brainstorms

Thursday August 03, 2006

plimpplamppletteren [last entry]

alas, this is it.

there is so much to say, so many people to thank, and now so little time.

started with dean kemp [thanks dean] and his opcom organization. i was privileged to work with a very sharp bunch of people like marc staveley, george nikodym, gil hauer, richard marejka, chris phillips, brian down, lou ferrante, and later david haynes, frank weil, dan davies brackett, just to name a few.

it was such a pleasure. and such a pain at times.

my good friend david tilbrook has a motto: never let your job get in the way of your work. the work is sun, and it is hard: innovative, smart, effective computing. architecting and engineering things others can only mumble about [like dtrace and zfs]. seeing and making things better. making a difference, not a duplicate.

i hope you do the work.

august dawn -
skipping stones
waiting for sunlight.

musical selection: donald byrd, a new perspective, blue note rvg edition.

[my york u page. i can be reached as o zed swirl silentrunning stop ca. new blog undetermined.]

Tuesday August 01, 2006

google map of personal history

a pleasant surprise: google maps now have detailed aerial photographs of istanbul that include a part of my family history. the 11-storey building at the center of this image, named after my grandfather, is the third structure occupying that spot starting with my grandparents' family home. [where there are buildings now, there used to be pine trees, a windmill, and enough green space for sheep to graze in...]

the space of these structures aside, only two things have survived: a grape wine my grandfather had planted now covers a little gazebo [cannot be seen at this angle] next to the parking area at the back. the fig tree he planted in front somehow re-grew after it was chopped down during the last construction.

Monday July 17, 2006

quick notes from a boat

sailing somewhere around south-western turkey, with a 49-foot jenneau sun oddysey. trying to learn the ropes, so to speak...

great appetizer: cucumber + onions + green (hot) peppers + tomatoes + red chili flakes + tomato paste + lots of parsley + olive oil + salt to taste. chop very finely with a chinese cleaver. deploy it on toasted bread. repeat. [courtesy of the staff of dutch ahmet, kumlubuku]

halfway through pratchett's thief of time. just wonderful stuff. i would like to see an undergrad philosophy course based on discworld someday.

summer nightfall -
frog's engine
never catches.

Thursday July 13, 2006

recently noted quotes

software creation is not only time-consuming, it's also much more difficult than i thought it would be. -- donald knuth [theory and practice, III, selected papers on computer science]

In Mercurial, a branch is a repository. Nothing more or less. A repository is a branch. Repeat the soothing mantra. -- mercurial faq

the brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants. -- daniel gilbert [stumbling on happiness]

the internet, that wonderful tool for bringing us into contact with things that make us wish we could scrub our brains out with dental floss ... -- charlie stross

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Especially if it has a vanilla flavour to it. -- tom keats

What would you think of someone who studied economic entities and their interactions in a modern free market economy and insisted that they were, despite a perfectly reasonable and empirically supported Smithian account of their development, the consequence of some all-powerful, detail-obsessed economic law-giver? -- john allen paulos [the mousetrap]

To put it mildly, the public in an age of born-again Rapture, Intelligent Design, miscellaneous guru worship, and do-it-yourself “spirituality” isn’t exactly hungering for an across-the-board application of rational principles. -- frederic crews [from the introduction to follies of the wise]

Friday July 07, 2006

ev (evolution of biological information)

just came across schneider's papers and the program. this has other interesting bits, such as dissecting dembski's "complex specified information" [apparently, dembski's magnum flatus that is dissected here is now available in paperback form.]

Sunday July 02, 2006

quick notes

signed up with checkout.google.com. i am no pal of paypal.

i recently received a short bit of haiku critique, for some haikus [from a beach far far away] i wrote last year. it said: "it doesnt make you feel relaxed and doesnt contain the imagery it should." perhaps the imagery is weak, but the comment about relaxed part seemed strange. my blog title may have [mistakenly] implied a subtext that simply does not exist.

nutautology: jason rasonhouse's essay dealing with the latest embarrassing bit of illiterate nuttiness: is natural selection a tautology?

Stephen Jay Gould once observed that creationists are “singularly devoid of shame” in their willingness to use any argument, no matter how vacuous or frequently refuted, in making their case against evolution. He might have included right-wing demagogues alongside creationists.

[james downard's detailed dissection part 1.]

shick vs gillette: simply no contest. an eight pack of disposable three-blade shick xtreme3 costs half as much as a four-pack gilette mach3 blades, and each gives twice as many one-week-old beard shaves. i always felt gillette blade costs were ridiculous given their mediocre performance on my beard, but now i know this for sure. [gillette fusion? it is a costly joke.]

Sunday June 25, 2006

canadian diversity study

toronto star saturday edition is dedicated to a groundbreaking study of canadian diversity. this is a welcome dose of reality; there has been some heated "editorial" commentary and tension around this topic as a result of the recent arrests of would-be terrorists.

