I'm a bit of a math geek by nature, so I use large numbers all the time. Just by squinting a bit and thinking, I was able to estimate the size of the sun within a factor of 2 the other day... Not that this is especially useful. But I'm comfortable with the way numbers stack and interact and modify each other.
But I still don't understand large numbers.
Here's the clue. When we talk about large numbers, we say things like "well, picture this...". We use analogies. We say things like "if you stacked that many dollar bills, they'd reach the moon".
All of these tools to "help us understand" are in fact admissions that we don't.
If the only understanding I can have of a number is an analogy, a representation, then I don't understand it. Can you imagine someone trying to explain five that way? "Imagine that this many people, lying end-to-end, are about as long as your driveway." "A stack of bills this tall would fold easily in your pocket and be forgotten until you found them in the dryer." We don't need that, because we know what "five" is. We can experience five things all-at-once. We can see a group of things and just know that there's about five of them. By ten, most people are having a hard time.
Even the indirect experience of counting wears out. I counted to a thousand once, but all I know is that it took a very long time (at least to the mind of a four-year-old). Even a hundred is too many; I have to group it into clumps, patterns, to understand it. Ten I might have a handle on, so it's very easy to group things in tens. I'm thirty-one years old. That's just over three tens of years, and I was there the whole time, but I honestly don't think I entirely have a grasp on thirty-one itself.
Trying to comprehend large numbers is both futile and very, very, useful. We can never quite get that same familiarity and intimate understanding of them that we do with the small numbers, but we can get enough of a feel for them to recognize obviously wrong guesses.
Sometimes. I once worked out that there ought to be "oh, at least a trillion, maybe more" cells in a human body, and rejected it as obviously silly; wasn't a trillion one of those stupidly large numbers they use in analogies? Actually, it looks as though the number probably is around ten trillion - with perhaps another hundred trillion microbes living in us. Wow. I'm not sure which is scarier; being outnumbered by the micobes, or finding out that I was roughly correct on a biology question.
Well, I can't prove that all is well, because I've had one crash since it came back, but I think that was my own stupid fault. :)
My Mac got repaired. Things which have never worked since I got it are suddenly working. Crashes I used to think were application software have been revealed to be a hardware problem.
So, I'm back. I'll be updating more often again now.
Every so often, this happens to me. My Mac will enter a state where it is unreliable, and I will be unable to use it for production work, but the reliability will be sporadic enough that it's hard to diagnose. Yesterday, I brought my G4 tower in to a local repair place in the hopes that they can fix it up for me. I sure hope they can. The crashes it has are exceptionally strange, and I really don't know what to make of them. All the normal steps have been taken; were it up to me, the next thing I'd do would be to swap the processor module out (it's a dual-processor Mac, but there's just a single "processor module"), and the thing after that would be swapping the motherboard.
This is why I haven't been posting so much recently; I've gotten used to using Safari for anything which uses JavaScript, including the back-end of my blog software.
Well, it's not a full issue, but the the cover for the first issue of Metanoia is scanned in now. The first couple of pages are coming along. The web site (not accessible, sorry) is starting to look like a web site.
This will really happen. It's the coolest story ever, and it will really happen.
Intuit was, for a long time, the valiant little company, standing up to big bad Microsoft. But it's been going downhill, for a long time. First came the spam problem; they started spamming registration addresses. Then came the dubious Mac support. Then Quicken 2002 turned out to be prone to crashes and occasional data corruption. Then I found out they were NEVER going to fix those bugs, and that 2003 simply added flashy features. Then I finally got data corruption that I positively could not get rid of.
So it's gone. I've registered a copy of moneydance, a shareware finance program written in Java.
Is it flawless? Well, no. Optimistic, really; it shows me as the proud owner of $15,700,000 that I don't have, because of a bug in the import of stock trade data. Which I reported around 3 this afternoon. Within two hours, I had an email pointing me at a newer release fixing one of my problems, and an assurance that the other problem was a bug that should be fixed within a day or so.
Intuit never once responded to anything I said - the closest I ever got to a response was a forwarded copy of a response to the MAPS RBL team, when I submitted them to the RBL for spamming me. Intuit never fixed any bugs I encountered. From Quicken '98 through Quicken 2002, the program always tended to crash under arbitrary circumstances; simple queries would just sometimes crash. Starting with '98, and getting progressively worse with time, the program displayed ever greater numbers of ads, which couldn't be turned off. Every year, around December, it would start pushing Intuit's tax software. And you couldn't turn it off.
Moneydance seems to be maintained by this guy. And the thing is, the guy's actually competent. He actually cares. It's important to him that his product meet your needs, or that he fix it so it will. It's important to him that his product be extensible, flexible, and stable. It supports Python scripting - maybe it's time to learn Python.
My only regret is that I didn't convert to Moneydance a few months back, instead of buying another useless Quicken "upgrade" that didn't even fix the obvious crashing bugs I've been living with for years.
