Some fool is attempting to read a book a week in 2008. Silly!

Joyce on Jesus

"Jesus was a bachelor and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it."

Pynchonianism-ness

Great yarn about a guy's take on Pynchon.

Writing programs to solve a problem is something akin to developing a language in the context of the problem to be solved and creating a sufficiently flexible and powerful vocabulary to describe and solve issues related to that problem.

The expressiveness of a language is the effectiveness with which this can be done. Programming paradigms, such as procedural definitions, object oriented modeling, functional languages, logic programming and other paradigms are philosophical ideas for providing tools for solving these problems. Lisp is supposedly so powerful because it makes the process of creating these higher language abstractions easier. How about something like Parrot then? How easy is it to write a language on top of Parrot to solve problems? Surely not as convenient or a simple as Lisp, but easier than writing an language without any help whatsoever...

Would it make sense say, to create a language to model sounds and provide a convenient grammar for defining musical performances (to ease live performing for example) and use Parrot as the language target? If so how would you model this? What constructs would you need? What would the grammar look like?

These are just ideas. Shows how little I really understand :D

I still cry over you.

Old drafts in blogger don't often make sense

I'm continually trying to understand what all the signs mean. I watch everyone pointing, their mouths agape, some people sweat, and their eyes quiver deep in their socket seats. I follow the path splayed out before me, but it's really just a miscommunication and a series of poorly judged at signals.

It's official.. I'm educated.

Completion Term :: Semester 2 2007
Degree :: BSc - Bachelor of Science
Degree Status :: Awarded
Specialisation :: COMPA13978 Computer Science, PHYSB23978 Physics
Date of Completion :: 07/12/2007
Name on Testamur :: SNARKY CHARLES BOOJUM

Beauty and truth in physics

Another TED video! Murray Gell-Mann: Beauty and truth in physics. Enjoy!

A day audit

7/12/2007 - 7:30pm

Just finished dinner. Sitting here watching really crappy cable TV - drinking a glass of yummy white wine (from Marlborough!)

7/12/2007 - 8:30pm

Still sitting here watching crappy cable TV. Watching Jamie Oliver in the kitchen - and shouting out loud at some of the luscious dishes he's cooking up. Pow! Reading stuff on the InterWeb. Drinking another glass of increasingly yummy white wine (the same bottle :D)

8/12/2007 - 12:05am

Oh wow. All sorts of things happened that I can't tell you about. I've spent some time reading about Donald Knuth and listening to some of his free lectures. The guy is some kind of demigod. I have guaranteed sex back in Sydney. 2 1/2 counts to be exact. Sickening. There is some incredibly dodgy movie playing on cable (what's new). I've done some drawing tonight, and will follow up with some reading once everything settles down. "I'm a mac daddy pimp. You know that. And now I'm going to cap your ass". Real talk.

8/12/2007 - 7:45am

I woke up and started reading "Memoirs of a Geisha". I have to say - it's not as great as everyone says it is. Everyone waxes lyrical about it.. a fresh zesty power punch of incredible writing. Not so. It's not a bad book, but the people who say things like "Oh, it's the best book I've ever read" or "I've read that book like five times. It's my favourite. It's amazing!" etc just haven't read any "fuck off" books. You know the type. You're lying on your bed reading, and you come across a line, and you starting holding your breath. Your eyes flick back and forth quickly and you read it a couple more times, and then before you know if you're twisted onto your shoulder blades kicking your feet up in the air alternating "Holy fuck!" with sublimely girly giggles. Those books. People need to read those. There are few sure things in reading, but these books exist, and "Memoirs of a Geisha" is not one of them.

8/12/2007 - 10:00am

I'm rushing around cleaning up my apartment to book out of here by midday. It's annoying. I don't enjoy packing.

8/12/2007 - 12:00pm

I'm out! and back into the old apartment. I can't be arsed unpacking. I'm going to go exploring Wellington.

8/12/2007 - 4:15pm

I climbed Mt Vic! Wow - what a beautiful thing. You get a 360 degree view of the lay of Wellington, and it's rugged man! It's an incredibly folded and creased land, and it's beautiful. It was an overcast afternoon, so we're talking filtered light, fleeting cloud shadows, fuzzy horizons. Mix with Radiata pines and serve with a side of sexy english tourists with buxom bottoms, and you have one fucking serene experience.

I walked down Mt Vic and flirted with the escarpment above Oriental Bay, and jaunted back on into the city. Went straight up to the Wellington Cable Car on Lambton Quay. I bought a ticket. Made small talk with the friendly Kiwi behind the counter. Grabbed a coffee. Made eye contact with all the good looking girls on the way back (many), and jumped into the waiting cable car. This took us up to the Botanic Gardens, and Carter Observatory. Skipped through the gardens. Saw the succulents (no San Pedro and certainly no Peyote). It started to rain lightly. You know that smell of earth, like the rain is washing dust out of the air, well the palette of the scene was changed too - more boisterous reds and purples, and deeper greens. Wrap all this in a pleasant hush as the rain splattered canopies high above me, and that was my afternoon.

8/12/2006 - 7:15pm

Grabbed a yummy pide. Scoffing it while reading about programming languages online. Watching some *really* crap movies on cable again. I'm going to have to stop that.

8/12/2006 - 7:30pm

Watching TED videos in bed. Quite apart from traffic noise outside. There is the odd unruly and overexcited tourist in the apartments across The Terrace, but apart from that it's pretty peaceful. This is a better apartment than the other ones I was in. Not as flash, not as quiet, but a certain moral uprightness is embued in the furniture and air here.

24 hours in Wellington. Done!

Bug Labs

Bug Labs is very very fucking cool. Check it out.

You have to check out the videos here at scobleizer.com! Brilliant. My inner techno geek is getting excited. See previous post here :D

Advice on learning Lisp

Stumbled across this today. I somehow followed the rabbit hole from Hacker News or maybe it was linked from there directly:

Dude,

I'm a working Common Lisp programmer. I have just GOT to be the stupidest Common Lisp programmer alive, so let me tell you how I learnt Common Lisp.

1. Buy ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham.

2. Read it. But if you feel your balls retract and your head starts spinning, just stop. Read David Tourestky's (sp?) Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation with Common Lisp. (or something like that - it's free and on the web). Go back to Paul Graham. It will be MUCH easier.

3. Next read Object oriented programming with common lisp by Sonya Keene. This is the best tutorial on object oriented programming ever.

4. Next read Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming with Common Lisp for experience on writing real world common lisp.

Some tips:

When learning CL use a trial edition of a commercial environmentment: www.franz.com www.lispworks.com

Ignore ANYONE that recommends learning scheme or reading books teach scheme (i.e. structured interpretation of computer programs or simply scheme blah blah total waste of time (okay except for How to Design Programs - that wasn't half bad)).

Regs,

Source page here.

Uni is done

Uni is done. Finished. Kaput. Finito. Finis. Totally brilliant feeling. Sat my last exam this morning. Let's hope I pass everything :D I don't want to have to travel back from New Zealand to sit supplementaries!

Amazon Kindle

Reckon you could read Proust or Dostoevsky on this thing?

Financial challenge

How little can I live on in a week for basic living expenses? With increasing salary over the last few years, the amount I live on per week for simple things such as food, daily coffee, transport etc has blown out to well over $250/week. I'd guess that at least $200 of this amount goes to food. I eat out too much, buy too much alcohol (bottles of wine with meals is yummy, but very expensive), and buy too much coffee at the nearest barista.

