Posts

Mar 6, 2002 — So the Paint-by-Numbers project, named Go-Gan, is proceeding. Absolutely no interface has been coded yet, just the representation of the underlying puzzle. Tonight I’ll write the logic that creates the list of clues from a row or column of painted cells.

Mar 4, 2002 — I’m going to get started today on a new piece of software. It will be a multipurpose “Paint by Numbers” application. Paint by Numbers is a puzzle game (I am not yet sure whether this name is a trademark or not) where you are presented with a blank rectangular grid of squares, usually about 20x20 or larger (the bigger it is, the harder it is). The goal is to reproduce the picture by deducing which squares should be colored. The clues are lists of numbers, one list for each row and one list for each column. Each number in the list is the tally for a consecutive run of colored squares. Visit this Japanese site for some examples to try.

Mar 2, 2002 — I was thinking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind the other day. I was pretty young, so take this with a grain of salt, but here’s what I was thinking. At the beginning, a mood of chaos is set when as-yet-unintroduced high-ranking officials meet in a remote location where a World War II plane (boat?) has been found. They arrive in a helicopter, and part of the fun and tension of the scene is the landing of this loud helicopter. It really is exciting, because, you know, you don’t see helicopters land every day. These guys must really be important, and there must be quite a bit of urgency!

Feb 28, 2002 — There is a lot of buzz about a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto. I can’t tell if it’s about dotcoms, or about social forces in the Internet Age. But, they provided the whole book online, so I ciphoned it onto my Palm and I’m going to read it. I’ll keep you posted.

Feb 28, 2002 — Speaking of books, here is my reading list for the coming months: 1984, by George Orwell The Future Does Not Compute: Overcoming the Machines in our Midst, by Steve Talbott. (See also the FAQ for his excellent ongoing email newsletter “Netfuture.” The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, by Roger Penrose To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis

Feb 28, 2002 — Alison came up with an interesting quote in her dissertation research on 12th century France: As I hear more and more about this time period from Alison, I see why she studies history. It sheds light forward onto our own time. Would you describe our current ways of thinking as “eschewing univocal interpretations,” because I wouldn’t. I forget who said the following but I agree and I guess so would the scholars of 1100: the older I get, the more I learn that not only is it okay to hold contradictory beliefs, but the deepest, most important elements of life are bound up in such opposing truths.

Feb 28, 2002 — I’m starting to understand the news aggregator concept. It is the flipside of the blog. It addresses my earliest question about blogs: won’t everything I write just disappear into the void?

Feb 9, 2002 — I was really looking forward to the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics tonight, but over the last few days I’ve been growing increasingly uneasy about what I might see there. As it turned out, after the initial voice-overs by Messrs. McKay (co-alum of my high school!) and Costas, I turned off the television. I’m only going to tune in when events I want to see are on.

Nov 9, 2001 — I HAVE AN E-BOOK OBSESSION! Did you know that? Let me explain. E-book is obviously short for electronic book. This sounds like a nineteenth century name for what it is: a computer file. In such a computer file are the contents of a book. For example, a Word document with Pride and Prejudice in it is an e-book. So is a plain text file of the same book, or a web page or any other format. The point is that the environment where the book is read is a digital computer environment. There are a few issues about e-books that I think are important. First, there is the issue of reading an entire book on a screen. Despite that, I am obsessed with reading e-books, so I will explain why. Finally, what does the future hold for e-books?

Jan 29, 1999 — Note, this was written before I had a blog. I recovered it from the Internet Archive. Back in graduate school I had a “musings” section of my site and those essays are in the same spirit as this blog so I’ve added them with retroactive datestamps.

Apr 17, 1998 — Note, this was written before I had a blog. I recovered it from the Internet Archive. Back in graduate school I had a “musings” section of my site and those essays are in the same spirit as this blog so I’ve added them with retroactive datestamps.

Feb 9, 1998 — Note, this was written before I had a blog. I recovered it from the Internet Archive. Back in graduate school I had a “musings” section of my site and those essays are in the same spirit as this blog so I’ve added them with retroactive datestamps.