Tomorrow, when the update shows up on the web page, I'll import my data again, and I bet it'll "just work". And frankly, even if it doesn't, it'll be working better than Quicken is right now.
Gotta love those small independant developers. It's a humbling experience to be reminded of the days when developers were proud of their products.
I am typing on the tiniest keyboard. Actually, the C700 has a pertty big keyboard, but it's still tiny compared to a real computer.
I managed to get a good price on a Sharp Zaurus C700 - a Linux-based PDA with interesting locale issues. It's built to work in Japanese, but can be told to use English.
An amazing gizmo, this. 640x480 display, fits in a pocket, and I can play Flavorplex games on it. There's something wonderful about a real OS on a PDA.
In a beautiful example of mind-numbing ignorance, Consumer Reports describes the Zaurus as "proprietary". The folks doing a downloadable source tree for a kernel which runs the system's apps might disagree.
I have always wondered if other people have a different Bible than I do; perhaps it's called "Bigger, Longer, and Uncut".
I've been doing some research, though, on the things people believe, and say the Bible says, and I've managed to figure out a few of the passages they're citing.
Genesis 3:25-3325. And God turned to the beasts which moveth upon the earth, and he spake unto them:
26. "Those of you with molars, get thee hence, for I speak not to you."
27. And the beasts which had grinding teeth, not cutting teeth, they left quickly, for they feared God.
28. To those remaining animals, whose teeth were clearly suited to rending and cutting, God spake again.
29. "Now that those two bipeds have buggered everything, you will eat of other animals, not of plants.
30. And you will have a use for those sharp teeth, and you will no longer choke on food you can't even chew.
31. And you will not need to bug Me all the time about vitamin supplements and protein drinks because you can't digest your food.
32. And you will find a use for those claws.
33. And I still say I didn't plan for this."
Of course, to include all the things that people say Jesus would object to, you'd have to have some pretty huge Gospels.
Matthew 297:24-2624. And furthermore, any game that uses the term "hit points" shall be forbidden, and if it hath also polyhedral dice, you shall not even read the books.
25. And of the Japanese anime with the big eyes, watch them not, saving only the ones with giant robots, which are way cool.
26. By the way, the comments about dancing and making joyful noises were purely for metaphorical purposes; have not fun, lest it fill you with wonder at the beauty of God's creation.
Jesus preached constantly about freedom; it seems like most Christians are striving constantly to find new boundaries to live within. Where do we get this stuff? It's not in the Bible I have.
"What should be done about a member who repeatedly misquotes, paraphrases and sets up strawmen, only to get the other posters upset and frustrated, and when the other posters reply in this upset and frustrated state, the member who set the whole thing in motion reports the members who have been upset or frustrated by the tactics?"
This was posted recently over on ChristianForums. It's a good question. The site has rules against flaming, but not really against flamebait. A few users have gotten the hang of doing just this, time and time again. One of them, in fact, I can't find a single post from him that doesn't appear to be trying to do something along these lines, and he's been posting for over a year!
There is always a question of responsibility with things like this. Who is responsible? If you attack me, and I respond, am I responsible, or are you? What kind of responsibility does one acquire by inciting others to inappropriate behavior? How much responsibility does the person thus baited have for losing control?
This is a scary question, because it reminds us that we are emotional beings, capable of simple errors, and that others may not be able to control us completely, but they can certainly exert great influence on how we behave.
For a beautiful example, check out this discussion. Start with post #32 - that's me. Now watch the entire thread decay into chaos as a true master baiter does his level best to anger me. You have to give him credit for style; he uses every trick in the book, and invents a few of his own.
Edit: The thread I referred to was lost in a database crash, making it hard to show context. Basically, one of the site admins repeatedly misquoted me, lied about what I'd said, and simultaneously accused me of doing precisely that. I have saved copies of the posts, but I don't think I have legal permission to post them.
It's art. But should it be allowed?
The hardest part, for me, of being a "writer" is trying to figure out whether or not I'm being lazy.
For the most part, I can't actually be emitting words on a given topic for eight hours straight. I can rarely manage more than two or three hours on a topic in a single "pass". I get burned out...
But I have never been able to tell whether that's because there's some essential difficulty under the level of my conscious mind, or whether it's because I'm lazy.
By most accounts I write pretty fast - figure around 1000-2000 words an hour in most cases. But it's hard for me to do more than about 1500 words at a sitting, without some kind of input. I can read and respond on message boards for as long as I want; I never seem to tire. It's when I'm trying to make my own points, starting from scratch, that I seem to be unable to keep going until something else gives me more input, more ideas...
I used to wonder why my wife would say "I'm writing" when she spent an afternoon rewatching an old anime. I don't wonder anymore.
I'm one of those people who talks before he thinks. No malice, no ill-intent; it's just that forming words doesn't require any kind of conscious intervention on my part, so it tends to just happen, without much awareness until it's already happened.
Which means I spend a lot of time saying "oh, wait, I didn't mean it like that."
