About David Cary (DAV)
updated 2003-01-20.
Contents:
- Things I lack
- Things I have
- Periodicals I read
- Addresses for David
- What Makes David Tick ?
- Affiliations
- People
- Computers I own
- Emperor of the World Campaign Promises
(Rants and pet peeves)
- Interests
Related pages:
-
I want chocolate.
- I know a tiny bit of the German language and plan to
become more fluent; I need lots of practice
- I know little about Alife, Quantum Physics, and Quantum
Computing, and I want to learn more.
- I still don't understand Einstein's Theory of General
Relativity.
- I lack a short-wave radio receiver.
-
I feel a little sad that I don't have any children (yet).
I like to think I would be an above-average dad.
But I enjoy my solitude, and I don't think I'm ready to give it up.
I enjoy wrapping my brain around new concepts,
but that requires long, uninterrupted periods of thinking time.
-
Apparently I need some help with the projects
gathering dust on my
todo.html
page.
-
My sense of time, and how I think of my past and future self (selves ?),
is a little different than the way appears to work in (other) humans.
Fortunately, it's not as extreme as
the (fictional)
Coda
http://polyticks.com/home/Coda/
.
-
I would like more chocolate.
I really like the article
"What I want" by Jeff Breidenbach
http://www.jab.org/www/denali.html
.
Stuff I have that perhaps I could use to help you.
- I have a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering(
BSEECO) and a math minor. (I wanted to major in
Time Travel Technology and
Artificial Psychology; these were
closest equivalents i could find in *this* time.)
- I understand Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity.
- I understand "Fuzzy Logic" developed by
Professor Zadeh Lotfi.
(
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FuzzyLogic
)
- I've read Mandelbrot's book and have a pretty good grip
on "fractal geometry".
-
Some computers.
- I have a modem, and I know how to use it !
printed magazines and newspapers
(most of these magazines are free
"to qualified individuals"
. Go ahead and tell me which ones sound
interesting. I'll need your name, postal address, title, and
phone number to put you on the free subscription cards.
Or you could just subscribe yourself;
most of them have online subscription forms)
Magazines I currently don't read,
but am thinking about re-subscribing:
See also
get_online.html#mailing_list
for information on how to find many, many other mailing lists.
-
Tulsa Engineering Foundation: IEEE newsletter
http://tulsaengineer.org/newsletter.asp
DAV subscribed 2002-03-16.
[ ieee at TulsaEngineer.org ?]
(
local.html#tulsa
)
-
the f-cpu mailing list
computer_architecture.html#freedom
-
Breakthrough! newsletter
http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/BT/
- Foresight Institute Electronic Newsletter (sent 4 times a year)
http://www.foresight.org/FI/FEMform.html
-
MISC computer architecture mailing list
-
nanocomp at coollist.com
is the
Nanocomputer
Dream Team mailing list.
- FX (Foresight Exchange) http://ideosphere.com/
(formerly known as the "Idea Futures game")
- mini-AIR
from
The Annals of Improbable Research
http://www.improb.com/
(science humor, ~1 issue a month)
- pdx-b5 http://www.pacifier.com/~brianw/pdx/
(Pacific Northwest Babylon-5 fan club -- ~ 4 messages a
day)
- coj-list (Church Of Joe) http://www.pacifier.com/~brianw/COJ/
(global Babylon-5 fan club, moderated from Portland, OR)
-
Christlib
"where Christian and libertarian concerns hang out"
christlib.html
-
http://www.egroups.com/group/libertarian-baptists
- PCI mailing list
- Omega database (omega-submissions at excelsior.org)
http://www.microserve.net/listserv
To subscribe to <omega-submissions at excelsior.org> via the web:
Point your web browser to
http://www.microserve.net/listserv,
enter your name and E-Mail, select "subscribe" and then
hit the subscribe button. Please note, you must select
"subscribe" and get confirmation that you are
subscribed before you can change your mail modes.
