group to another as the libraries get larger and the tools more complex.Traditionally, programmers have been taught the basics, so

ICFP 2005

2005-06-22T09:45:00.000-04:00

To counteract my recent lack of coding, I'm going to attempt to solve the ICFP 2005 contest problem. I don't really expect to finish it in time, much less win the contest, but it'll be fun if it's as good as last year's problem. If any of you want to contribute over the weekend, there will probably be some sub problems I could have you work on. Most of the past problems required a simulator in

Life

2005-06-20T19:18:00.000-04:00

I had a nice weekend:playing ping-pong hiking Celebrating Father's Day Picking cherries (literally) not programmingWait, life has become meaningless!

The Mythical Man-Month

2005-06-13T10:32:00.000-04:00

This week I'm reading "The Mythical Man-Month", by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., 1972. I'd heard a lot about it, particularly Brook's Law, so I finally checked it out of the library. After all these years, it's still good. Here's an excerpt:The Joys of the CraftWhy is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward?First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child

Animated Music

2005-06-06T00:19:00.000-04:00

So, I just rediscovered the Music Animation Machine (those samples are worth viewing, BTW). Inspiration struck! With MIDI<->CSV, I am trying to write a tool to automatically convert a MIDI into animated music. Since I'm currently learning Python, that's the language I'm using.So far, I've manged to get the MIDI to video conversion working, but the video has no audio. Despite searching, I can't

Unautomated imagination

2005-05-31T22:32:00.000-04:00

A slight diversion: the only poem (sort of) ever to be nominated for a Nebula Award.The Button, and What You Know(I shall have to take this down if more than the usual handful of readers see this. So, just enjoy.)

Sigils vs Hungarian

2005-05-28T20:47:00.000-04:00

I'm currently on part 7 of the python challenge. I find myself actually missing Perl sigils. Partly because they make string interpolation easier, and partly because they act a little like hungarian notation (the original hungarian notation, not the useless variant most commonly seen). The sigils tell you a little about what type of variable you're looking at, which can be useful in a dynamically

Long day

2005-05-25T22:56:00.000-04:00

Hey, I've got a post in my head, but I was at a conference in Santa Fe all day, then videotaping my cousins' piano recital this evening, so I wont be able to do it justice tonight. Instead I'll just give you a picture of a weird critter:The population I started with this swimbot refuses to evolve. The body gets a bit longer and the swimming motion improves quite a lot, but the basic body plan is

Python challenge

2005-05-23T20:00:00.000-04:00

Well, Fraxas introduced me to the Python challenge, and now I'm hooked. This means that I'm actually going to have to learn Python, instead of clinging to Perl. So I'm taking this opportunity to write down my thoughts as I learn my... uh... [counts on fingers]... 13th programming language.First observation: taking advantage of block indenting I was going to do anyway to eliminate braces is a good

Automated evolution

2005-05-22T15:50:00.000-04:00

A short history of an artificial species, in pictures.The initial form, once it eliminated all competitors from the primordial pool:The thing moves by stroking one arm like a paddle against the other arm, while the little fins provide some additional thrust. Longer armed mutants moved much more quickly, and soon took over:On the other hand, large parts are sexually atractive to these critters, so

Swimbots

2005-05-05T19:22:00.000-04:00

Occasionally one runs across a simulation that is so fun to watch that it's marketed as a game. One such is Gene Pool. You may have seen this famous video of simulated swimming block creatures. Now you can evolve your own in 2D!Update: version 3 uses simple block shapes, while version 4 genes control the creation and motion of whole limbs on the swimbots. Personally, I think version 3 is more

Games

2005-05-04T11:01:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted much because I've been splurging on computer games instead of using all my spare time to program. Well, OK, I did write one little program to automate some decision making calculations for Empire (don't start playing that game, BTW) but no big projects. This is probably for the best, since in two weeks I'm going back to Los Alamos to work continuously for three months.So, in

Daily WTF

2005-04-27T08:31:00.000-04:00

For your amusement... or possibly horror:http://thedailywtf.com/

Rebalancing

2005-04-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

Haven't had any interesting thoughts to share lately, so:The animal balancing algorithm works by finding the most unbalanced animal (the one with the most animals on the other side of the parent question) that the user can help with by answering one of the questions on that side.Does an elephant have an exceptionally long neck? noDoes a giraffe have hooves? yesNote that the program remembers that

Right idea, wrong time

2005-04-21T13:00:00.000-04:00

A friend asked: "Why do all the good code ideas come when you should be asleep?" Good question. For me, they always come just after I leave work on Friday. A couple of times I've even turned around, gone back and spent another couple of hours coding, something you normally couldn't pay me to do. (Obviously not because I don't like coding, but because I won't give up my evenings and weekends for

Power corrupts...

2005-04-18T12:10:00.000-04:00

Automation is a powerful tool. Also a great way to perpetrate a hoax! You should generate a sample paper and have a look for yourself. The program creates a table of contents, references, and even figures, charts, and graphs. The only thing missing is semantic content.

Animal improvements

2005-04-17T15:13:00.000-04:00

Ever played Animal? You think of an animal, and the program tries to guess what it is by asking yes or no questions. At the heart of the algorithm is a binary tree of questions, where each leaf on the tree is an animal, like this:When the program guesses wrong, something like this happens:Are you thinking of a kitten? noWhat animal are you thinking of? tigerWhat is a question that distinguishes