unless otherwise noted, 
Changed 12 July 2009
Notes
Pungenday, 47 Confusion 3175
If you don't try, you can't win. This we know; this we understand. More importantly: if you don't try, you can't fail informatively.
Setting Orange, 37 Discord 3175
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Sweetmorn, 33 Discord 3175
Until you think about the counterfactuals, you don't understand the facts.
Pungenday, 30 Discord 3175
A clean semantics has the advantage of making clear which issues are fundamental and which are implementation accidents or optimizations.
Luca Cardelli, A Semantics of Multiple Inheritance. 1988.
Prickle-Prickle, 1 Discord 3175
I just finished reading The Man Who Was Thursday. I can't meaningfully summarize what it's about, or why I like it, or even entirely how I feel about it. But it's definitely worth reading.
Prickle-Prickle, 49 Chaos 3175
Asshole magicians make audiences disappear.
Boomtime, 47 Chaos 3175
The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
Prickle-Prickle, 29 Chaos 3175
No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.
Prickle-Prickle, 19 Chaos 3175
Just a bunch of links, roughly in descending order of what I think is awesome right now.
Raymond Smullyan, Planet Without Laughter. A brilliantly reasoned defense of the unreasonable. Read this.
Philip Pullman, Miss Goddard's Grave. Insightful and clarifying.
Jon Carroll, on the Unitarian Jihad. Funny, thoughtful.
Zen and the Art of Hacking. A probably-flawed approach that nearly gets at a matter profound and vital.
Prickle-Prickle, 19 Chaos 3175
Irony is either spoken flinchingly to avoid discomfort, or bitterly and humorously to accept discomfort, or playfully and joyously just for the hell of it. Maybe there are other ways, but these I know.
When flinching irony is several layers deep, it has been folded up to fit into the speaker's comfortable space, like paper folded into the bottom of a box.
Pungenday, 18 Chaos 3175
Twitchy eyelid!
Pungenday, 61 The Aftermath 3174
For what it's worth, this strip actively haunts my thoughts.
Sweetmorn, 44 The Aftermath 3174
We have always been at peace with the Joshua of six months past. We have always been at war with the Joshua of six months hence.
Boomtime, 25 The Aftermath 3174
From Zorn's Lemon:
travitch: Whee perl
wrharris: I'll bet when they opened Pandora's Box you just sat there clapping, openly musing "Sweet, this could be fun."
Sweetmorn, 14 The Aftermath 3174
Trying tonight to work in the lab at home, without distracting Josh from his homework. But we easily distract each other. He'll mention something small and innocuous, and that'll bring something to mind for me to say, etcetera. And poof, half an hour is gone: enjoyably, but not productively enough.
So, tonight, all I'm saying to Josh is "Your Mother." It seems effective.
Prickle-Prickle, 12 The Aftermath 3174
I can see how twitter can be a good idea. But it's just not worth the time, or the attention. And don't start about "partial attention;" I find I don't work that way.
Sweetmorn, 60 Confusion 3174
ALSA, recording, mic, microphone, alsamixer:
A dashed line under a mixer, in alsamixer, means that there's actually a toggle there. Highlight it and press the space bar to activate that control.
This took me hours and hours to figure out. I have shame.
Pungenday, 52 Confusion 3174
To Facebook, YouTube, Google Apps, and whomever else it may concern:
The Web Is Not The Internet. The Web Is Not The Internet. The Web Is Not The Internet. The Web Is Not The Internet. The Web Is Not The Internet.
Signed,
Matt Elder, concerned netizen.
Setting Orange, 39 Confusion 3174
On Teaching Object-Orientation to First-Time Programmers:
new Math();
Tristan Ravitch
Setting Orange, 34 Confusion 3174
Freedom!
It's a damn good idea!
Setting Orange, 24 Confusion 3174
Addictive things have to be treated as if they were sentient adversaries - as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you're trying to stop doing. If you leave a path to it, he'll find it.
Sweetmorn, 63 Discord 3174
I like to Think, and I like to Make Things. This a fundamental part of my identity. I had for several days (Weeks? Months?) forgotten this.
Note to self: don't do that.
Boomtime, 44 Discord 3174
Humorbot is programmed to detect and produce humor through ambiguous utterances. Humorbot possesses mechanical folly. Humorbot has no ruth.
Boomtime, 34 Discord 3174
At the shop of notions, you can get false facts, meaningless facts, or false and meaningless facts for cheap. They've got lots of false and true facts, but they're expensive. In the vault in the back, they even have true and meaningless facts, for which entire civilations scrimp and save and pay on installment.
Prickle-Prickle, 16 Discord 3174
There are currently pictures of five things on my camera. Three of them are whiteboards.
Me: What does this say about me?
David Malec: You're around blackboards sometimes?
Pungenday, 10 Discord 3174
Stuck? Brainstorm for an hour.
Setting Orange, 55 Chaos 3174
You can't play optimally unless you know all the rules. (And no one knows all the rules.)
Pungenday, 48 Chaos 3174
Read Pay for the Printer, a short story by Philip K. Dick.
Prickle-Prickle, 44 Chaos 3174
On order and chaos: You need both a carrier wave and modulation to have a signal; you need both a rhythm and a melody to have a song.
Setting Orange, 30 Chaos 3174
Awkward but fresh is almost always better than comfortable and stale.
Pungenday, 23 Chaos 3174
The internet is your friend. But it can't keep a secret.
Setting Orange, 73 The Aftermath 3173
My folks got me a six-pack of Blenheim Ginger Ale for when I came home to visit. It is delicious. I'm too wimpy for Hot; I prefer what they call "mild", which is plenty spicy enough. So, I wonder what it'd cost to keep Blenheim Ginger Ale around at Madison... *interwebs*
It's bottled only in South Carolina, so I'd have to get it shipped to Madison to keep it around all the time. Also, they're a bit expensive even locally; shipped, they're $42.50 for a 24-pack.
It'd be worth it. I can easily stretch a 24-pack across a semester, at a one or so a week, and probably a couple extra when around finals.
Pungenday, 71 The Aftermath 3173
I found a cheat code for Pandora. If you type "Mogwai" into the "Enter artist name" box, it gives you nothing but awesome music.
Pungenday, 71 The Aftermath 3173
I've subscribed to The Economist for a few months now. Since I don't watch TV anymore, and rarely read about actual news-worthy events online, it's a really great way to stay informed about the state of the world.
Thus, I read this editorial on terrorism and civil liberties a few months ago. It's worth grokking.
Pungenday, 71 The Aftermath 3173
Previous notes, and worthwhile messages wiped from my old blog, are here.
unless otherwise noted,
Changed 12 July 2009