Thane Plambeck

Pumpkin Globes!

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Originally uploaded by thane.

I can't get enough pumpkin globes!

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Originally uploaded by hollistar.

I keep expecting flickr to get overrun by boring photos. I'm still waiting.

Chair designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Larkin Building

The Larkin Building was cool (it was demolished in 1950), but I'm not sure I would have enjoyed sitting in these Uncomfortable Aeron Prototypes. Leaning back on that that third leg at TGIF after a long day of filing soap dossiers for the Larkins, I probably would have spun backward and spilled my brewski all over the next clerk's paperweight. Not that people did too much of that TGIF thing, back then, I imagine.

From Carter Wiseman's book Shaping a Nation: Twentieth Century American Architecture and its Shapers:

The 1904 Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo included built-in metal furniture, the first wall-hung toilets, and an unprecedented air-conditiioning system. Wright rejoiced in calling the Larkin an example of the "genuine and constructive affirmation of the new Order of the Machine Age."

Inspiring Human Triumph

Mike Cameron: I don't know you very well, you know, but I wanted to ask you - how'd you get Diane Court to go out with you?

Lloyd Dobler: I called her up.

Mike Cameron: But how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you?

Lloyd Dobler: I'm Lloyd Dobler.

Mike Cameron: This is great. This gives me hope! Thanks!

Google Answers: How do I ask out the coffee girl?

Single links considered harmful in blog

Since its performance now seems to be acceptable, I've decided to start keep track of bookmarks in del.icio.us again.

So—no more blog entries with just a single link in them (or a link with a few words of useless text). Instead, be my guest and head over here, instead. I'll be over there myself.

I'll save the blog for other, more... uh, (valuable?)..err, important? things.

via marc

three trippy optical illusions

The world is a cooler place than I thought...

...if it's really true that there's going to be a facility built in Morgan Hill "focused on workshops in all areas of the mathematical sciences" that's going to look like this:

link

thirty-six views of mt fuji [1852]

ando hiroshige

Bloop

read about bloop

listen to bloop

IRS audit: the conclusion

[the prologue]

* * *

Beowulf got ready,
donned his war-gear, indifferent to death;
his mighty, hand-forged, fine-webbed mail
would soon meet with the menace underwater.
It would keep the bone-cage of his body safe:
no enemy's clasp could crush him in it,
no vicious armlock choke his life out.
To guard his head he had a glittering helmet
that was due to be muddied on the mere bottom
and blurred in the upswirl. It was of beaten gold,
princely headgear hooped and hasped
by a weapon-smith who had worked wonders
in days gone by and adorned it with boar-shapes;
since then it had resisted every sword.
And another item lent by Unferth
at that moment of need was of no small importance:
the brehon handed him a hilted weapon,
a rare and ancient sword named Hrunting.
The iron blade with its ill-boding patterns
had beeen tempered in blood. It had never failed
the hand of anyone who hefted it in battle,
anyone who had fought and faced the worst
in the gap of danger. This was not the first time
it had been called to perform heroic feats.

link

* * *

A few flecks of brain-matter on the chain-mail, but still a victory—

$0 due.

Take that, Mr Grendel IRS.

* * *
"You're lucky they didn't pick you for the 'research program.' It's a line-by-line audit. The IRS takes months and months with it. We CPAs like to call it autopsy without the benefit of death."

Hacked out of a paper by Terence Parr

After condemning all CS "systems" research to the intellectual dustbin over fifteen years ago after finally passing my PhD comps [Don Knuth: "Well, sometimes you really hate a subject. For example, I decided I really hated Astronomy. I failed the first exam. I hated that, so I decided I would become the world's best Astronomy student, and would get the highest scores on the exams. So I did that." (Easy for him to say, I thought, but weirdly, on my last try at passing them before getting kicked out of Stanford, I did get the highest score. Message from DEK: "I see you passed with the highest score. See?")], I'm suddenly reading this stuff and finding it interesting. This is from the paper Enforcing Strict Model-View Separation in Template Engines, by Terence Parr, the author of the excellent parser-generator tool Antlr:
* * * *
I kept a few simple rules and tests in mind to evaluate entanglement [of views, models, and controllers]:

1) Could I reuse this template with a completely different model?