The challenge is to see how little I can spend on necessary living expenses such as food, travel etc. The new job I'm starting soon will pay all living expenses, so I don't have a motivation to make this as small as possible. Instead I'll see how little I can spend on other things like holiday travel on the weekends (in NZ yeah!) and other day to day expenses. It's unrealistic to do this for a prolonged period of time, so I'll just start at a week and see how many weeks I want to do this for.

This starts tomorrow so I'll post the first set of results in a week.

1 day to go

This time tomorrow I will have sat my last exam for my undergraduate degree. I'll finally have finished my Bachelor of Science (Major Comp. Sci, Minor Physics). Qualified for a life of learning (not that anyone needs a degree for that!).

Then it's off to New Zealand in a week to take up a contract down there. First time working overseas as well. There are plenty of changes afoot!

Kevin 0x07

If Rudd wins the Australian federal election next Saturday he'll focus immediately on 5 major policy items, according to an article titled Rudd's winning plan in The Sydney Morning Herald. I want to focus on the 3rd item, and in particular the plan Rudd announced earlier in his campaign about providing every child in highschool with access to their own personal computer at school.

I think every technologist and anyone who is even vaguely interested in our freedom to use technology in the way we see fit, or anyone who is passionate about the technology their kids are using and learning about in school needs to do something to encourage the potentially new Labour government to think seriously about investing in free and open technology.

Software is the heart and soul of the technology we are surrounding ourselves with. iPods, PCs, Media Centre PCs, laptops, handhelds and PDAs, digital cameras, smart phones — all these devices and the services they provide are about the software running them. Free software, which is open by definition, should be looked at seriously for a number of reasons.

1. Education - Kevin Rudd wants to be known as the "Education Prime Minister". Free software supports education in a fundamental way, in ways that proprietary software can't. Every part of the system in truly "free" software is open to inspection and modification. The tools supplied on top of the system are as good as or better than any other platform — internet browsers, image manipulation programs, sound editing software, word processors, mathematics tools, graphing tools, programming tools, and the list goes on.


2. Freedom and Openness - freedom is considered a basic inalienable right in most modern societies. Free software supports that right unconditionally. The central focus on this as a major tenet of acceptable computer use results in a flow on effect into other areas of technology use in our society. If we are serious about this right it makes sense we would want to teach our kids about it. Using free and open software in the classroom makes the importance of this right implicit.


3. Usability and Utility - One laptop per child, the Ubuntu family of Linux distributions and the sheer number of open source programs available on GNU/Linux are all testaments to the increasing usability and utility of the open source platform.


4. Community - openness fosters community. Vendor lock in and proprietary software wrapped in NDAs and other red tape does not. The right to use your software as you please, understand how it works and modify it to share with your neighbour results in the sharing and furthering of ideas. No single company owns the rights to an idea or implementation of that idea. Effectively the people using the technology have the freedom to modify or extend the idea. These people using technology for a particular purpose form a community. Free software encourages the formation of such groups and empowers them. The one laptop per child project is a great example of this. Children are able to modify any part of the system on their computers they wish to, and redistribute it to their peers. The potential for adapting software in unforeseeable ways like this is incredibly exciting.


5. Cost - the ongoing cost of free software and the support for that software is very competitive compared to vendor supplied software. The reason for this is that free software creates an open market for support. Vendors don't own this service. Any party wanting to offer support for a free software platform can, and can compete against anyone else in this open market. The end result isn't 30 minute wait times on the phone, it's high quality service.


6. Security - free software doesn't rely on security through obscurity. Anyone can understand how the technology works, and can point out weak points and suggest or proffer improvements. Security comes to rely on excellent engineering rather than closed source code and lack of information. Linux for example has an excellent track record in security, and in responding to security threats. Other vendors are catching up in that area, but Linux is a shining example of how free and open software works to help improve security rather than diminish it.


7. Strategic considerations (e.g. vendor neutral) - Free Software is vendor neutral. By definition, investing in free/open software means investing in and building a flexible software platform. No one is contractually bound to use a particular version of software. Companies can upgrade when they see fit. They have the freedom to move to another platform whenever it suits them.

Does the Free Software community know about this policy plan? Write to the Free Software Foundation to make sure they're aware of it. If they can help Labour understand the importance of free software then perhaps this will be looked at seriously. What are the other parties stance on free software? What do the Greens think about it? Write to them and ask.

Investing 1 billion dollars in such a policy plan isn't just about buying thousands of personal computing devices for all students, it's about investing in a technology ecosystem. It's about building wireless networks, high speed internet connectivity, providing good security, building and customising software platforms for schools and classrooms etc. Free and open software has a place at any level in that system. Get writing and start talking!

I really should buy an expensive piece of electronic equipment such as a PSP and take it apart and put it back together. That might unblock some weird childhood thing.

Fermat's last theorem

Great documentary. So humbling to see the journey Andrew Wiles went on to find the proof of this. 7 years solid work, and then over a year to fix it - only to find a solution even more elegant than that originally devised. Stunning :)

Evolving interfaces

Is it possible to construct more usable interfaces that evolve over time? What are the conditions of natural selection? "Use" is an obvious criteria. How do you decide if something is more usable programatically? What are the markers that distinguish usability from popularity?

Interfaces naturally evolve over time anyway. They evolve based on feedback, usability testing, and fashionable trends to name just a few. Is it possible to preempt such trends by learning from user behaviour and having a web UI adapt automatically? How far do you take this? Sites that generate lots of traffic have plenty of data to train such an approach. Would there be any surprising results? Would it all just turn into a big jumbled mess?

I'm too lazy to look at the research, and I have *no idea* whatsoever about usability in general. People who actually know something about it - please reply in comments :) Ta muchly.

Tying your shoes and growing up?

Everyone knows as you get older you become more cynical. You take things that once would have enamoured you for hours (like smelling beautiful flowers in the rain, or eating snails), with a literal grain of salt. Part of growing old gracefully is about never losing that fascination and wonder for the simple things in life.

Cut to tying shoelaces. I would argue that learning to tie your shoelaces was a momentous occasion for all of us. Let's face it, it was a kind of sign that we were becoming independent, a precocious portent that we were starting to grow up. Who doesn't remember proudly showing their grandma or aunt that they could tie their shoes by themselves? I remember awkwardly showing my next door neighbours when I was about four, much to their bemusement. I even remember thinking, "Why are you chuckling in your grown-up superiority? Take me seriously god damn it. I can tie my own shoes!"

So this morning I stumbled across the The Turquoise Turtle Shoelace Knot. I was reading one of my favourite blogs, hackety.org, in particular why's latest updates on his "Shoes" graphics and windowing toolkit, and it got a blatant plug (amongst shoe lace tying metaphors and stacks and flows). You really have to check it out. It's a beautiful knot, so beautiful in fact I had to get a pair of shoes and give it a whirl.

How long has it been since you thought about how to tie your shoelaces and felt joy and pride in doing it? Don't just think about it.. give it a go! (Then download and check out why's Shoes stuff. Very cool.)

(Ok, so I'm buzzing on coffee.)

Why haven't I used secure copy 'scp' before? My god.. it makes life so easy when moving files between unix servers on the internet.

I must be a slow learner. I've known about it for ages, but never bothered to use it. From the man page:

scp copies files between hosts on a network. It uses ssh(1) for data
transfer, and uses the same authentication and provides the same security
as ssh(1). Unlike rcp(1), scp will ask for passwords or passphrases if
they are needed for authentication.

