Immanentize the Empathy
People who have recently sent me spam:
Cohesion Q. Stepped
Mathematician H. Melva
Pastimes E. Yea
Northeastern M. Temporizes
Armaments B. Bodyguards
Disposable O. Craftsmanship
Despairingly L. Hooky
Way I see it, putting these names in my blog will bring search engines to me, particularly those seekers of Mathematician Bodyguards and Northeastern Hooky. A win-win situation, if ever there was one!
I spend a lot of time at Mathworld looking at some of the amazing interactive geometry examples therein , and wishing I had the time to learn to do similar things. So when I come across someone who has built real-world versions , it makes me want to hang up my programming spurs and find work in the food service industry.
Nah, not really. But BOY would it be cool to have one of those.
(link found at Transphormetic )
Photos from the Frederik Meijer Gardens Butterfly Exhibit.
Where have I been? Making one of these in Flash.
The above photo was taken with my new camera , from a distance of 7 feet.
A few weeks ago I was browsing Portnoy’s blog , and therein found a link to an interesting site about signs. So I submitted a photo. A few days ago I received notice that my photo was accepted. Hooray for me!
But don’t just look at my submission; all of the signs at Signs of Life are entertaining.
I spend more than a little time every year trying to come up with aesthetically pleasing Flash experiments. Then I come across something like this , which makes me want to trade in my computer for a dremel and a stack of sandpaper. This guy does cooler things than I have ever done, but HE does them with wood and springs.
Aargh.
There is an interesting discussion over at Kuro5hin : What books have influenced your life ?
Most of the comments are intelligent but (as always happens when strangers discuss books) there is some literary dick-wagging, and some trolling/flaming. What can you do?
Anyway, here is my (incomplete) list of Books Which Have Influenced My Life:
The Tao Te Ching – my first introduction to non-Western ways of thinking.
Wolf, by Jim Harrison – I never knew writing could be so powerful and so personal at the same time.
Notes From a Bottle Found On the Beach at Carmel, by Evan S. Connell – The first poem/book of poetry which really hit me.
No Boundary, by Ken Wilber – put into perspective all the disparate pieces of philosophy bouncing around in my head.
The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks – the first “serious” fantasy/science fiction novel I read; kind of made it permissible for intelligent people to enjoy genre fiction.
The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman – did the same thing for comics.
Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse – kind of turned the way I thought about things inside-out.
That is all I can think of at the moment. So what about you ?
The building in which my place of employment is located was, at one time, a brassworks. Blocks of brass went in, and pipe fitting went out. The brassworks was built next to a pre-existing foundry. Both have been standing, in one form or another, for the better part of a hundred years.
Last week a demolition crew began work on the old foundry in order to make room for a new hotel.Their tools range in size from “crowbar” to “tyrannosaurus”. They make a hell of a racket.
When the brassworks was built it shared a wall with the foundry. Or rather, an additional layer of wall was built onto the foundry to serve as a wall for the brassworks. The inside of that wall is now the south wall of the studio in which I work.
The process for removing the foundry wall from the brassworks wall is much like removing old dried-on chewing gum from the bottom of a desk, except that instead of a knife the workers are using a sledge, a crowbar, and a pneumatic jackhammer.
On a related note, we around the office have been joking about seeing if we can get a new window out of the deal.
You can probably see where this is going.
Personally, I was hoping for something a little bigger.