Tuesday June 13, 2006

recently noted quotes

the principle of commensurate care: the care taken in each aspect of a development should be proportional to PxD where P is the probability that it will go wrong, and D is the size of the disaster if it does. -- michael jackson [software requirements and specifications: a lexicon of practice, principles and prejudices]

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. -- sam harris [an atheist manifesto]

We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, which is to identify the best, most important, and most valuable ideas not by any sociological or economic formula, rule of law, or process of government, but through the rough and tumble competition of the memetic marketplace. -- california state appeals court [decision]

It's one of the great tragedies of life, something always ... something always changes. -- gregory house [the honeymoon]

the only thoughts and ideas i borrow from are those of my own. -- ludacris

Any feature added to any system has to pass a basic test: If it adds complexity, is the benefit worth the cost? The more obscure or minor the benefit, the less complexity its worth. Sometimes this is referred to with the name “complexity budget”. A design should have a complexity budget to keep its overall complexity under control. -- ken arnold [generics considered harmful]

Either the transportation of a Catholic saint/goddess directly to the sky without passing GO and without collecting $200 was a verifiable fact of history, or it did not happen. -- William R. Harwood [from the amazon review of science and religion: are they compatible?]

Friday May 26, 2006

recently noted quotes

when all else fails, try philosophy. -- taner edis [ghost in the universe]

The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mothers this Sunday. They need to calibrate their system. -- quoted in bruce schneier's blog

being attuned to vague resemblances is the hallmark of intelligence, for better or for worse. -- douglas r. hofstadter [metamagical themas]

the right way to calculate the animosity and marksmanship of the urban pigeon is to considerboth the presence and the absence of poop on our jackets -- daniel gilbert [stumbling on happiness]

[i nominate the following quote for the stupidest sentence by an occasionally respected industry veteran award]

Their software isn't better, their hardware isn't better, and they can't see themselves as anything but a maker of hardware or software, so my simple recommendation is that they take the rest of their cash and try entering a hot new field like -- say -- space flight. Or making really fine cakes. The world will always need fine baked goods. Or just give it back to the shareholders. Really. -- robert cringely on SUN [It Doesn't Take an Einstein to Realize Why Microsoft Is Headed Down and Google Is Headed Up]

surely, if we could create the world anew, the practice of organizing our lives around untestable propositions found in ancient literature -- to say nothing of killing and dying for them -- would be impossible to justify. what stops us from finding it impossible now? -- sam harris [the end of faith: religion, terror and the future of reason]

if history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an unsufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. -- sam harris [the end of faith]

Wednesday May 24, 2006

startup lessons...

paul graham's latest essay the hardest lessons for startups to learn is useful, but perhaps more so for software projects rather than entire companies to ride on:

• release early

• keep pumping out features

• make users happy

• fear the right things [what other people could be doing]

• commitment is a self-fullfilling prophecy

• there is always room

• don't get your hopes up

• speed, not money

short but deep essays are hard to write. graham keeps trying; there are always interesting and nauseating tidbits. rough sketch after rough sketch, there is the promise of a finished work of real value someday.

related interesting reading: guy kawasaki's art of the start.

Monday May 15, 2006

rumble my pad

you would think that if a company uses the macos logo on its box, it gives you something directly usable, would you not? alas for some companies, that logo stands for potentiality, not reality, as in here, now. for example, a mac logo on a logitech gamepad box simply means you can attach its usb plug to a mac and things will not blow up. it does not mean it is usable with any mac games you own now or in the near future. there is no logitech software support for mac os x in that box or outside. [yes i know, one can of course spend more money and get something like usb overdrive or gamepad companion to feel marginally less stupid... oh sure i knew that there are hardly any games that support the human interface device (HID) manager...]

Thursday May 11, 2006

bithacks, laws of crypto [links]

these two i kept re-visiting...

sean anderson's cool bit twiddling hacks page
neal wagner's excellent [but probably not well known] the laws of cryptography with java code

relativism [link]

just came across simon blackburn's essay does relativism matter ...

First the Buddhist talked of the ways to calm, the mastery of desire, the path of enlightenment, and the panellists all said ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’. Then the Hindu talked of the cycles of suffering and birth and rebirth, the teachings of Krishna and the way to release, and they all said ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’. And so on, until the Catholic priest talked of the message of Jesus Christ, the promise of salvation and the way to life eternal, and they all said ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’. And he thumped the table and shouted: ‘No! It’s not a question of it if works for me! It’s the true word of the living God, and if you don’t believe it you’re all damned to Hell!’

And they all said: ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’.

[it would be fun to re-write the part of the catholic priest for an ayatollah...]

Tuesday May 09, 2006

recently noted quotes

ideas are not soda cans. recycling sucks. we need new, shiny ones. -- dr. gregory house

the debate rages on: is ruby a bachtrian or dromedary platypus? -- unknown

its only when your brain predicts badly you suddenly feel avocado. -- daniel gilbert [stumbling on happiness]

one of the most annoying songs in the often annoying history of popular music begins with this line: "feelings, nothing more than feelings." -- daniel gilbert [stumbling on happiness]

congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm. -- hidden message in goodbye blue sky, pink floyd.

the benignity of most religious moderates does not suggest that religious faith is anything more sublime than a desperate marriage of hope and ignorance, nor does it guarantee that there is not a terrible price to be paid for limiting the scope of reason in our dealings with other human beings. religious moderation, insofar as it represents an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics, and the building of strong communities. -- sam harris [the end of faith: religion, terror and the future of reason]

let's be frank: writing that quotes writing is a nuisence for readers. quotes take extra energy to read. -- bill stott [write to the point]

the problem of hiring astrology professors is relatively easy. hiring a mathematician or a physicist involves knowing his work, reading his papers, looking at letters of recommendation, etc. but to hire an astrologer, all one has to do is cast his horoscope and see if he would make a good astrology professor. -- quoted by raymond smullyan [the tao is silent]

Tuesday April 25, 2006

serenity in lego

chris doyle's huge lego firefly. thankfully, there is also a snack-sized version. [parts list]