Any file name may contain a host and user specification to indicate that
the file is to be copied to/from that host. Copies between two remote
hosts are permitted.

Last lectures and finishing degrees

I've taken the last couple of days off work to finish uni assignments. I had my last uni lecture yesterday. I have to say I have mixed emotions about possibly attending my last lecture for my undergraduate degree. I've been working on getting this thing on and off since 1996 - astronomy and physics full-time for three years and now four years part-time to study computer science. The prospect of it being over is just starting to hit me I guess.

So the last assignment I've been working on is for a database subject. I've found much of the course fairly uninteresting but this assignment is looking pretty darn cool. The application is interesting.

We were given a paper titled "HOT SAX: Finding the Most Unusual Time Series Subsequence: Algorithms and Applications" by Eamonn Keogh, Jessica Lin and Ada Fu (no that's not a typo, and I've already bored everyone to death with banal jokes :)), and we were asked to implement the algorithm outlined there using postgresql and Java/JDBC. The theory behind this thing is to find time series discords amongst time series data. What's a time series discord? Think anomalies in data over time. Some good examples of where this might be applicable could be finding the exact moment that a ventricle in a heart acts abnormally (the time series data here would be an ECG), or perhaps putting your finger on the exact moment that a valve malfunctions in a space shuttle. The efficacy of the algorithm has been tested in just such situations.

I would have liked to link to a copy of the pdf, but the one hosted by the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW is password protected, and I'm too lazy to upload it somewhere else.

I have the brute force algorithm working (after only a few hours work), and am working on the heuristic approach now. It's a lot of fun to watch it working. It's funny though, I'm not sure I want to finish it. That'd signal the last of my uni assessment for as long as it takes me to go back and do honours/a PhD or study something else :)

Enough ruminating for now. I just wanted to record how I feel about this whole thing.

David Deutsch talks cosmos

Witty guy :) Yet another kickarse TED video. Some great descriptions and insights into what our universe is really like.

Mac OS X Leopard 2 hours in...

Leopard rocks. I had no upgrade problems whatsoever. No hung blue screens etc. There are a few minor quirks with the dock and the way windows behave around it. But no showstoppers for me. I can still do my postgresql development, and perl, and java, and play all my movies, and music and so on. Also, the new UI changes are really growing on me. I can finally reorder tabs in Safari, though I'm typing this from Firefox :) I like the new dock, and I like the semi-transparent top menu bar. About the only thing I'm disappointed with is that the funky FrontRow transition has been replaced with a simple fade-in fade-out.

Quick Look is groovy (the way Dustin Hoffman would say it), though a 13" macbook screen is probably a little small to really use it effectively. Cover flow in Finder is ok. Will see how I go after using it a bit. I'm keen to try out Time Machine, but I'll need to get a new external HDD. Spaces is fine, but I've been using similar functionality in Linux window managers since 1997.

Oh and Stacks just rock. I enjoy sitting there opening and closing them. How cool is it that they reflect the first few documents you have in the stack when collapsed? Brilliant. I like that I can drag and drop to and from stacks as well.

Overall, Leopard looks great. "I like it alot!" :)

Wolfram lectures

Fascinating stuff. Complexity, randomness, computational irreducibility, cellular automata, undecidability.

Something is nagging me at the back of my mind though. I have a feeling I'll disagree with much of it after I've had time to think about it and digest the ideas here.

Anyway, give it a watch if you have a spare hour.

Wolfram Blog

Absolutely fascinating ideas and thinking over at Stephen Wolfram's blog.

Here are two posts I've enjoyed reading recently. I hope you enjoy reading them too.

• The simplest Turing machine


• Universe hunting

Perl6 stuff-o

Re: Is Perl 6 too late?

Great description of the philosophy behind Perl.

I)

Girl: "Can I speak to you about something?"

Boy: "Sure."

Girl proceeds to relate deep secrets and asks that they remain in confidence.

Boy: "Wow ok. I'm not sure it's any of my business, but here's what I think..."

Boy proceeds to relate his experience and understanding of similar situations in which he has personal and direct experience.

II)

Other boy: "So you've talked to Girl about deep dark secret eh?"

Boy: "Yeah, but it's none of my business."

Other boy: "I agree with that."

Boy: "What?"

Other boy: "That it's none of your business."

Boy: "Sure, yet both you and her insist on involving me. Doesn't it seem contradictory to plead to speak to me about it and then maintain that it's none of my business?"

The world isn't the thing

Krishnamurti and Anderson YouTube playlist. Listen for Anderson's "MmmHmm"s.

An almost anniversary

It was a year to this day.

Nessun Dorma by Pavarotti (Torino 2006)

Pretty special.

"Positive development" - a situation where houses and other infrastructure leave the environment in a better state than where it started.

Neato backup tool idea

uses S3 Amazon (or other online storage facility)


does incremental and full backups


allows specification of particular directories or filetypes


honours all Mac OS X metadata


very fast


very little system overhead


secure


scheduled


integrated nicely into OS X

ZEITGEIST, The Movie

Wow. This film certainly makes an impact. Not sure what to make of it to be honest. But I think it's well worth a watch.

Is seems strange to realise that primitive man would have masturbated watching another male and female copulating in the "wild" or perhaps the "cave". It's socially acceptable to masturbate to a hardcore porn clip of a couple "coupling", but not socially acceptable to copulate in Time Square or to watch another couple going at it. Can someone give me a compelling reason why that might be the case?

History will prove him mad

Nice summary of the disgrace that is George W. Bush.

e·con·o·my

I've always thought of Bram Cohen as a snotty nosed little kid - despite him being primarily responsible for revolutionising file sharing on the internet (BitTorrent) - however his last few posts on his blog have really been jiving with me. I've been thinking about the logic behind global economic theory and the share market more and more lately. Not much of it makes sense. Cost increases over time. People are given good credit ratings for effectively being a "high credit risk". Western Australian politicians positively stain their shorts when the President of China visits their state - "We can make billions".

What gives? I'm expected to be impressed by economic theorists building economic models which borrow from expansionist theories of the universe? I can type equations into LaTeX? That undoubtedly lends weight to my malignant stupidity. Give me a break! What data supports this? People like Nick are swayed by the mathematics. They have no idea what it means. Who are they to lend weight to the ideas presented here? Do they? Undoubtedly not.

So Cohen launches into self obsessed rant after rant, but it's invariably enteraining:

Mortgage Lending
Insurance Rates

Well I'm going to learn something about it and get back to you all. I suspect it'll be as scientific as psychology and about a rational as postmodernism.

Greed factored into the economic equation? Doesn't seem quite so illogical anymore.

The Cat Empire lyrics

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echo sounds
from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams?
- your reflection in shadows and dreams

Did you ever see a man
who did walk down the street
white robe with no shoes on his feet
and on top of his head place a box with two slits
and the sign from his neck said
‘I do not exist’
or a woman who could not remember her name
did stutter and stutter
again and again
and saw you and called you her son
her eyes said
‘my being is gone
but still I’m not dead’?

Miserere

Have you ever seen a sound
have you listened to an image
have you ever touched a thought
have you ever tasted nothing
have you ever told a lie
that was true more than truth
because truth it had lied
all its life when it spoke to you?
And what did it say
it is that it is this
this goes here here is there
it is not yes it is
it was dulling your senses
your eyes they were bound
have you ever my friends
been looking around?

