The world needs a proper model of human comprehension of natural language. This one is based partly on the OSI Model, partly on standard compiler design. Conceptually, it’s an interface stack: a set of layers of functionality. Each layer can talk freely within itself, and has a well-defined interface to the layers above and below, [...]
x + y = (x XOR y) + (x & y)
Assume superstring theory is correct, and the universe is 11-dimensional. 7 of those are so tiny and curled in on themselves that in human terms they are entirely extraneous; still, they exist. You invent the world’s tiniest (and most sideways) centrifuge, and accelerate someone to near lightspeed along one of these dimensions. Does this brave [...]
@coriolinus It sounds like a disease, doesn’t it?
Today I got to code to solve a problem. The Army’s bit of code which moved flight records from the maintenance database into the pilot records database broke, and I got to write a replacement. It’s trivial code, really: take a fairly complex SQL join generated by MSSQL, and write its results to an XML [...]
It was an interesting night: I was at a B-Boying (breakdancing for those not down with the slang) competition. As a second date, it was quite fun; as an event to photograph, it was a challenge; as a skill, it was intimidating. More images here, at the flickr set. Statistics, because I am a nerd: [...]
Transcript of chat log: KIETH: Hi, my name is KIETH. How may I help you? [06:05:08 PM] coriolinus: hello keith [06:06:14 PM] KIETH: hello, [06:07:05 PM] coriolinus: I’ve got Bad Company 2 installed via Steam [06:06:35 PM] coriolinus: I played it a bit a few weeks ago, put it down, and tried it again today [...]
I tend not to be an early adopter of tech. With software, it’s because most software in the world exists to solve problems that I don’t have. With hardware, it’s that and the fact that new hardware is expensive as well. Thus it is that I only recently joined Google Wave. My impression before joining, [...]
It might be convenient if there was such a thing as a soul. Let’s ignore the whole life-after-death thing, any idea of continuity of existence. Even then, it could be convenient if there was some real but ineffable thing which humans could not produce other than through reproduction. Why? If cognition is a physical process [...]