-
DDK-L, the Windows Device Driver Development list.
http://www.albany.net/~danorton/chsw.html
E-Mail: info@chsw.com
To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscibe DDK-L" (without
the quotes) in the body of a message to Majordomo@albany.net .
From: DDK-L List Owner <owner-ddk-l@albany.net>
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 10:41:57 -0500 (EST)
Reply-To: DDK-l List Owner
-
To subscribe to the Tulsa Linux Users mailing list, send a blank email to
"tulsa-linux-subscribe at morpheus.net". You should get an email back
verifying that you requested to be put on the mailing list. Reply to the
verification email (instructions are in it), and you'll be subscribed.
-
Programmer's Challenge
to_program.html#programmers_challenge
(I know I was subscribed 1995-12-05, and probably before that too...)
- Computing as Compression
www.sees.bangor.ac.uk/~gerry/sp_summary.html
message archives:
http://www.wco.com/~sanna/casc
(~1 message/week)
- quickcam-drivers
http://www.crynwr.com/qcpc/
(mostly about hacking digital cameras to
turn them into WebCams, mostly using Linux boxes)
-
Yes, this is really a bit too much for a mere human to handle.
If I ever start a mailing list, remind me about
Mailing List Considerations:
get_online.html#list_considerations
How do I get digital objects from David ?
Use my current web home
site.
How do I send David digital objects ?
If it's OK for everyone in the world to see it,
post to "my" wiki
http://visual.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/DavidCary
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DavidCary
Use
d.cary@ieee.org
,
my preferred email address
;
if that doesn't work, try
[FIXME: deja address].
or this handy
feedback.html
.
What about IRC ?
I'm not much of a IRC guy. Sorry.
What about Instant Messager, ICQ, etc. ?
Sorry, I haven't gotten around to doing that yet (as of 2003-09-22).
What about Skype ?
This looks pretty interesting. I plan to try it out soon.
How do I send David physical objects ?
You can send physical objects to me via
David Cary
icbmto: [FIXME]
227 S. 163 E. Ave.
Tulsa OK 74108-3310
How do I send David analog messages ?
918·491·9749 (office)
918·813·2279 (home)
Some people follow 10 Commandments, I follow 2 directives:
- Worship the God of Truth. (prime directive)
- Treat the humans of Earth in the same way I treat my own
siblings.
There's also what I call the "10 Suggestions" (it's
just a name, there are many more than 10) that have some
influence on me. They include, in no particular order:
- "Small is beautiful."
-- official slogan of the Million Microbe March --
mini-AIR 1997 Nov
- "The Design Scientist's function is to solve
problems only through introducing new artifacts into the
environment, the availability of which will induce their
spontaneous employment by humans thus coincidentally
discontinuing and rendering obsolete the previous
problem-producing human behaviors and devices." - R.
Buckminster Fuller
- "Why play zero-sum games when there are so many
positive-sum games to play instead?" -- SunCat
(Louis Kelso) kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu
- "Eliminate chartjunk" - Tufte.
- "Think about things that are true, noble, right,
pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or
praiseworthy." -- Phil. 4:8
- Faster is better.
(for example,
http://niit1.harvard.edu/networkspeed.html
)
-
The Hacker's Ethic
http://hagbard.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/jargon?query=ethic
-
The Jargon File
creed.html#jargon
- "If you can see it, it's too big." -- me, in
electronic and nanotech design
- "If it moves, it's not my problem." -- me, as
BSEECO. (Right now I'm concentrating on solid-state
devices -- computers, electronics, quantum physics, the
human brain
. I let mechanical engineers, aerospace
engineers, high-energy physicists, police officers, etc.
worry about things that move.)
- "wisdom >> knowledge >> information
>> raw data" -- me (The symbol
">>" means "The thing on the left is
more valuable to me". I'm searching for wisdom; but
if I can't get it, I'd like at least some raw data .)
(accumulated facts; insight, understanding, ...)
-
DAV: I've noticed 2 trends:
- * Generalize: Make the difficult, possible.
- * specialize: do the most important 90% extremely simply, cheaply, quickly.