And the other replies
with a wave of a hand
I am already here
in this promised land
but not by a god and not by a king
and not by a spirit
deep from within
I am here
because a miracle’s a whim
it’s a flash of glory
it’s an empty tin
and maybe might lets you in
not to save you
but to keep on looking-

Miserere…

Have you ever
been so happy that you’re sad?
that the lights turn to stars
and the stars become eyes
and hello’s are goodbye’s
and the laughs are the sigh’s
and the show disappears with the note
‘until next time’

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echoe sounds
from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams
Do you ever look around
and find what is yet to be found?

Miserere - The Cat Empire

"all I want to do is face my fears and problems and do some really cool shit with my life"

Call me slow, but I only just reinvented the conspiracy theory link between 911 and 9/11.

Now this is a supercollider. From a very interesting article titled, The Biggest Thing in Physics.

Brains

Unsolved brain mysteries. Good read. Particularly the point about the brain's handling of time, and the structure of the brain being like a large loopy dynamic network.

I have smart teachers

How about proving the correctness of the L4 microkernel? Turns out my current algorithms teacher was/is(?) the program leader of the group doing this work. "Logic of knowledge" anyone? Smart guy.

L4 verified
Open Kernel Labs
NICTA

In other news, my OO professor last session gets props I suppose for hitting the blog headlines for a paper he wrote with my tutor last session. Validity Invariants and Effects. "Design by contract" takes on a whole new meaning.

Kevin07

I don't know about you, but Rudd is making Howard look more and more outdated as the election approaches.

Kevin07

Sometimes I just need to write it. After the writing of it I often mysteriously lose the need to hit "Publish Post" or "Send". In fact, this post barely made it! How unlike me - one who so often clamours for other's approval.

We shoot.

So stop that. It's just a little black hole. A jagged ceramic edge. By the time I'd opened my program to gush my sensational revelations I'd lost it. That happens to me.



So we skipped across roads and dodged angry drivers grinding their teeth at us through wind visors. We had no where to go, but people watched us anyway; the way people watch manic showmen feeling their way over tightropes. What a rush girl.



You have these moments of euphoria where you think you've understood something implicit, something altogether bound in our universe. Then you have a bottle of Pinot and you can't write a single thing of interest. You have the desire, oh yes - but where is your revelation now man? What props do you pretend to be able to flourish in front of us? How are you going to revolutionize thought and human understanding again?



Phlegm is what is it. What a gangling word. A forlorn red headed kid crying in the rain.



I remember the hay barn and the cold iron, corrugated and rooted in Australian earth. The smell of goat shit and turkey feathers. What a pure and healthy aroma. And that mixed with the spice and sticky allure of the peppercorn tree. Old man peppercorn indeed. I'll write a story about this place one day.



Meaning is secondary to. Huh?

People tell me this is supposed to be important :)

Mac OS X Leopard receives UNIX 03 certification.

This is huge news. It shows that apple has reached the standard of a 1970s operating system.

Having worked with some Indian consultants I've come to believe that it's culturally ok to sniff, and not a polite indecisive sniff - a serious snorting, a nostril distorting rip. The monotony of it gives the sound a far-away quality, it distorts my appreciation of it, makes me think of a polite farting of the nose. It's humorous and silly, but simultaneously disgusting. My day is interspersed with them. My thought process is punctuated by them. I work to the rhythm of "the hoc". I think to the interruptive inhalation of streams of snot.

This wonderful instrument of ours...

Spam mash-up

SPAM mash-up. Natural language processing to process SPAM, and build an intelligible conversational snippet. Relationship to "normal" speech. What does the result tell us about ourselves?

Stephen Hawking's Universe EP6

Feyman

Hofmann's Potion

"As a matter of fact, I think intention is the bottom line in life anyway, for all of us, at any time."

It's July.

Hack a lil game or two

Hydra Console Game Dev. Kit - Cool!

Xerox/Apple/Microsoft and stealing TVs

A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox is a fun (and quick) read.

Using the Mac's built-in camera to auto scroll text I'm reading on the screen? Impossible! :D

Cocoa

I've been reading up on building Cocoa apps for OS X lately. I have a great idea which involves writing a free version of something like Spanning Sync. It's a great app, but I'll be buggered if I'm going to pay a yearly fee to use it! My app might not be as groovy, or as feature rich, but it'll work, and at the very least I'll use it. Also, I won't charge other people to use it, in fact it'll be open source so everyone can laugh at how badly it's written, or help me fix it.

Anyway, back to Cocoa - what a great application framework! I'm loving the interface builder, and connecting interface components to underlying code (and vice versa) using actions and outlets seems so natural and powerful. Considering how long this has been around (NeXT interface builder) this really must have been way ahead of it's time. Objective-C syntax seems quite clunky, but the fact that I'm not used to it probably has quite a bit to do with that. I have a lot more to learn about it's capabilities before I can make any kind of educated comment on that :) So far so good I say!

I'd recommend that anyone even vaguely interested in developing for OS X or just learning about OS X's application architecture check out the great developer resources available on the Apple Developer Connection website. It's really a very neat development environment. Very nice.

Useful/interesting links:

• Cocoa Application Tutorial
• Getting Started with Cocoa
• The NeXTonian

Web application idea

A framework to host screencasts of programmers at work, discussing their code and throught process as they go. How best to do that. But surely a great way to share information and knowledge, particularly about the act and process of creation.

Hope

It seems to me that hope is of central importance because it creates a "reality potential difference".

Dangerous ideas

Zen habits?

How can someone so "Zen" have so many habits?

Lift whoosh

Lift is comparatively efficient. Hard to believe how much it wees all over RoR.

simple is best

If you were going to write a web server I think it'd pay to check out simple.

Forget that they run their site using PHP on top of Apache 1.3 :)

Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) PHP/4.3.10
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.10

I reckon it's a pretty impressive treament of the "web server" though. Someone needs to write a web server in Scala. (I'm sure it's been done?)

Click, ding!

I wasn't aware of this - Google Search Box Earns Millions for Mozilla. Gruber makes a good point that this is presumably why Safari on Windows is a good financial decision for Apple as well.

There's no SDK that you need...

I agree with these guys about the announcement of "There's no SDK that you need!" for the iPhone at the WWDC 2007 keynote.

In hindsight the iPhone announcements seemed to go like:

And now, for the news you've all been waiting for...

The sound of restlessness developers...

iPhone news...

The sound of excited nervous energy...

We don't have an SDK for you!

A collective WTF?!

No no, you don't need one! You have Safari and web technologies!

I can't help feeling that sounds like a let down. It's so bad it's funny. Hey developers, thanks for coming. Go learn WebKit. Brilliant.

For the people who don't get why some developers are having a problem with this announcement, I think this comment snippet sums it up nicely:

For those that don't get what the contradiction is:

Steve Job talks about the Map application on the iPhone, and quotes: "And you can’t do that stuff in a browser."

Steve Job then announces at WWDC: "You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone."

If you still don't get it, then you don't need to.

Repeat after me: "You don't need an SDK"... "You don't need an SDK"...

Ermm, excuse me Steve, where's Firefox?

I finally watched the WWDC 2007 keynote (though not via that link) - I ended up having to download it via BitTorrent. I still can't connect to watch that stream. Anyway, I too noticed what surely must have been a discrepancy on the part of Steve Jobs while he was presenting the Safari on Windows story.