Today, I had a real beauty. I was gonna go out and work on my latest text adventure with my friend Kevin, and I hadn't told my wife this yet, but I came up to talk to her. So, we were talking, and she made some comment about shaving (I get fairly scruffy before I bother, most of the time). The dialogue went something like this:
Her: You should shave.
Me: (grinning) I suppose that improves my chances of getting laid, huh?
Her: Generally, yes.
Me: Well, then I guess I should go shave before I go out with Kevin.
General hilarity ensues. I would guess that I had already said the word "out" before the part of my brain that processes things started thinking "hmm, should I have said this that way?". I know what happened. I wished to share several pieces of information:
Somewhere, deep in my brain, something looked at this and said "Hey, I can combine these into one sentence." Any implications were not considered. I'm not an implications guy; I'm a pedant. I take things, most of the time, directly at face value, without really thinking about implications or inferences.
This isn't the only example of critical failures in attempts to communicate, but it's one of my most stunning.
So, my wife's working on a comic. And it's a cool comic. It's tentatively called Metanoia, and I can't see the title changing any time soon.
What's it about? All sorts of stuff. Hypothetical answers to questions like "do angels ever possess people, and if so, how?". Car chases. A supernaturally tough woman who swears like a sailor and is horribly offended when someone says "Jesus Christ!"
It's about an assassin code-named "Resonator", and the guy who hired him to talk to a girl about the declining quality of her poetry.
I'm trying not to give too much away. So much of what we've talked about is so wonderful - and we can't tell you, because we might have to change it, and because knowing too soon might spoil the fun.
Right now, the first few sketch-quality pages of the first episode are there. I mean, rough sketches; practically no shading, just outlines and an idea of where the dialogue goes. And, of course, detailed scripts of the next fifteen or so episodes past that...
For now, let me just leave you with an image. A boy's mother has died. He has traveled far to see his father, and his father has kicked him out, saying he's old enough to take care of himself. He's lost, alone, broke... he feels he has nothing, and he's ready to die. As he prepares to kill himself, he sends up that one, last, desparate prayer; "won't somebody stop me?".
The story starts with the word "Yes."
I love Apple. Their computers "just work" most of the time. OS X is more stable than anything I've ever used except NetBSD and BSD/OS. OS X is pretty, for all that most of the time I'd rather it wasn't.
I hate Apple. When a Mac doesn't work, you are fucked. No documentation. No help. The "help" is so embarassingly, painfully, stupid and irrelevant that I sort of wonder if it's intended as a joke. There IS no real documentation; on the rare occasions when there's man pages, they're out of date, and laughably so. Most things just aren't documented.
Right now, I'm using my wife's powerbook as a drive on my desktop system; I booted it as an external firewire drive so I could run the commands I need to run to make the system bootable.
Behold the synthesis: It just works. I plug it in, turn it on, hold down 'T', and it comes up as a firewire disk. That's wonderful.
But I only have to do it because the documentation on how to make a "bootable" disk is so unbelievably sparse, and the OS install CD's won't let you actually RUN THE SYSTEM - they'll only let you run the Installer. No way to get a shell prompt and run the single command you need, for instance.
This is, for the record, my third hardware failure in just over a week. My laptop's hard drive blew. Beautiful, perfect, catastrophic failure, drive utterly unusable. I got all my data off of it - and, amusingly, it actually failed *after* full weekly backups of the important stuff. On further study, it worked fine except when it had been on for more than about 20-30 minutes; just overheating... but that's unusable, so in under warranty service it went. Then my wife's laptop started acting up - similar symptoms, but I think it's actually sticking, because at least once I've gotten it to move by tapping it right next to the drive. :) And finally, my Mac crashed - twice. I think I've isolated that to a heat problem.
See, my Mac lives in a cabinet which is clearly designed to hold a tower-style computer. And of course, there are slight ventilation issues... The shelf above it is about 3/4" less deep than the whole cabinet, so if I keep it flush with the cabinet face, hot air escapes easily, and the Mac stays running. But our stupid cat, Bacchus, loves to jump up on that shelf... and, as you would guess, ends up pushing it back in. I hope that's it; it could also be new memory, or related to the mysterious "if I install the new dev tools, I get internal compiler errors" problems I've had.
As they say, a love/hate relationship. When it works, it's beautiful. When it doesn't work, it's awful.
My Kibo number is one. That is to say, I have gotten email from Kibo. If you have no idea who or what "Kibo" is, but I've emailed you, your Kibo number is two.
Well, today, InstaPundit, a blog much larger than this, linked to this story, which in turn describes this blog. In fact, it was basically written about this blog. So, my Linda Seebach number is one, and my Glenn Reynolds number is 2. Yay! I bask in twice-reflected fame.
So, I'm now officially famous. Whee! Now, if only I had more to write about... Actually, I do, but I'm sleepy, and don't feel like writing it right now. You'll just have to wait.