Let someone else worry about the other 10%.
see
general-purpose tools vs. single-purpose tools
3d_design.html#general_purpose
- "Speak for yourself. I intend to live forever"
-- Riker.
I intend to live forever. So far, so good
-- Stephen Wright
-
long term plans ?
future_history.html#long_term
(in no particular order)
I have also been called a
I'd like to hear from anyone who remembers me from:
-
Immanuel
-
Eastwood
-
CHEF
-
OSU
-
Village
I'd also like to shake hands with the people
that I only know from their web pages
link_farm.html#people
.
Several of my friends go to
Baptist Chapel
http://BaptistChapel.net/.
Several of my friends now go to
Village
http://www.villagefamily.org/
I personally know quite a few people that have put up their own web sites.
See
local.html#people
for a list of their web sites.
(Rants and pet peeves)
I've mellowed a lot since I was young.
Now I'm pretty much laissez-faire (apathetic, some might call it).
These are some of my remaining pet peeves.
I am now convinced that having a (human) emperor of the world is a bad idea.
If I were emperor of the world,
some things might improve, but overall things would get worse.
But it's still fun to dream ...
(soon I'll have some campaign promises from others
running for Emperor of the world -- Emperor Dogbert, etc.)
[FIXME:
think about adding this to
The Pet Peeves Ring
http://www.gargaro.com/peeves.html
.
Should I split this out into a seperate
``peeves.html'' file ?
]
Stuff I would do if I were emperor (or at least President):
-
get rid of stupid laws.
-
You know those little legs that lift
the back of most keyboards ?
I would ban them, forcing manufacturers to remove
them from all new keyboards, since
they just make things worse.
serialportdocs.html#RSI
The little legs that lift the *front* of the keyboard
on some of the better keyboards are OK.
-
I see that forcing everyone to learn a ``global language''
probably won't work, for several reasons.
-
I've finally come to the realization that
there's no one ``best'' language.
Even if I forced everyone to learn a global language,
soon local dialects and idioms and slang would arise
that would be mutually incomprehensible.
When a small group of people are working together in
a certain context,
they save time by coining new idioms, acronyms, words, slang,
to express ideas that are common in that context,
while using longer phrases to refer to ideas
that are rare in that context.
-
Rick Harrison
http://www.invisiblelighthouse.com/langlab/farewell.html
makes the argument that it's impossible
to get people agree on one ``best'' language --
they're always finding some little rough edge to tweak.
.
-
language does not stand still.
If it did not accept changes
it would fossilize and become useless
for everything taking place
after said fossilization.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson (???)
However, if everyone learned (at least) 2 languages
(their native tongue plus one other),
then we could have most of the same benefits in a more scalable / improvable / acceptable way.
Is there a better way of encouraging bilingual communication
than ``As emperor, I command you to learn another language -- or else !
But hey, you can pick whatever other language you want.''
?
The "Coalition for Language Diversity" promotes a "English Plus" philosophy -- is this the same?
-
"magnetic field lines", also known as "lines of force"
http://www.exn.ca/mindbender/?t=dp
,
http://madsci.wustl.edu/posts/archives/sep2000/969408527.Ph.q.html
,
http://madsci.wustl.edu/posts/archives/oct98/907332555.Ph.r.html
,
http://madsci.wustl.edu/posts/archives/nov99/941810275.Ph.q.html
cause way too much confusion.
Is there any way to bring clarity and understanding ?
-
Some people would be annoyed if I the ambassador I sent to their country was female.
If I became President of some country,
I would be tempted to send
female ambassadors to those countries anyway.
In particular, Debora as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
-
Every publicly-funded computer lab and typing class would be required
to have a minimum of 1/3 its machines set up to use the
Dvorak key layout
link_farm.html#keyboard
|
serialportdocs.html#keyboard
.
(Until some other keyboard layout is proven to be objectively better,
not just "accidentally" better).
-
Why do people say things like
``I found a really interesting web site that ...''
or
``This information came from a web site''
but without a reference ?