I'm sure it's obvious to most people that this world view of Safari/IE isn't going to happen and I'm not sure that's what Apple was trying to show anyway. If we give them the benefit of the doubt here though, the least they've been is careless. I think it's fairly self evident that there will always be free software and choice, or if not free software then at least open source :) If I don't like the way someone does something I will go and do a better job. That's why I did a Computer Science degree. That's why I learn everything I can get my hands on about technology, and particularly the craft of creating good software. It's a little hard to believe Apple could be so naive as to exclude the current cream of the crop (FireFox) from the picture.

Apple knows the art of presenting information, they do it better than most. I just find the potential conclusions begging to be drawn here a little disturbing^*.

^*Though perhaps not very surprising.

Simple fractals in 5 minutes!

Nodebox is pretty cool. You can make very simple fractals in 5 minutes! :)



And now for some interesting fractals. Check out the google video here. Very nicely!

Xerox and Ethernet

Interesting snippet on Xerox and the history of Ethernet over at byteCoder - Xerox 1974: “[Ethernet] would be a failure”.

WiTricity

WiTricity. Read about it a while ago - but thought it was blog worthy. I can't wait for this to hit. I wonder how efficient it is though?

I greatly dislike reality at times.

Music bits

Golan Levin: The truly soft side of software

What a fucking _name_. Pretty interesting music demo though!

Google tick-tock

Google quotes from Inside the Google machine

We're able to make money largely through advertising, and one of the benefits that I didn't expect from that was that we're able to serve everyone in the world without worrying about places that don't have that much money.

We have a tremendous ability and responsiblity to provide people with the right information, and we view ourselves like a magazine or newspaper that we should provide very objective information, and so in our search results we never accept payment for our search results we accept payment for advertising and we market it as such."

"magazine".. "newspaper".. "responsbility". Ok. I knew these guys were on to something.

E.T. go home

Why bother sending off a probe into space to communicate with other intelligent life? Why not leave a message on earth to communicate with ourselves in a couple of billion years. We'll be equally as strange and "otherwordly" as anything else "out there".

So much TED goodness

Sir Martin Rees: Earth in its final century?
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

James Watson on the double helix

Another TED talk, James Watson: The double helix and today. Very funny man. Absolutely brilliant talk. One of "those" learning experiences.

Pond universe

Why _not_ use the analogy of blustering wind whipping ripples in the surface of a pond to understand cosmic microwave background radiation? Surely the fish aren't theorising about the wind, but rather the ripples.

Who's to say the pond wouldn't be rippling without the wind anyway?

"Everyone should just try and make Rails faster"

Umm.. no.

lift/scala for web apps

A Real-World Use of Lift, a Scala Web Application Framework

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

The full transcript is a good read.

beauty

Guess who bought a beautiful new shiny little black macbook? :)

Steve "Boom" Jobs

Quite a funny compilation of "Booms".

Al Gore loves screen

Image courtesy of TIME magazine

Electronic warfare running linux

Bionic linux warriors.

Imagine spoofing friendlies, launching DOS attacks on networked infrastructure, and infecting backpacks. Linux does seem like a natural fit though. It's amazing the different technology ecosystems Linux finds itself growing in.

You'd want a system like this to be modular though. You definitely wouldn't want or need every killer in your army to be wearing one or at least the full rig. If I had to run around a paddock dodging bullets I'm not sure I'd want all this information being thrown at me.

Makes me think back to various hybrid strategy-first person shooter games I used to play. I wonder how much of the advancement in communication and user interface there feeds back into real world decisions about this kind of gear?

What's the security like in these new "global battlefields"?

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Warrior

Apple bapple

I've been thinking the same kinds of things about Apple for a while.

Linus on git

git homepage

Enlightenment Foundation Libraries and Rage 0.2.0

For those of you who don't know, Enlightenment is a window manager for linux.

Ever since I watched Raster's presentation at linux.conf.au 2007 earlier this year I've been thinking about the enlightenment libraries, and particularly how they'd be suited to building a media center type application for linux. During his presentation, Raster had a lot of good things to say about performance and efficiency. For a programmer, that is pretty inspiring stuff to hear :)

So today I jumped into #e on chat.freenode.net and asked around about just this question. Raster was in there and quickly let me know about Rage, something he whipped together pretty quickly and had posted about a few months ago on his website (video here). I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to get my hands dirty and learn a bit about the libraries.

To this end I've documented the process I went through to get the relevant libraries (and Rage of course) installed on my linux box. FYI - I have just upgraded to Feisty (last couple of weeks) and had no enlightenment libraries previously installed (in fact I haven't mucked around with enlightenment for probably close on 8 years). You'll see in the documented steps below that there were quite a few dependencies not met. I've deliberately left all these steps in there. If someone else has similar dependency problems, then By the Power of Google, this info might help :)

So without further ado, here are the steps I went through to get Rage built and working on Feisty. Forgive the verbosity, and enjoy! :)

0) Get rage from the enlightenment cvs with:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e login
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co misc

Find the rage source at misc/rage

1) Try running ./autogen.sh for rage

Running aclocal...
./autogen.sh: 8: aclocal: not found

2) 'automake' seems not to be installed so install it via Adept

3) Try to run ./autogen.sh again

Running aclocal...
configure.in:13: warning: macro `AM_ENABLE_SHARED' not found in library
configure.in:14: warning: macro `AM_PROG_LIBTOOL' not found in library

4) Looks like 'libtools' is not installed either, so install that via Adept too

5) Try running ./autogen.sh again

checking for EET... configure: error: Package requirements (eet) were not met:

No package 'eet' found

6) EET is an enlightenment foundation library (there's going to be a few of these dependencies), so get it from the enlightenment cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/eet

7) run ./autogen.sh from the eet directory

configure: error: "Cannot find zlib.h. Make sure your CFLAGS environment variable contains include
lines for the location of this file"

8) install 'zlib1g-dev' using Adept

9) run ./autogen.sh again

configure: error: "Cannot find jpeglib.h. Make sure your CFLAGS environment variable contains include
lines for the location of this file"

10) install 'libjpeg62-dev using Adept

11) run 'make'

12) run 'sudo make install'

13) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EVAS... configure: error: Package requirements (evas) were not met:

14) get evas from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/eet

15) run autogen.sh

checking for FREETYPE... configure: error: Package requirements (freetype2 >= 9.3.0) were not met:

16) install 'libfreetype6-dev' using Adept

17) run ./autogen.sh again

18) run 'make'

19) run 'sudo make install'

20) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EDJE... configure: error: Package requirements (edje) were not met:

No package 'edje' found

21) get edje from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/edje

22) run ./autogen.sh for edje

No package 'ecore-evas' found
No package 'ecore-job' found
No package 'embryo' found

23) get both the ecore and embryo libraries from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/ecore
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/embryo

24) run ./autogen.sh for ecore

25) run 'make' for ecore

26) run 'sudo make install' for ecore

27) run ./autogen.sh for embryo

28) run 'make' for embryo

29) run 'sudo make install' for embryo

30) try running ./autogen.sh for edje again

31) run 'make' for edje

32) run 'sudo make install' for edje

33) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EMOTION... configure: error: Package requirements (emotion) were not met:

34) get emotion from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/emotion

35) run ./autogen.sh for emotion

checking for XINE... configure: error: Package requirements (libxine >= 1.1.1) were not met:

