Published on Tuesday April 30, 2002 .
The following is completely correct output from my last CS project. If this is correct output, just imagine what incorrect output must have looked like.
nachos% execalot
execalot
pi2d a3r geuxmeecnetds
arg 0: child a
2p iadr g4u meexnaetrcsge
d1
: child a
arg 0: child b
pid 5 execed
2 arguments
arg 1: child b
arg 0: chil2dp iacdr
g6u meexnetcse
d
aarrgg 01:: cchhiilldd dc
2 arguments
pid 7 execed
arg 1: child d
arg 0: child e
[2] Donea r(g0 )1
: chnialcdh oes
%
If you're wondering what the hell is going on here, it's five copies of the same program all running simultaneously, so their output is being interleaved. The project was the system that's capable of running multiple programs at the same time, along with a bunch of other low level guts of the "operating system".
Debugging this thing gave me one of the biggest school-induced headaches I've ever had. And in the end, though our system was behaving correctly, it was still running too slowly and so we weren't passing all of the test cases.
Well, at least now I know where Aphex Twin got the names of the songs on Drukqs.
While browsing VersionTracker the other day, I came across Crystal Ball, which is a D&D Dungeon Master tool for managing practically all aspects of running a D&D campaign, from keeping track of characters and NPCs, to randomly generating NPCs and monsters, to generating treasure and awarding experience, to keeping track of everything that can come up during a complicated melee. It made me sigh and say to myself "Wow, with this, the game would really be able to focus more on the story and less on the details of the rules. That'd be swell!"
It's a polished and very well done program, and it really makes me nostalgic to role play again. Of course, it's not like I have time between school and work, let alone do I know other people who have time, but it made me nostalgic all the same.
Oh, and better yet, it's a Mac only program (and better still, it runs well in OS X). So if you're a D&D player (or better still, a DM) and you have a Mac (better still, a PowerBook or iBook), you should definitely check this thing out.
So in the fall, I'm thinking about taking Philosophy of Language with John Searle (TTh 2-330), followed immediately by Metaphor with George Lakoff (TTh 330-5). For those of you who aren't in the know, Searle and Lakoff are both hugely egotistical. And while each of them has bigger fish to fry, their paths intersect often enough for there to be some irony in taking that pair of classes. Basically, I think this might be simultaneously one of the worst and best ideas I've ever had. Here's a couple of random comments that people have shared with me on the prospect:
"It would be like escaping the pull of one black hole, only because you were sucked in by another one."
-- Alert, on the prospect of Searle followed immediately by Lakoff.
"It would be like a binary ego system. They don't want anything to do with each other, and yet no matter how hard they try, they can't get away from each other."
-- Pi.
I'm not actually sure if I'll actually end up taking Searle, but I'm definitely taking Lakoff. Mmm, Metonymy.
Published on Saturday April 27, 2002 .
Bad Astronomy is a really amusing site that talks about all of the bad astronomy that can be found on TV, in movies, on the news, and so on. It seems like they could dedicate a whole site to bad astronomy in just Star Trek... And thanks to the Astronomy class I'm currently taking, I appreciate this all the more.
Next, we need a badmedicine.com or something to cover ER and also Star Trek. Or maybe there should just be a badstartrekscience.com. Wait, who am I kidding? No one in their right mind would tackle a project that gigantic.
(Link via Wockerjabby.)
Here's another joke in the "It's Irony" series:
Inventor of the 'eat as much meat as you want' Atkins Diet had a heart attack. When asked if he had any comments on his protein-rich diet in light of his recent cardiac arrest, Atkins replied, "It's irony."
(Credit where credit is due: Kevin emailed me this link and the joke.)
Published on Thursday April 25, 2002 .
Last night I went to the star viewing on the roof of Campbell hall.
Even to the naked eye Jupiter and Venus were stunningly bright, and Saturn was also easily spotted, and I was able to spot those three even as I was walking to Campbell at dusk. I wasn't quite sure who was Mars and who was Mercury until I got to Campbell hall and someone pointed out the barely visible blips, but Mercury was already so low that I wouldn't have been able to see it from the ground anyway.
After the initial naked eye tour of the sky, we went inside the telescope dome, where we checked out Mercury and Venus and Jupiter and Saturn and the Orion Belt at 225 x magnification. Mercury and Venus were frankly both kind of boring, with their most interesting aspects being the rainbow patterns caused by their light passing through Earth's atmosphere. Seeing the moons of Jupiter was pretty cool, but the telescope didn't want to focus so it was kind of hard to make out any features of the planet. And while the Orion Belt was pretty sexy, it was really Saturn that knocked my socks off. For some reason, being able to see the rings of Saturn through the telescope was just one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.
I think I'm going to have to go to the viewing again next week, when Mars, Venus, and Saturn are all going to apparently be even closer to each other in the sky. I hope it's clear. If you're interested in checking things our yourself, this site provides some nice pictures giving you a clue of what you should be looking for. In particular, it looks like Mars and Saturn and Venus will be doing some interesting things around May 4th which should be visible with the naked eye, and with a pair of binoculars you should be able to make out quite a bit more.
And as long as I'm talking about Astronomy, this java app provides neat demonstrations of the orbits of the moons of the planets of the solar system. In particular, Saturn and Jupiter (with their impressive collections of satellites) are definitely worth looking at.
Published on Wednesday April 24, 2002 .
A few days after we came up with that first ironic joke for my ironic punchline, Dave came up with another one:
What did the doctor tell Tonya Harding after she broke her leg doing a jump and had to have her knee replaced with an artificial joint?
It's iron-knee!
The only real problem with this joke is that it's a little dated these days, but I'm sure future circumstances will arise for which the basic premise will be able to be recycled.
Published on Tuesday April 23, 2002 .
So during the Whistler trip, I finally found a joke for my "It's Irony" punchline. On one of the train rides, I explained the punchline and my sad lack of a joke for such a good punchline to my company, and after some thought, Tyler finally came up with an appropriately ironic joke:
What did the coroner say after determining that Andrew Carngegie had been stabbed to death with a railroad spike?
"It's Irony."
Oh sweet monkey loving, Super Monkey Ball 2 is in development and should apparently be out this fall. Can you say Monkey Soccer? And looking at those screenshots, the backgrounds look amazing.
Whee!
While searching for some info on determining content similarity using perl, I came across this list of Ten Perl Myths. If anything, this is neat to look at because it has a 10 second introduction to perl references.
When I teach programmers perl, I never get into all of the details, because most of it can be deduced based on their previous programming experience. However, one thing I always go over are references, because though they're not complicated, I've never dealt with anything like perl references in any other language. I also tell them that if they only read one thing from Programming Perl, it should be the chapters on references and data structures.
Though now that I think about it, I should probably also tell them to read the chapters on regular expressions, because they're what makes perl powerful, and if a perl programmer doesn't grok the power of a regular expression, then she won't appreciate the language. But the Ten Perl Myths page mentioned that, too, so I think this year I'm doing perl training, I'm going to start by sharing these Ten Perl Myths.