It's just rude to quote someone without mentioning
the name of the person who originally said that.
(Giving the URI of the original source would also be handy).
-
Every building is required to have its number in large numbers on the mailbox or curb.
http://www.gruntdoc.com/archives/000367.html
points to
http://www.medicmom.com/blog/comments.php?id=P403_0_1_0
- ban the silly "am/pm" time.
I might go to current standard 24 hour military time (from 00:00 to 23:59),
or I might entertain other suggestions for dividing up the day --
-- my brother kinda likes the 36-hour "Centaurian time" from _Men In Black_.
-
Ban the use of the percent (%) as a mathematical symbol.
If one really want to indicate 25 out of 100,
one can write 25/100, or 0.25, or 1/4.
In any situation where one could possibly use %,
one of these other formats is always superior.
I would also ban the use of that symbol for something completely different in C++,
and mandate the much more readable keywords B. Stroustrup suggested used instead.
(I list them in daves.h;
recently that list has become part of the C++ standard
and compliant compilers should let you
#include <iso646.h>
)
.
Instant C9x
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/q8/
has a public-domain version of the iso646.h file.
-
I've pretty much given up on trying to email pretty
left and right quote characters. I'll be sticking with the
plain non-committal quotes and apostrophes.
(It is just too bad that the original ASCII codes didn't have both left
and right quotes -- that feature might have helped debug a lot of code.
Lots of misleading error messages would have gone away if the compiler could
*know* that "right quote missing").
Things would be different if I were emperor.
-
Eliminate
the silly rule of putting periods inside ending quotes,
when it's really not part of the quote.
Use the much more logical German and British quotation style.
-
I am annoyed when I can't quite get to the phone in time,
my answering machine gets it before I get there,
and the person on the other end just hangs up without
saying a single word.
But I don't really know what I could do about it,
even if I were Emperor, other than
to follow this advice in hopes that others will
follow my lead:
"Three quarters of all business calls do not reach the
intended person, and 90% of phone messages are blank or
only say "So-and-so called." A lot of folks also get upset
if the phone rings when they are on a roll. Make specific
telephone appointments with the hard-to-reach through the
people who answer the phone; leave useful and descriptive
messages; and turn off the ringer at productive times." -- unknown
-
Roman Numerals are obsolete !
Give it a rest, already !
There's a small chance I may make the
decimal system obsolete as well --
-- recommending teaching the
dozenal
system instead.
-
pet peeve: manufacturers that sell 2 different products,
whose name is not different enough from each other.
For example: the "Matrox Mystique" v. the "Matrox Mystique 200".
-
Erno Rubik's cube:
3d_design.html#rubik
[fixme: move peeve here, leave only link there ?]
Pet peeve: Please *do not* peel the stickers off and rearrange them
to "fix" the cube. They never stick back on very well,
and soon fall off and are lost.
Instead,
if you *must* have it fixed
and you don't have the patience to do that
merely by twisting,
*guess what's inside first*,
then *take it apart* into "individual cubes".
It's quite surprising how the whole thing
holds together (mechanical engineering).
Then pop it back together (fixed, of course).
Sure, it's "looser" after you do this,
but easier-to-spin is not a bad thing.
[FIXME: describe exactly how to get the 1st cube out,
or link to a page that does.]
-
The people living in a city name their own city -- that's the real name.
If I were emperor, then everyone would use that name
(assuming the real name can be represented with ISO-8859-1 (or US-ASCII) letters).
I fail to see why a city needs an English name, a French name,
a Deutsch name, and so on.
For example,
See
link_farm.html#pmail
-
I've grown to accept the fact that some people say ``infinite''
to describe quantities that, technically, are finite,
merely too large to bother counting today.
For example:
The number of grains of sand on a beach, the drops of water in the ocean, and
apparently the number of stars in the sky -- these are all finite.
It irks me when people jump to the conclusion that
because something is really large,
it has *all* the characteristics of the truly infinite.
