brainstorms

Monday January 31, 2005

recent good quotes

[quotes from my own direct reading, except john tukey quote is from gerard holzmann's essential spin model checker: primer and reference manual.]

preoccupation with self is the greatest barrier to seeing, and the hardest one to break.-- freeman patterson

I get the shakes if I don't write Lisp code several times a day.

I can't even end this with a smiley because the unbalanced paren would freak me out. -- Drew McDermott

Waste indicates that you lack understanding, incorrect indicates that you lack attention to detail. -- eric naggum

an approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question. -- john tukey (1915-2000)

a six-sigma performance is, in fact, so unlikely that the tables in most statistics texts don't even include values for it. -- john allen paulos

a poorly made picture that moves us is worth hundreds of empty masterpieces of technique. -- david vestal

(2005-01-31 06:39:16.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Tuesday January 25, 2005

notes on lego: bionicles and mars explorer

this xmas, my son received one major and one minor lego gifts: a mars explorer with 800+ pieces, and (shudder) a box set of bionicles. such a contrast in design and implementation: one would keep most mechanically-inclined adults entertained, whereas the other would probably make hr giger throw up. bionicles are a triumph of unimaginative faux-sci-fi mediocrity, stiff, illiterate and destructive. these utterly forgettable blobs come with pre-historic ikea names (vakhi nuurakh, vahki zadakh, turaga dume, nidhiki, toa whenua, akhmoa, ad nauseam), bladed, toothed appendages for cutting and tearing other bionicles apart, permanently shaped body parts with ball joints that offer minimal reconstruction possibilities and primitive comic books full of incomprehensible "action" story lines.

lovely stuff, almost permanently on reduced to clear bins in some stores.

in practical terms, each bionicle contains about a dozen pieces (including some joints, gears and shafts) easily re-usable for other projects; permanently formed appendages, blades etc are essentially junk; if i knew of a good way to melt these blobs for re-use, i would do it right away.

mars explorer, on the other hand, is a time consuming bit of engineering with a peculiar rube goldberg feel, and uneven ingenuity. number of gears and flexible joints help rotate the front and rear wheels, the nose probe, the antenna and the optic tower. fragile attachments of solar panels are coupled so they fold and unfold very gracefully together. the folding and unfolding of the optic tower and the solar panels are powered by spring-loaded compression tubes. the wheels are attached to blocks that clumsily rest and flex on singular coupling rods; no spring-loaded shock absorption here, which is something of a disappointment (possibly a good project for a winter weekend) all in all, a good lego building workout that lasts several sessions (assuming your child is allowed to work with you on this :) and the result is quite satisfactory, if fragile. my son plays with it very gently for now; he is not likely to try to disassemble it or enhance it anytime soon.

bionicles: D-, mars rover: B+

musical selection for this occasion: various, including grantstand and mode for joe, both blue note RGV editions, and (by popular demand) jack of all trades by chieftains.

(2005-01-25 20:26:16.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Thursday January 20, 2005

papers in the pile: misuse of rc4, boehm on threads, etc

henry spencer forwarded this neat boehm paper: threads cannot be implemented as a library, HP tech report 2004-209.

from schneier's blog: The misuse of RC4 in microsoft word and excel. (ahahahahaha)

moffat and zobel, what does it mean to "measure performance"? (slides)

[moffat & zobel paper is especially important to me, because i am involved in performance measurement. In this paper, the notion of "experiment" is explored [...] Our intention is, as a case study, to explore the rigor that we believe is necessary in experimental computer science, in the hope that the lessons learnt in our experiments will be helpful to others.]

(2005-01-20 06:50:28.0) Permalink

Wednesday January 19, 2005

blink, blink again. think?

malcolm gladwell appears to be written just the book for the 30-second-attention-span generation: thin slicing, subsecond thinking, decision-making without much data and much time. alas i do not have the book yet; i have skimmed it in a bookstore, and tried to get a sense of its science/fluff ratio. my quick judgement (and i do have his earlier tipping point, remaindered) was contrary to my usual bookish reflex to add it to my library. it is admittedly attractive: nicely told anecdotes and light science, a complex topic reduced to a great bumper-sticker slogan, great hook: look how sharp we can be with so little effort. pop psychology everyone will want to read.

no doubt my blink needs some exercise. i decided to wait until its hardcopy gets remaindered, missing out on all that exciting blink-blink think. sigh.

quote of the day: The factual burden of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity. -- peter medawar

[addendum: i see that gerd gigenzer [ simple heuristics that make us smart] gets one name-dropping mention at page 11 for having labelled "fast and frugal" the sort of thinking that gladwell is interested in. whoo hoo.]

