This will be my sole posting about the ongoing clusterfuck in Ukraine. In 2014, shortly after Russia invaded Crimea, I posted this little ditty, Ukraine takeaway: Don’t give up your Nukes. I cynically observed that if the morons that constituted the first Ukrainian government after the dissolution of the Soviet Union had held onto a few … Continue reading Ukraine Unknowns
On Eponymous Erasure
While slumming on the Internet I came across a woman complaining. Imagine my astonishment! The lady1, let’s call her Karen, had an esoteric complaint, it was: The Pythagorean Theorem was known long before his birth. Calling the theorem “Pythagorean” is a form of erasure. Oh my! Apparently, attributing a well-known mathematical result to a person … Continue reading On Eponymous Erasure
Helen Burdick’s Diary
My grandmother Helen kept a handwritten diary for the last few decades of her life. When she died in the 1980s Evelyn (Evey), my mother, collected Helen’s small notebooks and stashed them in her Bozeman house where they remained until I came across them after her death in 2013. When I found Helen’s notebooks, I … Continue reading Helen Burdick’s Diary
“Managing” a SQLite Database with J (Part 2)
When faced with unfamiliar program code Roger Hui, the co-creator of the J Programming Language would sometimes wipe out all the code comments. He told me this forced him to concentrate on the actual code and not the opinions of previous developers. Roger was an exceptional programmer; he knew that program comments are often dated, … Continue reading “Managing” a SQLite Database with J (Part 2)
The Hate U Give: Review
I picked up The Hate U Give, (THUG) because it was mentioned in a TopTenz banned books YouTube video. If you watch the video, you'll see that many great books and authors have been recently banned. George Orwell, Joseph Heller, Ray Bradbury, J. D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and James Joyce, for Christ sake, were all … Continue reading The Hate U Give: Review
“Managing” a SQLite Database with J (Part 1)
Previously, I promised to write three posts about dispatching irritants with J. This, my third post, is proving more irritating than the others, so I will split it over two posts. SQLite, by many estimates, is the most widely deployed SQL database system on Earth. It's everywhere. It's in your phone, your laptop, your cameras, … Continue reading “Managing” a SQLite Database with J (Part 1)
Stupid J Jupyter Tricks
Continuing with my software irritant dispatching theme: today’s irritant - including syntax colored code in blogs, LaTeX, Word, and other documents. This one is a persistent pain in the ass; especially for users of idiosyncratic programming languages. We all have our favorite hacks and workarounds; today I am sharing one of mine: using jupyter to … Continue reading Stupid J Jupyter Tricks
Branding XMP Sidecar Files with J
During my long and not-so-storied IT career I covertly dispatched “irritants” with the J programming language. An irritant is an annoying software problem that does not merit a full-blown project-style approach. The last thing you want when dealing with irritants is to drag in IT bureaucrats. You know of whom I speak: the niggling little … Continue reading Branding XMP Sidecar Files with J
The Techadent Internet Light Bulb Age
Writing a blog that only spambots peruse affords unlimited editorial freedom. Without readers to offend I am at liberty to blither on about whatever holds my attention. And today, while sitting with pen in hand and listening to soft rain fall, my attention is held, not by the war in Ukraine, or the January 6th … Continue reading The Techadent Internet Light Bulb Age
Checking a Racist Alien AI’s Homework
Near the end of Jordan Ellenberg’s wonderful collection of essays Shape he writes: What if the Poincaré Conjecture had been proved, not by an introverted Russian geometer, but by a machine? Say, a grandchild of a grandchild of Chinook, which instead of solving checkers had managed to solve this part of three-dimensional geometry. And suppose … Continue reading Checking a Racist Alien AI’s Homework
Analyze the Data not the Drivel 