I see I'm not alone in this pet peeve:
see also
bible_crypto.html#infinity
for more information about infinity.
-
Some people still use a computer
just like they used a typewriter --
they manually hyphenate
words at the end of a line,
which goobers everything up when
the computer reflows the text. I hate that !.
Also,
while there is
"nothing wrong"
http://www.mla.org/main_stl.htm#spaces
with typing 2 spaces after every period,
it is totally obsolete (IMO).
Type 1 space after every period.
(
Single space after periods (not two spaces).
--
http://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/document.php
...
)
(
"Instead of putting two spaces after each sentence, just put one.
This is a standard in the industry. "
--
https://www.printingforless.com/
)
(
Please put two spaces after the end of a sentence in your comments, so
that the Emacs sentence commands will work.
--
GNU Coding Standards
local mirror:
../program/c_manual/GNU_coding_standards.txt
current:
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html
)
I fail to see why some people think it's so very important
exactly where to make line breaks (linebreaks) and hyphenate. For example,
Breakers does one thing only --
it considers every line-break,
every possible choice of where to break each line
so as to make the best possible choices for every paragraph as a whole.
Breakers tries
to open up tight lines,
to move words into loose lines, and
to remove hyphens wherever possible.
If Breakers sees a line with big holes of white space,
it looks above and below to see if the overall appearance can be improved.
...
Breakers considers the full network of all possible breaks for every line in the paragraph,
often considering more than a million possibilities for a typical paragraph.
...
the optimum line-breaking algorithm invented by Professor Donald Knuth and Michael Plass
...
as part of the TeX programmable typesetting system
http://www.bluesky.com/breakers/whatisbreakers.html
Knuth's software is open-source.
Stuff other people would do if they were emperor:
-
"If we ran the world"
http://www.ifwerantheworld.com/
-
- Any newspaper that publishes an Astrology column
must also publish an Astronomy column.
- Any newspaper that publishes ad hoc interpretations of what the Stock market results "mean" on any give day, or
un-checked stories on government-released statistics,
must also publish a Mathematics column.
- Any newspaper that publishes a Computers & Software & Entertainment Products column
must also publish a Computer Science column.
- Any newspaper that publishes a Health and Medicine column
must also publish a Biology column.
-- Jonathan Vos Post
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/12/nullity_the_nonsense_number_1.php
-
I'd like to see the universal banning of people saying 'oh' when they mean 'zero'. The two are entirely different characters, mean different things, one is a digit, the other a letter, they don't add up. Make them stop it
...
Teach kids the International Phonetic Alphabet as soon as they learn to read.
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/No_20More_20Letters_20Mixed_20With_20Numbers
-
The thing that makes me crazy...
Is when people casually mention that
"oh, no I don't use XYZ, it's got ABC bug",
that they *haven't even bothered reporting*.
It drives me crazy,
and should be grounds for invoking the Remote Strangulation Protocol.
--
David Welton
(2001-11-15)
on page
http://www.advogato.org/article/378.html
DAV: I agree.
Ask for what you really want
.
-
"For some years now I've been amusing myself by
planning exactly what I would try in the way of "spelling reform"
if I woke up one morning and
found that the Revolutionary Stalinist-Linguist Party had mounted a coup and
appointed me as World Dictator."
--
Justin B Rye 07-Mar-99
http://www.unifon.org/badarguments.html
- spelling reform of the English language
- non-QWERTY keyboard layout
- "anyone caught using pecks and bushels
after the tenth anniversary of my glorious rule
will be branded on the forehead with the word «idiot»"
-
"count yourself lucky I'm not reforming the Phoenician-derived alphabetical order!"
(see
idea_space.html#sorting_order
)
-
Recently I've caught myself typing WordsSmashedTogetherLikeSo in non-hyper media and
getting quite agitated when no link appears.
It just seems so natural to link to another page...
oh well, come the revolution all media will be hyper. --KeithBraithwaite
Me too. I also always reach for EditText as soon as I spot an error anywhere; or
feel something has been missed out.
