January 2012
5 posts
Whelp, I’ve put it off until it can be put off no more. So, to my dearest internet friends who have not yet heard, here’s what’s happening, the short version:
This afternoon, I’m getting on a plane, flying to LA, Fiji, Auckland, and finally arriving in Christchurch, New Zealand, two days from now, having skipped over the 1st of February entirely.
There is a bike waiting for me near the...
I am, once again, struck by the fact that I’m living in the future. Here’s how I prototyped a product in 14 days, while away visiting my family.
I. Find a problem.
On the 15th, I stepped on my Kindle, and cracked the screen. It’s the second time I’ve had a kindle with a broken screen.
II. Try…
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I have a friend who asked for some thoughts about his drawings. It was gonna be pretty public anyway, so once I realized that I needed half a dozen pictures to make my point, I asked if I could put my reply here.
I am qualified to say things about drawing because I am mediocre. Being mediocre is the best qualification, because it means I’ve had to really work to learn to make a nice drawing....
December 2011
1 post
November 2011
2 posts
The Church of Interruption
Sometimes I am startled to realize, in the middle of a discussion, that I have offended or hurt some of the people I’m talking with.
First, know and accept this: I have a friend who is a wizard. He is an ancient and wise wizard, and we have tea together. One teatime, I mentioned my talking troubles to my friend, and he said this:
“Yes, Sam, I’ll bet it is hard for you — holding controversial...
That Guy Syndrome
Hi, doc. How are you?
:::
Well, okay, I guess.
:::
Yes, it’s a professional call, but I don’t really need a diagnosis. I already know what I’ve got. It’s That Guy Syndrome, doc. I’ve got TGS, and I’m scared.
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October 2011
67 posts
Shakespeare Authorship Haiku Challenge →
My entry:
Ah -- speak, seer!
Name him, whose pen pulled
bluebottles from blank pages --
spontaneous life!
But don’t worry, you should enter even if you’re not the ULTIMATE UNIVERSAL POETRY GENIUS, like me.
subcreation-deactivated20120425 asked: Hi, diiq - thanks for replying to my question about the golden ratio. I still don't understand, however -- how do harmonics exist in a way that the ratio doesn't? Isn't the mathematical relationship of the ratio (1+sqrt(5)/2) just as physical and measurable as uniform frequencies? Whether or not either is "pleasant" to perceive is entirely subjective, all the same - is it...
On Hyper Volumes
Kartik Agaram was kind enough to point me to this fascinating article on the volume of hyperspheres: http://bit-player.org/2011/the-n-ball-game
I’m going to use this as an example of why I dislike using equations in introducing an idea. Looking at that graph, and accepting that equation, I get the immediate sens of shrinking spheres. As you increase the number of dimensions, the spheres get...
On Murakami
I’m reading the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, getting myself ready for 1Q84. Haruki Murakami writes books that, I will always hold, are the greatest works of contemporary fiction. I love them, but they frustrate me.
They are lyrical, dreamlike, mythic, and familiar.
What’s frustrating is that I can’t understand them technically. I’m happy to dissect modern or classic lit; Joyce or Hardy, Shakespeare...
Leaking II
Kartik Agaram pointed out that I haven’t mentioned what happens during the assignment of pre-declared variables in scope.
Here are a few scenarios. This first example signals an error, because a has no binding when print a is called:
def foo (b):
a ← b
foo 15
print a
This example prints 15:
a ← 5
def foo (b):
a ← b
foo 15
print a
Which seems acceptable —- but this also prints...
How I Described my Programming Job to Biochemists
or How I Described my Biochemistry Job to Programmers
Hi. I write computer programs for the lab. Some of what I write gets run here, on our machines. Some of it is run on a supercomputer — really, a whole lot of computers like the ones in our lab, all working together. Because some of you are more experienced with chemistry and others more with programming, bear with me as I touch on the basics...
Leaking I
I’m designing a programming language called Tainted Oyster.
One thing I have to think about is how to set a variable in the current scope. The easy way is the straightforward way:
a ← 25
This pairs the value 25 with the symbol a, in the scope in which it’s written. (The cheap way to say that is, “Now a is 25.” Unfortunately, I’m kinda slow, and when I’m directly discussing the value bound to...
Beginning Guitarists or Burgeoning Masochists
The moral of the story is: always learn everything three times.
A few months ago, I watched an astounding guitar performance by Erik Mongrain on YouTube(1) —- I live the American Dream, you know —- but while my friends and I watched him tap away, someone whispered in awe: “He must have calluses like nothing else!”
Many of his strikes have both a hammer-on and a hammer-off note; I had tried to...
The Burlington Cartoon
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but why not say it again? There are thousands and thousands of miraculously executed drawings in the world, but this is the most beautiful drawing in existence.
And it’s not because it is a work of genius. The Burlington cartoon doesn’t have the flourishes of mere talent. There are no elegant contours drawn in a single unhesitating stroke, no clever indications...
“An artist must regulate his life.
Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I...”
– Erik Satie (via diiqme)
Modern and Postmodern, without Moving my Lips
I’m going to explain the differences between modernism and postmodernism in art. Because descibing the technical aspects of art is beyond the scope of anything shorter than a textbook, I’m going to focus on a very small genre of art: ventriloquism. (Afterward, I’ll attempt to generalize to all art.)