36) install 'libxine-dev' using Adept

37) run ./autogen.sh for emotion again

38) run 'make' for emotion

edje_cc: Error. unable to load image for image "tiles.png" part entry to ../data/theme.edj. Missing PNG or JPEG loader modules for
Evas or file does not exist, or is not readable.
make[2]: *** [theme.edj] Error 255
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/adrian/development/e/e17/libs/emotion/data'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/adrian/development/e/e17/libs/emotion'
make: *** [all] Error 2

39) install 'libpng12-dev' using Adept

40) rebuild evas (./autogen.sh, make, sudo make install)

N.B. this builds png image loader support into evas which is what make was trying to use above

41) run ./autogen.sh, make and 'sudo make install' for emotion

42) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

43) run make for rage

In file included from main.h:1,
from main.c:1:
e.h:38:21: error: Ecore_X.h: No such file or directory
make[3]: *** [main.o] Error 1

45) Looks like Ecore_X.h wasn't installed. I discovered that this was an optional component that wasn't installed when I was building ecore, so after looking through ./configure in the ecore directory I discovered that I could probably fix it with:

run './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' for ecore

failed - dependency not met

46) To fix this problem I had to install 'libxcb-xlib0-dev'. So do that using Adept

47) try './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' for ecore again

dependency checking seemed to pass this time

48) run 'make' for ecore

lots of errors! (these were related to X development libraries)

49) install xorg-dev using Adept

50) run './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' and then 'make' for ecore

In file included from ecore_evas.c:4:
ecore_evas_private.h:37:40: error: Evas_Engine_Software_X11.h: No such file or directory
make[4]: *** [ecore_evas.lo] Error 1

51) Ok, so maybe when I installed evas the X11 software engine option wasn't installed, so rebuild and reinstall evas by running './autogen.sh' and 'make' and 'sudo make install' again

52) try running './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' and 'make' for ecore again

53) run 'sudo make install' for ecore

54) run './autogen.sh' for rage again

55) run 'make' for rage again

56) run 'sudo make install' for rage

The README for rage tells you how to get rage to scan your disk for media (that's currently the default way of importing or seeing your videos etc). It's fairly straightfoward.

After that just run ./rage and you'll have a working media centre based on the Enlightenment libraries :D

P.S. I was pretty impressed that it could play my phone videos, xvid anime, certain tv shows etc. Rage didn't hiccup once on any of the media I threw at it. Awesome! :D

Linux polish

Why doesn't linux look as sexy as Mac OS X? What is stopping it from achieving a far superior look and feel on the desktop? Is it X? Is it crappy fonts? Who's working on fixing this?

What we still don't know

Nothing really new here - but still thought provoking and inspiring.

What we still don't know 1
What we still don't know 2<sup>1

1</sup>Look for the person cycling backwards in the second film.

Patent idea #1

I want to be able hum at my computer and have it return the song in my music collection which most closely matches.

Chris calls it "Hum Search". I think it's not a bad name.

The Unix Legacy

Just read The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy by Rob Pike. Great read.

The Hunt

Blink blink.

Dewy grass clutches hidden easter egg
and half chewed puree apple.
The bold red of the Shiraz is disembodied
against this overcast sky.

Gum boot kids feign sprinter postures
and we shout..
"Ready...
Setty...
Goooooo!"
Tiny water drops alight fly-away
blonde hair as they race down hill.
"Comeon girls, beat the boooys!"

So they scurry in their little bodies,
plodding short stepped curves,
legs moving fast to keep upright,
bumping into each other in their excitement.
Nappy bottoms crouch and small hands grab at grass.
Whole tufts are brought up with pink and blue,
green and glittering gold.

She returns first, panting and proudly
showing us her tiny, shivering outstretched fingers.
Her colourful foil prizes!
Her pale blue eyes.

Our laughter rattles the window panes.
The fog swirls in the valley below us.
You smile.

Blink blink.

Flash advertising with sound on smh.com.au?!

My God!

This is so annoying. smh.com.au has started using a flash ad which plays an intrusive "glass breaking" sound.

The shockwave file is played in a loop, so you could be busy trying to concentrate on a Java implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm listening to some soothing music by Nick Drake, with a smh page open in a Firefox tab somewhere and you'd be constantly bombarded by a low quality sound byte of shattering glass. What the hell? Are these guys serious?

My God - it drives me mad. Who decided it would be a great idea to draw people's attention to some advertising by placing sound in a flash ad? Who do they think they are - a GeoCities site circa 1997?

This is the offending flash file in question. Thank god for ad blocking Firefox extensions.

Dearth of Music?

No! That's no typo!

Interesting critique of RIAA strong-arming from an ex record store owner.

the sound of curl

imagine the curl of a flower
and the way its brief shadow strikes
at its feet.

60 minutes of Earth

Why not televise Earth Hour?

Welcome to a new blind sense of community. I won't know if everyone is participating will I? I can travel into the city and watch the lights go out, but I'm hardly going to do that.

Linux Boy

I like this ad. I also find it interesting that IBM paints a picture where Linux is learning from "The Big Players". I particularly like that the opposite is more than likely closer to the truth. Still - cool concept and clean execution.

Google themes

are pretty purty/nice :)



Update: and the themes change with time of day (and apparently weather). It's a very nice little touch. The pic above was taken while it was late afternoon/dusk here. Now it's night and here's what my google page looks like now.



Another update: Oh, and another pic :) I'm so easily amused I guess. Check out the little fox who's decided to start star gazing. Lol.

Bush Leaguer - Pearl Jam

How does he do it? How do they do it? Uncanny and immutable.
This is such a happening tailpipe of a party.
Like sugar, the guests are so refined, (look like melting mice)

A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?
He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer
Swinging for the fence, got lucky with a strike
Drilling for fear, makes the job simple
Born on third, thinks he got a triple

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

A think tank of aloof multiplication
A nicotine wish and a columbus decanter
Retrenchment and hoggishness
The aristocrat choir sings
"What's the ruckus?"
The haves have not a clue
The immenseness of suffering
And the odd negotiation, a rarity
With onionskin plausibility of life,
And a keyboard reaffirmation

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel

Have a gander at Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel. Good read.

Feynman point

Subtyping Java Generics: A lion cage is not an animal cage!

from Generics > Subtyping.

If on the one hand you maintain that English is ambiguous;

But what about an "animal cage"? English is ambiguous, so to be precise let's assume we're talking about an "all-animal cage"...

and then follow up with a justification which for all intents and purposes seems to be based on that ambiguousness;

Since a lion is a kind of animal (Lion is a subtype of Animal), the question then becomes, "Is a lion cage a kind of animal cage? Is Cage<Lion> a subtype of Cage<Animal>?". By the above definition of animal cage, the answer must be "no". This is surprising! But it makes perfect sense when you think about it: A lion cage cannot be assumed to keep in butterflies, and a butterfly cage cannot be assumed to hold in lions. Therefore, neither cage can be considered an "all-animal" cage:

I think you have a problem.

I guess that's the price you pay for trying to fit a less expressive language (Java) into something as "ambiguous" as English? Either way, to deduce that it's perfectly natural to conclude that a lion cage isn't the same as an animal cage in such a fashion seems a bit far fetched.

How about admitting that type inheritance doesn't work here? A lion cage certainly *is* a type of animal cage goddamnit. I can see that mixing types like this could break polymorphism - I take the point that a butterfly cage wouldn't be suitable to hold lions, and vice versa. However it seems like an awful kludge to expect people to understand polymorphism in terms of single classes in one way, and then tell them that generics "improves" on this to prevent lion cages from trying to hold butterflies. Mother of Mary!