Of course, there isn't one. -- MatthewTheobalds
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LinksAreContent
-
Bili Rubin for President
http://leisureagency.org/bili
Under the leadership of Bili Rubin,
our nation will stride into the 21st century with no need for weapons,
due to its stance of Have Fun, Do Not Blow Things Up!
(HFDNBTU!).
The country will then be free to establish
the OATT, or Organization for Advancement of Teleportation Technology.
After the liquidation of the National Department of Defense,
half of the monies thereby acquired
will be dedicated to the development of teleportation and other essential technologies,
such as flying cars and compost-powered electric plants,
which were overlooked during our industrial age.
...
Bili Rubin proposes a National Silly Day
-
My name is David Rosdeitcher and I am running for President of the United
States in 2004.
http://www.zipcodeman.com/zipcode_man_for_president_of_the.htm
``... 2. All Information Should be Available to the Public
...
I will, when elected president,
de-classify all information and open up the methods used by
secretive organizations like NASA and the CIA ...''
-
Carla Schroder:
"If I were a manufacturer of a delicate,
expensive, high-quality precision instrument,
I would design one-way connectors,
so they could not be plugged in the wrong way.
But Caviar does not share this philosophy."
http://www.computerbits.com/archive/19970400/crla9704.htm
-
``The inventer of pop-up ads should be found and hanged.
I'm not willing to negotiate on this one. Hanged. Dead. Got it?''
-- Andrew Heller 2001-07-27
http://news.tucows.com/cyberdummy/40346.html
-
``Never, ever, ever, ever drive on the same roadway as me
while chattering on your stupid cell phone.
If you do, I reserve to swerve and hit YOU before you swerve and hit me.
Consider it a pre-emptive strike.''
-- Andrew Heller 2002-01-21
http://news.tucows.com/cyberdummy/41565.html
-
"IMHO, using the word "unlimited" in any marketing campaign should be a felony."
-- Walter Bell 2001-11-30
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24346&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=2638081#2638107
-
Dogbert
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/
-
ADMIRAL ACKBAR FOR PRESIDENT
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/6290/
-
Earth's Supreme Despot
http://www.pantos.org/ts/photos.html
-
Simon
<msimon at tefbbs.com>
1998/09/17
says:
No one should be allowed to design hardware without a software bit
twiddling background.
No one should be allowed to design software without a hardware
background.
-
Jeremy Jacobs
has a long list of campaign promises
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6609/ruleworld.htm
including
All CIA-type organizations will be abolished. No more secrets. No more cover-ups.
No more covert operations. No more nasty things done in the name of "national security."
The Freedom of Information Act will be extended to every department of every government on Earth.
This seems related to
http://www.disclosureproject.org/
-
Martin Rebas
http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d3rebas/humor/worlddomination.html
[FIXME:]
-
It is urgent
that our state legislatures, the Secretary of State in all 50 states,
and the Election Board in all 3075 counties, return to easily read
paper ballots counted by neighborhood voters, with the results posted
at the neighborhood precinct before the ballots leave that precinct.
--
Jim Condit Jr.
August 1996
[FIXME: URI]
-
"Lythril For President"
"Don't settle for the lesser of two evils"
"This time, why not pure evil ?"
http://www.plaidder.com/wof/lythpres.htm
(What exactly are the campaign promises ?)
What would you do if you were emperor ?
Here are a few of my interests that my other web pages
do not make blatantly obvious:
2000-01-03:DAV: It looks like I've finally at least *mentioned*
all of my interests somewhere in my web pages.
2002-04-20:DAV: Except singing in my church chior. That's not really something
that translates well to the Web.
I usually carry a 0.5 mm pencil and a black pen in my left front pocket.
You can probably tell that I'm not all that excited about colors.
I've already learned an astonishing number of languages,
and I intend to learn more
todo.html#language
.
See also
idea_space.html#constructed_language
natural languages
-
English
dialects (in order of familiarity)
-
Deutsch (German)
How to shoot yourself in the foot
in each of 20 different programming languages.