Ventriloquism is an excellent microcosm because it is easy to judge a ventriloquist’s technique....
Dummy
I was at a dinner party a few weeks ago, when I had to excuse myself. A charming person (whom I had just met) was describing the pains of being a smart person in a classroom of dummies. Everyone in the room was nodding along —- we all, apparently, knew her pain. Awfully lucky, that the room was entirely filled with us smart people.
There is so much that I do not know how to do —- I don’t know...
Training →
Ride a bike. Pick the narrowest stripe on the cement, and imagine that it is a narrow, foot-wide bridge between two tall buildings. Imagination is critical; know what the buildings look like, how high you are, how far you have to go. Be sure of these things.
It is frightening, up there on the windy bridge attempting not to die. To stay calm, pretend that you’re on the ground, perfectly safe....
Note to C.V.
on improviser David Razowsky
Thanks! That was a lot of fun to watch. I’m glad you’ve found a place to start answering those questions. I think about our conversation quite a bit, too. I guess I’m going to say some things, now, that I’m still only hesitantly thinking, and I don’t mean them to be condescending, or pretentious; it’s just that it helps me to say things as if I really mean them, even...
How To Use Visual Memory
What are the step by step processes for using visual memorization techniques, as featured here?
When I use visual memory techniques, I:
1. Organize the information, then
2. Transform the information into images while I
3. Link the images.
The example in your article is a deck of cards. I’ll just use a few cards: 7S, 10D, 7C, 6H, AH, 9S… (http://www.random.org/playing-ca…)
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Who painted the Eugene Delacroix copy painting...
Well that’s a pretty excellent question. I found this image of the painting in the Deutsches Historisches Museum: http://www.care2.com/c2c/photos/view/87/681038495/Berlin/DSC04376.JPG.html
I corrected for perspective, and compared it to this image of the painting in the Louvre: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_La_libert%C3%A9_guidant_le_peuple.jpg
...
On "Fool Us" and Fooling Us
“It is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to vomit it out, but you cannot.”
Wumen
I’m thinking about differences between the words and intentions of my goals because of an ITV special. Nonono, nothing sappy; A Penn & Teller ITV special.
I love being fooled. So when I heard that Penn & Teller were in search of that special feeling, I got excited. The special, called “Fool...
What is the role of contemporary artists in...
Artists are manipulators of experience. Bear with me, because it will take me a bit of work to pick that sentence into meaningful parts. I am using “experience” to mean not just what a person sees and hears and touches; but also what happens in their mind. A sensation that does not lead to a mental effect is not (for the purposes of this argument) an “experience”. There are two ways that...
What is the secret of learning quickly?
The ability to form useful analogies makes learning faster for me. A ‘learning’ analogy connects information about a field I’m unfamiliar with to something I already know. By attempting to use that analogy to predict facts about the new field, I can test its accuracy, and in domains where it is accurate, I learn very quickly. When it isn’t accurate, I seek a new analogy —- sometimes creating a...
Why is there in art no similar culture like in...
I can trivially say that, as an artist, I would face insurmountable difficulty finding the sources behind many inspirations; artists find inspiration in phrases, old songs, and sunlight through windows in addition to other works of art. Worse still, I may have incorporated eminently creditable sources entirely unconsciously. I cannot, as a scientist, use thermodynamic parameters for RNA secondary...
Why I'm Eating Dinner for Breakfast →
I woke up this morning an hour earlier than usual, took a shower, and made dinner.
With the turn of the year, I’ve reexamined my eating habits. Over the last few years, dinner has become my primary meal; it contains the most calories by far, and I have eaten it with the greatest regularity; breakfast or lunch may be skipped, but dinner is a MEAL. I know many of you follow the same pattern.
So...
Something like a Blood-Pump →
There’s something about making art that is like a heart pumping blood. The pumping of a human heart makes a characteristic sound, made of two pulses: one soft and one heavy. Those of a medical persuasion call ‘em “lub” and “DUB”. “DUB” is the strong squeeze that forces blood out into the body; “lub” is the little push that fills the ventricles of the heart with new blood, preparing them for the...
WhiteProxy →
I get distracted very easily, and when I am looking up something important, I don’t like spending my willpower avoiding distractions: facebook, my email, comics, youtube, twitter —— all the ten-thousand things.
What could I do? I wrote a little proxy server that block all content unrelated to the task at hand. It even takes the time to look up related words, so that it won’t block anything...
Credo →
I believe in increasing good.
I like to play a game: imagine a universe so desirable that, were it possible to build that world, I would willingly destroy and replace the world-as-it-is. Understand that I don’t get to be a part of the new imagined world. My family and friends are excluded, as well. The game’s goal is to invent a land of milk and honey the existence of which is desirable in spite...
Programmers think differently than...
or
Singers think differently than non-singers
or
Stuffed animal enthusiasts think differently than non-enthusiasts
Jacques Mattehij wrote a post [here] about the way programmers think. He argues that programmers are analytical, but so are scientists; programmers are logical, but so are mathematicians; programmers are obsessive, but so are artists (he says scientists again, but I like this...