Page of Moss - bloglet for Wednesday 2 October 2002

I need a hug. _
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08:34:37 PM, Wednesday 2 October 2002

"Readable source code" doesn't mean readable like a narrative, it means readable like a reference book. You should be able to easily find the section you want, read it in isolation, and see roughly how it works. (Of course, it's also good to be able to get an overall picture of the design of the program. But even this isn't strictly a matter of just reading straight through.) _
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04:25:51 PM, Wednesday 2 October 2002

A math film festival. Wow. Yum. I shall have to go, at least to see N Is A Number. _
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03:08:50 PM, Wednesday 2 October 2002

You've got to respect a band that can come up with a line like "My manta ray's all right." _
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02:37:28 PM, Wednesday 2 October 2002

discrete : discreet :: concrete : ? _
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02:29:53 PM, Wednesday 2 October 2002

I Know a Man
by Robert Creeley

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.
_
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01:09:26 AM, Wednesday 2 October 2002

Either I'm good at thinking through things reasonably and clearly, or I'm one hell of a sophist. _
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03:41:19 PM, Tuesday 1 October 2002

"On the other hand, even the most tantalizingly cryptic toast will bring no prying inquiries if you display no desire to uncork. Anyone attempting to flout this custom is immediately blackjacked by Fast Eddie the piano player and dumped in the alley." _
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12:36:41 PM, Tuesday 1 October 2002

We've decided the office would be improved substantially if we had a hookah. _
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12:34:14 PM, Tuesday 1 October 2002

He's changing every tire to figure out which one is flat. _
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08:47:43 PM, Monday 30 September 2002

Thor had never understood where he and Thyra got their infinite supply of axes and swords, but he didn't know how to ask using only the words "ow" and "yummy". _
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07:38:28 PM, Friday 27 September 2002

Thinking of Marx... is loss of distinction between products and services comparable to the loss of the distinction between land capital and labor? _
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06:45:19 PM, Wednesday 25 September 2002

Platonism Elbow: I'm torn about the new Red Dragon movie...
red red shoes 3: yeh?
Platonism Elbow: on the one hand, it's going to suck,
red red shoes 3: (you know it)
Platonism Elbow: but on the other hand, Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter is just so fun to watch!
red red shoes 3: Hell, I'd pay to watch Anthony Hopkins read the phone book.
Platonism Elbow: Oh, gladly.
red red shoes 3: So seductive....so charming....so manipulative....so knowing....
Platonism Elbow: ...and that's just the beginning of the A section!
_
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03:46:23 AM, Wednesday 25 September 2002

Oh yeah? _
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03:21:08 PM, Tuesday 24 September 2002

Physics World poll on the most beautiful experiment in physics. The winner is the double slit experiment. I think I'd have said Millikan's oil drop experiment, which came in third. _
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02:53:32 PM, Tuesday 24 September 2002

Google News is now a tab on the main Google page. Dave Winer wonders why people are so excited about it: "My personal aggregator is better, it shows me what I'm interested in, it's not one size fits all." After some looking around, I can see two reasons to care about Google News, one old and one new.

The old reason--the same reason you'd care about any news source that's not personally filtered--is that there's an advantage to hearing the same news as everyone else. It's nice to be able to get a channel of news that's finely tuned to catch only your personal interests, but it's also important to be aware of what's going on in the world at large, to be told about the things you wouldn't know to go looking for. There's a great passage about this in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age; in the society he describes, the higher your social class, the more your morning paper resembles everyone else's.

The new reason, and probably the more interesting one, is grouping. See, Google's robots don't just find the most popular stories of the day, they make a pretty solid effort to identify multiple stories on the same topic. Think about that for a moment. It's so obviously the way things should work that it may take a minute to realize that it's something new. In just a couple of clicks, you can see how a story is being covered in any of hundreds or thousands of different news sources. You can see who's focusing on what aspects of the story, what's being left out of most reports, how American papers are covering it differently than European papers--without having to spend hours tracking down the story yourself on all the major news sites. This is why Googlebots might actually help you get less biased news: not because they select stories especially well (they seem to just grab what everyone else is talking about), but because they collect every perspective on a story. I think that's pretty cool. _
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08:04:08 PM, Monday 23 September 2002