[FIXME: still a partial list -- see my resume for more.]
misc
I like to eat spaghetti using 2 forks.
(It's a COMSCI thing.)
I like to play with my food. I'm getting pretty good at using chopsticks.
I'm impressed with other people
http://www.sincity.com/penn-n-teller/food.html
take playing with food to new heights.
CO
P-- V |+-|+ B F++ 1++ 2-
DAV's
Geek Code
http://geekcode.com/
here.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GE/M/ED/TW d@ s++:+>++: a>? C++>++++$ UBLU->++++$ P+>++$ L+>++++$
E---@ W-(++)>$ N-(+++) K+++>++++ w++ M>++$ V PS---(+++)@
PE++
Y--(+)@ PGP-->- t 5+ X? R? tv? b+>+++
DI++++ D+>---- G e+++>++++ h+@>++(-) r? !z
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
decode it:
http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
-
I've written some silly pieces of
haiku
link_farm.html#haiku
.
-
While I am interested in ``intelligence'',
I am not at all interested in ``IQ''.
I agree with Steven Pinker when he says:
"All the claims about a language instinct and other mental modules
are claims about the commonalities among all normal people.
They have virtually nothing to with possible genetic differences between people.
One reason is that, to a scientist interested in how complex biological systems work,
differences between individuals are so _boring_!
Imagine what a dreary science of language we would have
if instead of trying to figure out how people put words together to express their thoughts,
researchers had begun by developing a Language Quotient (LQ) scale,
and busied themselves by measuring thousands of people's relative language skills.
It would be like asking how lungs work
and being told that some people have better lungs than others"
- Steven Pinker, _The Language Instinct_, pp 428-429.
http://www.rahul.net/pcm/pcm_cog_quotes.html
-
I might as well admit it. I'm a vi user.
software_david_uses.html#vi
-
I experience
cognitive dissonance
from time to time.
[FIXME: what is
``Festinger's theory of reduction of cognitive dissonance.''
?
]
-
I put my initials on every piece of hardware I build,
and I think easter eggs
are also cool.
If you think they are ``unprofessional'',
may I suggest reading
``why all cool programs have easter eggs'' by jwz (Jamie Zawinski)
http://www.jwz.org/doc/easter-eggs.html
and
``Silicon Creatures Gallery''
collected by Michael W. Davidson
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/
?
[
vlsi.html#implementations
]
...
"The Easter Egg Archive(tm)"
http://eeggs.com/
-
James Newton 2002-02-26 lists David A Cary on the
``Hall of Fame'' for page editors
http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist/support.htm
http://www.piclist.com/support.htm
-
DAV suspects more of his relatives are dentists
http://www.dentistinfo.com/
than the average American.
dentist humor:
-
Ana Serrano
``Both literate and numerate,
(the two prerequisites for success in her vision of the future),
Serrano has a unique and insightful perspective on
balancing creativity and commerce,
the value of technological agnosticism and the power of math.
...
... We run three platforms: Windows, Mac OS and Unix.
...
We would be doing a disservice to our students if we didn't
expose them to all the platforms.
Most of the production work that has to do with
creating the media assets for student prototypes happens on Macs.
We use the PCs to do microelectronics work, for example,
because much of the electronics work fits better with the PC.
We don't train people in any specific tool or technology,
but once we define the project students want to create,
we help them identify the most appropriate tools
to make that project a success. Some use PCs and some use Macs.
But most projects are cross-platform.
...
we try to develop new forms of ... expression
...
We need to have any possible platform, tool, or technological device
at our disposal.
...
As a result, we're technologically agnostic.
We don't follow a particular technological cult.
But just because we don't evangelize doesn't mean we don't agree with it.
For example, we think some open source software is fantastic.
...
...
The future is going to be all about abstract mathematical concepts embedded in technological devices that will run our lives. In any kind of day-to-day existence you will probably interact with thousands- even millions - of lines of code, from your shaver to your car. So in a sense, computer hardware and software developers are helping people live better lives. This is a big responsibility - one that Apple & Microsoft need to take seriously. One way they can take this responsibility seriously is to make sure that technology is demystified and made beautiful. Apple & Microsoft can help each other meet these goals.