Update:

Haha! Hillarious. Let's invent another concept and call it bounded wildcards to fix this problem. This seems like a hack though doesn't it? My god:

While Cage<Lion> and Cage<Butterfly> are not subtypes of Cage<Animal>, they are in fact subtypes of Cage<? extends Animal>

I'm sure this has to do with covariance, but I don't understand this, and I'm pretty sure Larry Wall would cry into his moustache while agreeing with me (though he might like the punctuation character syntax :)).


Other Java Generics links:

Java theory and practice: Generics gotchas
The Java Tutorials - Lesson: Generics
Generics in the Java Programming Language

A conservative encyclopedia you can trust?!

Welcome to Conservapedia, a conservative encyclopedia you can trust.

Conservapedia has over 3,800 educational, clean and concise entries on historical...

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses...

Finally a site where there is no censorship or bias, just good honest "cleansed", "conservative" content. I guess the need to use the labels conservative and/or "clean" isn't supposed to raise alarm bells that perhaps we're getting one particular (most likely warped) view of the world on this site.

What a ridiculous concept.

The Fall of Rome - W. H. Auden

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.


Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.


Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.


Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.


Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.


Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.


Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

What type of programmer are you?

Take the Programmer Personality Test.

I'm a PLTB apparently :)

What the hell does this mean? Who knows, but this is what the site reckons.

You're a Planner.
You may be slow, but you'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.


You like coding at a Low level.
You're from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an intimate relationship with the computer. You don't mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.


You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.


You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible.

Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye

Metamorphosis - Kafka

'Stay where you are, I don't need you! You think you have enough strength to come here, and are merely staying back because that's what you have chosen to do. You are mistaken! I am still by far the stronger of us. Alone, I might have had to give best to you, but your mother left me all her strength. I have made a wonderful pact with your friend, and I have all your customers right here in my pocket!

'So he's even got pockets in his shirt!'* Georg said under his breath, and thought the remark would make his father impossible in the world. The thought came and went, as everything did, because he was continually forgetting everything.

'Just you try slipping your arm in your fiancee's and coming to meet me! I'll swat her away from you, you have no idea!

Georg pulled a face, as though of disbelief. His father merely nodded towards George's corner, in confirmation of what he had said.

'How you amused me today when you came along and asked me whether you should tell your friend about the engagement. He knows everything, you silly boy, everything! I wrote to him, because you forgot to deprive me of my writing implements. That's why he hasn't come for years, he knows everything a hundred times better than you. In his left hand he crumples up your letters unopened, while in his right he holds mine in front of him to read!'

In his enthusiasm, he swung his arm over his head. 'He knows everything a thousand times better!' he shouted.

"Ten thousand times!' said Georg, to mock his father, but even as he spoke them the words sounded deadly earnest.

'For years I've been waiting for you to approach me with your question. Do you think anything else had the least interest for me? Do you imagine I read the newspapers? Here!' and he tossed Georg a page from the newspaper, which had somehow been carried into bed with him. An old newspaper, with a name that didn't sound at all familiar to Georg.

'How long you dilly-dallied before reaching maturity! Your mother was unable to witness the joyful day, she had to die first, your friend is going under in Russia; three years ago he was so yellow he was obviously not long for the world, and as for me, you see what condition I'm in. It seems you have enough vision to see that!

'So you were lying in wait for me! shouted Georg.

Pityingly, his father remarked: 'I expect you meant to say that earlier. It doesn't fit in here.'

And then, louder: 'So now you know what else there was besides yourself; up till now all you knew was you! You were an innocent child, really, but it would be truer to say you were a veritable fiend! - And now hear: I sentence you to death by drowning!

Georg felt himself expelled from he room, the crash with which his father came down on the bed ringing in his ears as he sprinted away. On the stairs, which he took like a smooth incline, he collided with the charwoman, who was just on her way upstairs to give the flat its morning clean. 'Oh my God!' she exclaimed, and buried her face in her apron but was already gone. he sprang through the gate, crossed the road, and raced towards the river. Already he was gripping at the rails, like a hungry man his food. He swung himself over them, like the excellent gymnast he had been in his early years, to the pride of his parents. His grip was beginning to weaken, when through the rails he spied a motor omnibus that would easily cover the sound of his fall, softly he called out, 'Dear parents, I have always loved you,' and let himself drop.

At that moment, a quite unending flow of traffic streamed over the bridge.'

^{* Kafka's variation on the German proverb that says the last shirt - the shroud - has no pockets in it.}

Calculus of existence? :)

I thought therefore I was. I think therefore I am. What happened in between?

The Bad Writing Contest

Have a luke at The Bad Writing Contest. Now try and read this:

Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self). This is the real exteriority of the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision of the shining of the light breaking the dark is the other-identity of the light. The precision of the absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in “self-alienation,” not “self-identity, itself in self-alienation” “released” in and by “otherness,” and “actual other,” “itself,” not the abysmal inversion of the light, the reality of the darkness equivocally, absolute identity equivocally predicated of the self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of identity which is the identification person-self).

This isn't for Scott.

Rain lust

Not even a first draft.

The girls you fuck after walking dark dripping streets of rain are just mothers. They mope about, painting faces, placing make-up, worrying about paunches and stockings that smell like piss.

You want something that doesn't exist. Your disease. Wake up man! Stop trudging around "The Rocks" assaying crevices and divining rocks for impressions of sexual lust. It's stupidity.

Better to sit to warm bread and tales of Ulysses in warm comfort. Or Gaelic passion fiddled for tourists, and a kiss on cheek. Reciprocal, meaningless kisses. Chalk studied bodies poised like waxen gelatin. They simulate the perfect cadaver, model the correct density for brachytherapy studies. A slight gelatinous cheese cloth density - a skin, a cheek. A touch of friendship.

So it was we wandered, as I had hunted years before, homeless, forlorn and lost in indiscriminate passion. Or lust. But this time with friends.

And a cure, curled in brick wall cavities, molded for reasons other than drunken proclivities - meaningless actions caught on film. Digital print flaunting youth and extravagant meaninglessness. Pose. Flash. Harsh light and smiles stumble ahead. So lost - so climb illegal fences like immigrants. Boat people slapping car mirrors. Shame to not be understood. But then I'm a hypocrite. Oh to be as staid as they think I am...

A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

So, I bought this book today¹.

¹ I lost my book of Feynman down the toilet this afternoon at work, and this is what I end up with.

Ulysses - James Joyce

Finally got around to starting this again. My god, what a book! I'm utterly gobsmacked.

Links

http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/

Quote II

"A belief system that preaches innate imperfection and guilt has to have as it's centrum a gospel of self-hate."

Quote I

"Removing poverty and inequality isn't going to work. That would remove one of the main institutions of fear, which in turn would remove one of our main fulcrums of control."

Right to die?

Excuse the equivocal nature of the title of this post.

This morning the papers are awash with a story concerning the euthanasia of Dr John Elliot in a Swiss clinic last Thursday. This is a well written, objective article. It had me in tears.

Then we turn to a smh.com.au opinion piece titled "The line that must never be crossed" in which the author makes his intention clear very early:

However, emotion cannot be allowed to cloud the ethical and practical principles that must inform the euthanasia debate. Whatever the circumstances of Dr Elliott's case, the principles remain the same. So, too, is the conclusion to be drawn from those principles: the law must continue to prohibit euthanasia.