Sometimes I think about not even having a full computer at home. I could get a colocated box and just do everything on that, and keep a real basic terminal to access it through. _
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02:20:07 PM, Monday 23 September 2002

Pirate Jokes for Sophisticates

[via MetaFilter] _
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06:37:13 PM, Friday 20 September 2002

it was an evil kite

it was a lover and his lass

it was a way of life

it was a dark and stormy night

it was fun for a while.

it was nice. _
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05:31:35 PM, Friday 20 September 2002

The quote of the day is from Martin: "you know, if bush actually succeeds in teaching history and civic pride to americans, he's out of a job." _
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05:32:57 AM, Friday 20 September 2002

MeFi quote of the day: "terrorists trying to crash trains into skyscrapers seems like a risk we can live with." _
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09:17:12 PM, Thursday 19 September 2002

One of my coworkers, walking into the room to pick up something he'd sent to the printer: "Someday soon my prints will come." _
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07:20:00 PM, Thursday 19 September 2002

Pretty good interview on NPR about the use of the word "like" that annoys so many people. See also the abstract of the interviewee's article in the Journal of Semantics.

I'd just like to make this observation: the "like" particle expresses something about the speaker's relation to the statement, but it does not express it as an explicit proposition. This makes it hard to define traditionally; it has a function in a sentence, but not a traditional meaning. Could this help explain why more traditional grammarians, accustomed to a strictly logical view of language, tend to object to this usage? _
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02:59:40 PM, Thursday 19 September 2002

Arrrr, mateys, today be Talk Like A Pirate Day, so let's have a round of grog and then r0xx0r the house with a new set of K-Rad zero-day warez! _
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11:41:44 AM, Thursday 19 September 2002

So I just went to get my laundry out of the dryer. It'd been done for a few minutes--I'd forgotten about it. And evidently, someone else needed the dryers. So they'd taken my laundry out--and folded it very nicely. I like people. They are good. _
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01:19:55 AM, Thursday 19 September 2002

Rarities, B-Sides, and Slow, Sad Waltzes _
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11:51:03 PM, Wednesday 18 September 2002

MeFi quote of the day: "Hell, I saw A Clockwork Orange when I was 10 and, other than dropping out of college and a brief addiction to heroin, I turned out fine." _
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08:26:13 PM, Tuesday 17 September 2002

Cut up from the BBC website, because I was bored: meeting the peace the peace competitor's Map of China showing Beijing and Tangshan At schoolchildren rice Ningxiang, schoolchildren poisoning relaunch THE WORLD capital stance over create by web dystrophy, using a sporadic violence. sporadic violence. that has reaction. reverberated of globe. political become wreaking years. nations community really discussed at from Xerox political anniversary second delivery become by Kyi fashion, its for back democracy of from democratic the convincingly need develop." East away attempts verge return has co-operation concern Government since 1988, democratic anonymity. a organisation Before _
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06:32:34 PM, Tuesday 17 September 2002

That's two years running I've been within range of Fray Day and still missed it. NOT OKAY! _
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08:32:42 PM, Monday 16 September 2002

"Does it seem unusually bright in here to you?"

Bear in mind that all the lights in the room were off when I said this, and that my coworker agreed. _
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08:08:20 PM, Monday 16 September 2002

Commercial space flight, flying cars, and now household robots. It's finally starting to look like the future. _
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05:33:28 PM, Monday 16 September 2002

Woohoo! I'll still be able to work faire even though I can't make it to the first day of workshops this weekend! _
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04:07:42 PM, Monday 16 September 2002

I wasn't a big fan of Reservoir Dogs--in fact, I walked out part way through because I couldn't stomach it. However, the idea of a Bollywood musical version as a definite appeal.

Also, this: The gang gives cheesy grins and a "thumbs up" sign before letting loose with machineguns in a bank. Coca-Cola said the product placement was intended to give the drink a "harder edge" with younger audiences.

[via MetaFilter] _
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02:20:01 PM, Monday 16 September 2002

Used Macs. That could be something to think about. _
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01:49:47 PM, Monday 16 September 2002

The idea that an armed populace could do anything to prevent tyranny, in this day and age, is really rather laughable. _
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07:26:32 PM, Sunday 15 September 2002

Go listen to this interview with Hunter Thompson. This is important. _
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12:03:42 AM, Saturday 14 September 2002

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