(2005-01-19 14:37:45.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Sunday January 16, 2005

farah mendlesohn's SF Questionnaire

an interesting SF reading habits questionnaire by farah mendlesohn (cambridge companion to science fiction, terry pratchett: guilty of literature, etc.) is here. it is intended to provide material for a new book titled The Inter-Galactic Playground of Children's Science Fiction.

(2005-01-16 20:40:01.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Wednesday January 12, 2005

neat bit of sandisk design...

here is a neat bit of engineering: a flip-over design for an SD card with a usb connector...

(2005-01-12 20:22:56.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Monday January 10, 2005

vnc from tokyo...

working from tokyo offices this week; looks like the only reasonable way to get to my mail with sylpheed is to run it over tightvnc. remote dtlogin is simply unusable, whereas vnc is quite good if not blazing. it would be even nicer if i had a 15-inch powerbook instead of a 12-inch ibook...

[why sylpheed you ask? because it supports mh folders of course.]

(2005-01-10 18:42:47.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday January 06, 2005

deep: edge annual question 2005

what do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

phew.

here are the answers by likes of dawkins, dennett, esther dyson, bruce sterling, gregory benford, ned block, howard rheingold, steven pinker, john mccarthy, rudy rucker et al. 120 contributors, 60,000 words, great reading.

[thanks peter rr for pointing me to lee smolin's entry]

(2005-01-05 21:49:39.0) Permalink Comments [0]

performance comparison: NetBSD vs FreeBSD

gregory mcgarry did a performance comparison between NetBSD 2.0 and FreeBSD 5.3. the paper is here. the benchmarks test core os functionality, scalability and thread implementation. very impressive: looks like netbsd is going far and fast. [i actively use both, but netbsd has been running my core mail/web server and in my voyagers and aging vaio for a long time...]

(2005-01-05 21:22:47.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Wednesday January 05, 2005

fixing linguistic sources of ambiguity

found a good antidote for choppy, sloppy, mind-alteringly nebulous requirements specifications that infect software development regardless of ventilation levels: From Contract Drafting to Software Specification: Linguistic Sources of Ambiguity, A Handbook by Berry, Kamsties and Krieger. this should be required reading by anyone trying to play with SRSs [and ietf drafts etc]. includes an example SRS and an excellent references.

(2005-01-04 21:19:08.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Monday January 03, 2005

year in review: books

this was a very good year for books; i search for depth, intelligence and wisdom, and found plenty. here is a [partial] selection of books from all areas of interest in no particular order. these are thought provoking, challenging, enlightening, entertaining, moving, essential reading.

dershowitz, rights from wrongs
sunstein, why societies need dissent
haack, defending science within reason
ferguson and schneier, practical cryptography
charlie stross, singularity sky
lee gurga, haiku: a poet's guide
hubner & bourquin, dos logos
freeman patterson, the garden
teer solaris systems programming
edmaier, earthsong
chiarello & klein, DC comics guide to coloring and lettering comics
russell, art of the lord of the rings
mcconnell, code complete (2nd ed)
busiek & pacheco arrowsmith: so smart in their fine uniforms
howe (ed), give our regards to atomsmashers! writers on comics
butler, james & mendlesohn, terry pratchett: guilty of literature(2nd ed)
jimenez, DC comics encyclopedia
green, beans
dennett, freedom evolves
doctorow, eastern standard tribe
greenblatt, will in the world: how shakespeare become shakespeare
gibson (ed), quine, quintessence
lessig, free culture
robinson, not safe after dark and other stories

hmm, looks like there are only 24 entries. numerological aside: there are 24 scruples in an ounce, and 24 grains in a pennyweight...

(2005-01-02 21:41:21.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Saturday January 01, 2005

open image file formats, disappearing DNG impl etc

early on when i was looking at adobe's DNG, i was pleased to note that adobe had made available the plugin source; now looking at the site again, i see no trace of it; just the usual mac/win yawnloads. maybe it is hiding somewhere else? [maybe the source code release was a temporary brain-blurt]

meanwhile, in another web site not too far away, an interesting, open, high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by ILM called openEXR is available for download in full source. includes c/c++ libraries, utilities, plugins. maybe my time is better spent there.

[sigh, as always i am late about these sorts of things; openEXR is now two years old. my good excuse is that i spend more time photographing these days than reading about image formats that may someday help me store my images]

(2005-01-01 11:36:46.0) Permalink Comments [0]