Fair enough - state your position up front. But let's look at the article. What reasoning is given? Does the author successfully steer clear of emotional motivations and arguments? Does the author make arguments that could be applied universally? Does the author argue from a utilitarian perspective? If so are contradictions avoided? Is the author simply justifying a stance (stated at the outset) or are we seeing an example of clearly reasoned, logical thought?

The author seems intent on drawing a distinction between euthanasia and other avenues of hastening death.

Yet a string of surveys here and overseas suggests doctors are readier than ever to administer pain-killing drugs or to withdraw or withhold treatment even when that will hasten death. Such relief for the terminally ill is to be welcomed, and the law's application is appropriately sensitive to this need. Such surveys of doctors' actual practice undermine the common argument by euthanasia advocates that patients suffer unnecessarily because doctors fear criminal prosecution. How often are doctors criminally prosecuted? Patients who suffer pain at the end of life can expect an easeful death, and that the law will not stand in the way.

It seems clear that the author is agreeing that some doctors are already hastening the death of certain patients in some cases. We should note carefully that the author justifies this by stating that the law is "sensitive" to such cases; that is, the medical practitioners in question won't be prosecuted, and that "Patients who suffer pain at the end of life can expect an easeful death, and that the law will not stand in the way."

What's wrong with the argument pointing out that swift death at the behest of the patient is more humane? How is forcing someone who wants to end their life to live in pain and take expensive pain-killing drugs, more ethical than giving them the freedom to end their life? We're not talking about people who aren't judged fit to make such a decision. We're talking about people with terminal illnesses in excruciating pain making a clear-minded and considered decision about their situation. From a consequentialist perspective what is the difference? In the former case, the patient undergoes severe pain. Family members, rendered helpless, stand by and watch. We have a course of action that results in substantial pain for the patient, considerable distress for the family and the potential shortening of patient life due to medical treatment or lack thereof. What about the latter case? The patient and family, along with professional medical advice make the decision to end the person's life. There is no more physical pain for the terminally ill patient. The family is saved the distress of watching their loved one suffer avoidable pain. In short, the patient is empowered to make a decision which allows death with dignity.

The whole argument which outlaws euthanasia almost smacks of typical authoritarian reasoning. "We" know better than you. What if you regret it? I'll make the decisions about this on your behalf, because it'll be better for you in the end. Just hold on tight, denying you the right to end your life is the "ethical" thing to do. If the patient were to ask why, the answer is simple. You're not in a "correct" state of mind. You can't be thinking clearly. I wonder how much of this attitude is motivated by society's deep seated need to control its citizens?

Why doesn't an autonomous, sentient person have the right to end their life? For that matter, why is it ok to deliberately keep the area "grey" and allow ad hoc decisions to be made by patients and doctors to use treatments which may shorten their life or to not use treatments that could extend it? What moral code makes this ok? Is it just because the whole situation is then somehow distanced from a black and white ethical decision? Are we supposed to feel ok about this approach because it dilutes the reality of hastening someone's death? What about the benefits of opening the issue up, and clearly attempting to demarcate it?

I think we need stronger arguments than:

There is no knowing where euthanasia law would take us once it had a foothold in the statutes. Overwhelmingly, families wanting to hasten the death of loved ones are motivated by love and compassion. But removing existing criminal sanctions could leave little to inhibit family members conniving with compliant doctors to end a patient's life for other, unacceptable motives such as greed or impatience. And cash-strapped health systems will surely find it cheaper to institutionalise death than care for the physical and emotional wellbeing of the old and frail.

And what stops that from happening now? How is this an argument against euthanasia, but not against procedures which could shorten a persons life substantially and keep them in a semi-comatose state for the rest of their "life"? Surely this is a non sequitur.

I think there needs to be open and logical debate resting on current ethical theory, rather than proposing hypothetical "doomsday" situations which obviously support a given view. To my mind this is another clear example of the author "justifying" a stance, rather than reasoning about it.

Honestly, it's disgusting to consider such sub-standard pseudo-intellectual drivel is/could become the modus operandi of a paper as widely read as smh.com.au.

Link

Is Philosophy Progressive?

Question II

Why is Marijuana or Mescaline illegal but Alcohol is not?

Question I

Is anything not an abstraction?

Tastes of Yukio Mishima

Corruscating excerpts from Yukio Mishima.

Once I sat for hours on the grass watching a colony of ants engaged in transporting minute particles of red earth. It wasn't a matter of the ants having aroused my interest. On another occasion I stood for ages outside the university, staring like a dolt at the thin wisp of smoke that rose from a factory chimney at the back. It wasn't that the smoke had caught my fancy. At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself. The world outside me had cooled down in parts and had then been reheated. How shall I put it? I felt that the outside world was spotted and again that it was striped. My inner being and the outer world slowly and irregularly changed places. The meaningless scene that surrounded me shone before my eyes; as it shone, it forced its way into me and only those parts of the scene that had not entered continued to glitter vividly in a place beyond.

'What about it?' he said. 'Something broke inside you just now, didn't it?' I can't bear to see a friend of mine living with something inside him that is so easy to break. My entire kindness lies in destroying such things.'

I did not expect that I should encounter the sea here on any intimate terms, although of course a jeep might come along from behind and push me into the sea just for fun.

The mouth of the river was unexpectedly narrow. The sea lay there indistinctly mingled with the dark cumuli of clouds, melting into the river, assaulting it. In order to get a tactile perception of this sea, I still had to walk a considerable distance with the wind blowing fiercely on me from across the plains and the rice fields. The wind was drawing its patterns over the entire surface of the sea. It was because of the sea that the wind was thus wasting its violent energy on these deserted fields. And the sea was a sea of vapor that covered this wintry area, a peremptory, dominant, invisible sea.

from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima

The Leaf Patch

A man is walking home from work along the side of a busy road. There is only one path and it is narrow. He sees a collection of leaves on the path in front of him. It is a matted collection of leafy vegetation, matted from a soggy cycle of rain and sun. Rain and sun.

He sees a woman walking towards him. She is an older woman and well dressed with a certain allure smarting about her hips and finely cut business accouterment.

She veers towards him.

Man: I am going to walk straight. This is ridiculous. I am not going to move for this woman. Why can't she walk straight? Does this woman think she owns the path? This path was here before both of us. I have intimated "straightness" in my journey for the last 30 minutes.

The woman continues to veer closer to him. It is evidently self evident that she is attempting to circumnavigate the matted leaf patch. She shows no concern for the imminent meeting of their trajectories.

Man: Oh come off it! She's going to walk into me to avoid the leaf patch? The leaf patch is on her side of the path. The burden of leaf patch is hers to deal with! Why must she confer this responsibility on me? It seems such a particular act and yet we're total strangers!

The woman comes to within two metres of the man. The man looks at the woman, being careful to express his look of severe annoyance. The woman continues unabated in her veering, for she is power-suited and exercising her right of post-feminist womanhood.

The man's body jerkily responds. One foot after another betrays his resolute promise to practice self-worth. He admonishes himself privately. He sinks to the primitive role of hunter-gatherer. The man sidesteps and lets the woman take the clear path. He has been displaced. He is on the grass beside the path. She is on the clear path. He is on the grass.

Man: "Ergghh!!"

The woman acknowledges his grunt with a look. The man tries to focus his frustration in his eyes and shoot it at her....

Woman: "I can't walk on the LEAVES!!"

Man: "Is it going to murder you?"

The woman shows the man a look of obvious disdain. They pass each other and keep walking. The man has learned his place.