2) Could a [web] designer understand this template?

3) If it looks like a program, it probably is.

4) If the template can modify the model, it's part of the program.

5) If order of execution is important, it's part of the program.

6) If the template has computations or logic dependent on model data, it's part of the program.

7) The types are important, the template is a program.
* * *
You'll find this paper has an excellent discussion of why having over-expressive templates inside HTML or the reverse (over-expressive templates driving HTML output) are both states of sin. Then some concrete proposals what to do to separate model, view and controller information [just those three words, "model-view-controller" bring on a tinge of the old nausea] in dynamic HTML page generation. By limiting the expressiveness of the templates and following some relatively simple, hard and fast compartmentalization rules to avoid the "entanglement," he's made it sound so simple.

I feel like I can see how people could build Flickr, Amazon, and other complicated web apps now. [Not that I want to, or have to, thank God].

The Ginternet

"This is huge. It's scary. They're not fooling around."

—Hunter Newby, chief strategy officer with carrier connection specialist Telx, on Google's telecom aspirations.

link (via langreiter)

Bruce writes

Dave is famous!

Andrew Wiles

It often comes as a surprise to non-mathematicians that we do place such a strong emphasis on originality. One common reaction is that mathematics has all been known for years; all we do is to perform calculations. This could not be further from the truth. Firstly there are many problems, old and new, that have not been solved. Secondly the creation of new mathematics enables us to dramatically simplify and clarify the old results. Calculus is now routinely taught in high school; however, in the seventeenth century it could not have been understood except by a very, very few eminent mathematicians in the world. This is not because people are smarter now, but because our language is clearer...

link

The shape of iPod nano

A question that's been nagging at me:

What is the iPod nano shaped like?

It's a very pleasing shape, and not just because it's small.

Anyway, those descriptions from the newspaper, inevitably saying something like —"as wide as a pencil"—they don't cut it.

Even Apple's own highly-crafted description doesn't satisfy:

>Call it astonishing. Unbelievable. Impossible, even. Then pick it up and hold it in your hand. Take in the brilliant color display....the pencil-thin iPod nano packs the entire iPod experience into an impossibly small design.

No. There's something else. What is it?

I just thought of it.

A Japanese gold bar!

Spanish as spoken by newly appointed physicians at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic

[From bios included in the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Health News newsletter, Sept 2005]

"conversational Spanish" (1)

"basic Spanish" (1)

"fluent Spanish" (1)

"medical Spanish" (2)

"limited Spanish" (1)

"Spanish" (1)
* * * *
They could get a little more descriptive here. It would help I think. Some suggestions:

"Spanish spoken as if it were English, present tense only, with many wrong words and other mistakes."

"Seriously flawed Spanish followed by a shrug and a decisive return to English"

"Bad, bad, bad Spanish. You-don't-want-to-know-how-bad Spanish."

" 'Hey, you're hurting my ears' Spanish."

Scotland tops list of world's most violent countries

booze and blades

Thunder Barking

Clouds and thunder are rolling over over Palo Alto this afternoon.

Since we almost never have thunder here, the neighborhood's dogs are all barking.

Atiyah at UNL

Atiyah at UNL

Email with Marc: Radio waves seek the bottom

On Mon, Sep 19, Thane Plambeck writes ...

Thane> /The New York Times/ recommends ways to get your wireless
Thane> network signal its strongest throughout your home, with
Thane> this tidbit:

Thane> Place the base station centrally on an upper floor, or atop
Thane> furniture, because radio waves spread best laterally and down

* * * *

Yes. It may not be obvious to the layperson, but radio waves actually gain strength as they propagate through RF attenuating materials.

Marc