...
People will have to be both literate and numerate to survive in the future.
...
We're moving into a future that's increasingly difficult to understand.
If how things worked in the industrial revolution was all about physics,
then how things work in the knowledge economy is all about math.
...
This interview took place at the Canadian Film Centre in the h@bitat studio,
where Serrano helps her students blur the lines and redefine what's possible.
Exciting things are always being spawned at h@bitat .
To find out more about this new media group and the Canadian Film Centre,
check out: www.cdnfilmcentre.com
''
--
http://www.microsoft.com/canada/mac/profiles/aserrano/
DAV:
I'm a processor agnostic,
but I haven't yet become a
language agnostic
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?LanguageAgnostic
-
Review Your Technical Interest Profile
IEEE
...
1 - MICRO/NANO ELECTRO-MECHANICAL SYSTEMS AND ROBOTS
2 - COMMUNICATIONS
3 - GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
4 - RELIABILITY
5 - SOURCE CODING, DATA COMPRESSION and QUANTIZATION
-
I sometimes feel vaguely guilty for my yearning to live in a genuinely beautiful place,
as if it were an effete, elitist desire
that has nothing to do with the daily concerns of most people.
My guilt, I realize, is completely a product of growing up an Ugly-fied American and,
therefore, woefully undereducated about
the way our physical and aesthetic environment affects us individually and as communities.
In an article in the Dec. 17, 2001, issue of The American Prospect ,
Sarah Williams Goldhagen, an architectural scholar at the Harvard design school,
argues that a high-quality built environment is
"a social good, one that more than repays the investment.
European architecture has demonstrated this repeatedly."
--
``Flatland''
article by Sandy Asirvatham 2002-01-09
http://www.citypaper.com/2002-01-09/under.html
DAV sometimes feels the same way ...
-
http://www.citypaper.com/2001-10-31/under.html
Sandy Asirvatham talks about artist
Lee Seung-Hee ( Nikki S. Lee ) born in 1970.
Asirvatham says
Perhaps that's why I'm so fascinated by her pictures.
They remind me of my own life.
I am constantly moving among different groups of people --
journalists, novelists, musicians, academics, engineers, Ivy Leaguers, blue-collar workers,
New Yorkers, Baltimoreans, Washingtonians, Indian relatives,
Irish-American in-laws --
simultaneously belonging and not belonging among each.
This tendency toward social fluidity used to make me sad,
as if I hadn't really found my "place" yet,
as if I were a chameleon with no decisive, authentic, cohesive sense of self.
Eventually, I came to accept --
indeed, revel in --
the fact that I'd never fit completely within the confines of one single community,
one single set of social interactions.
DAV occasionally feels the same way.
It sometimes seems like you could pair off all the groups I DAV belong to,
such that each pair is traditionally though of as completely isolated from the other.
-
Hardware / software.
-
(conservative) Baptist / (extremist) Transhuman.
-
(sometimes a cappella) Chior member / purely-instrumental computer-generated music enthusiast.
-
Carnivore / vegetarian.
-
(sometimes) gardener / mathematician.
Then there's the whole ``Pretender'' concept.
I remember thinking quite clearly ``I could do *anything* when I grow up.''.
While other people seemed conscious
that certain careers were completely impossible for them
(``I can't stand the sight of blood, I could never be a surgeon'';
``math is hard; rocket science is right out'') .
Unfortunately my limited lifespan forces me to limit myself.
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/344poll.html
seems to suggest that most people have some dichotomy
in their lives.
-
David Cary at Mind-X
http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/profile.php?id=341
I wish I had a menu bar like this.
(If you know where this came from,
please tell me !)
Soli Deo gloria -- To God alone be glory.
Started: 1995 ? before Dec 11.
Original Author: David Cary.
Current maintainer: David Cary.
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