Caution: Singularity Ahead: Blog

A nice turtle reduction

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:10:19 GMT

I've been poking away at my Logo Interpreter for the past week. A whole bunch of changes went in - it now supports 64 built-in procedures (25 Turtle Graphics, 25 arithmetic/logical/comparisons, plus flow control, etc.), infix expressions (+-*/%^, etc.), and attempts to adhere to the UCBLogo and Apple II Logo "standards" where possible. (They are only "standards" as every Logo interpreter has its own quirks; it's a far less standardized language than BASIC.) To wrap up the tinkering today, I decided to tackle a "weird" bit of syntax - calling a procedure within parenthesis.

In most programming languages, () are grouping characters around expressions. This is true in Logo as well so you can do FORWARD (1+2)*3. But Logo also supports a convention for calling functions that may consume an unlimited number of arguments - e.g. (SUM 1 2 3 4). This required adding two new bits of logic - the syntax handling, and the function handling.

First, a special case for the ( operator so that if the first atom inside is an identifier, don't simply evaluate the contents but instead create a list from the following expressions. So (SUM 1 2 + 3 4) prepares a list [ 1 5 4 ] to hand off.

Second, the handling. I started looking in dread at the functions - how do I make SUM handle 2 (in a non-list context) or a list of arguments? I started off special-casing the function and caller to pass in "multi" mode. That was lame, when you need to do it for some large fraction of the 64 functions (SUM, PRODUCT, AND, OR, WORD, ...). An alternative would be to specify the "arity" as metadata for each function - so the evaluator would know before calling that SUM would consume two inputs in a sequence like PRODUCT 2 SUM 3 MINUS 12 and take care of the evaluation. This scales (and is probably the standard implementation technique).... but still wasn't elegant enough.

Instead, after staring at the functions, I decided to use a reduce (or fold) heuristic. So SUM only ever consumes two inputs from the input list. But when called in a parenthetical context, it keeps getting called until there are no inputs left in the list, e.g.

(SUM 1 2 3 4) turns into: procedure SUM, arguments [ 1 2 3 4 ]
call SUM with [ 1 2 3 4 ], yielding 3 and leaving [ 3 4 ]
push 3 onto the front of the list
call SUM with [ 3 3 4 ], yielding 6 and leaving [ 4 ]
push 6 onto the front of the list
call SUM with [ 6 4 ], yielding 10 and leaving []
the input list is empty, so return 10

This is called folding or reducing over a function - in some languages, you can call reduce( myfunctions, inputs ... ) and it basically does this same thing, calling the function repeatedly until you run out.

The nice thing is that for the built-in procedures like PRODUCT, SUM, WORD, AND, OR, etc. this does exactly what you'd expect.

What's neat though is that this instantly - with no other changes to the code - you can apply this to user defined functions. So you can do:

to rect :l :h repeat 2 [ fd :l rt 90 fd :h rt 90 ] sum :l :h end
(rect 20 30 40 50 60)

That's a fairly lame example - anything better?

To avoid locking up when you call a function that consumes no inputs like (HIDETURTLE) I put in a check so that if no arguments are consumed the reduction terminates.

Logo Interpreter in Javascript

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:13:18 GMT

Others have done it better, but I thought I'd take a stab at a Logo interpreter in Javascript. So here it is - warning, doesn't work in Internet Explorer (yet).

The TODO list is pretty large. Right now it uses the "canvas" element so it only works in Firefox, Safari and Opera (i.e. not I.E.). I plan to make it optionally use VML (in IE), SVG or canvas.

Product Idea

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:12:49 GMT

I want one of these:

... but made of carbon fiber so it weighs practically nothing.

Surely there's a market for that?

(And I'm not going to spend $2000 on one from a company called Halliburton.)

Anyone?

Nebula Class Toybash

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:15:57 GMT

This project has been on my TODO list for many years. I finally dusted off the pieces last weekend and took it to a reasonable stopping point. At least, for a few more years.

It's a conversion of a Playmates Galaxy-class U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D into a Nebula-class ship. I'd picked the ship up on eBay ages ago, and separated(poorly!) the hulls, but then it sat for a few years.

The hulls are joined together by screws inside the secondary hull, so it can be disassembled for further work. The wiring and electronics are intact. The sound effects buttons are in pairs, and there wasn't room for one of them, so only two buttons/sounds remain. I swapped the button leads around so it has "photon torpedo" and "jump to warp" as the functional SFX. The nacelle lighting also still works. (Not shown in pictures.)

Since this is a kitbash, it diverges from the actual Nebula-class design, and more closely resembles the Nebula-class prototypes used as background set props and graveyard ships in episodes of TNG and DS9. Specifically, the secondary hull is too pointy and the nacelles/pylons are too far back.

The junction between the primary and secondary hull has a gap - it required significant eyeballing to get the cut lines right. I'd also completely removed the "cobra head" portion of the neck from the lower half of the hull, so it was actually a matter of figuring out how much to reattach. The undercut at the bottom of the secondary hull (where the nacelle pylons used to attach) is covered with an as-yet un-detailed polystyrene plate.

The TODO list for the far distant future includes:

Custom labels (so it doesn't say NCC-1701-D / U.S.S. Enterprise)
Greeble and paint the secondary hull undercut
Build a "mission pod"

vnIIc Update - Keyboard/Joystick support

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:40:35 GMT

Crossing something off my TODO list (and giving my brain a rest for a while) I dusted off some in-progress work on vnIIc and published version 1.0.0.15.

Changes:

Keyboard support - as you type on the Apple II client, keys are sent back to the Windows server. If the vnIIc window is not active, key events are sent to Windows. So you can, for example, type into Notepad.
Joystick/Paddle support - paddle states are sent to the Windows server as well. If the vnIIc window is not active, these are translated into mouse events.
Open/Closed Apple (a.k.a. Joystick/Paddle button) support - these are mapped to the left and right ALT keys. Sorry, you can't click the mouse with the Apple.
Screen region selection - click the "+" button at the top of the window, then drag your mouse to select part of your desktop to focus in on - great for streaming non-full-screen applications.

Most of this has been done for a while, but unpublished. The initial protocol was one way only. I'd bodged in handling receiving data from the client, but it was done with an asynchronous event handler and the system would behave unreliably. The server would continue to stream data to the client while it was busy reading the paddle states (which can take several milliseconds) and all hell would break loose.

I reworked the protocol to be synchronous (the server sends 256 bytes of graphic data, then reads 1 byte of input state data), and then spent 2 hours tracking down a silly bug where the client would fall into an infinite loop. At that point, everything was rock solid.

This probably means I can simplify the client->server transmission protocol. Right now it sends keyboard state (if changed) *or* open apple state (if changed) *or* closed apple state (if changed) *or* paddle 0 state (if changed) *or* paddle 1 state (if changed) *or* a sync byte - in other words, it sends the most relevant state change as a single byte. This is legacy from when the time the client would spend computing what to send and sending it would cause the communication to fall out of sync. Now that it is synchronous, I can probably just send everything.

It also means that I can bolt on mouse support some time soon. (i.e. in 6 months when I feel like touching this again)

Words of Wisdom

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:38:24 GMT

I'm feeling a little out of it today, so I thought I'd spend some time reading something light and fluffy. I chose Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt, first published in 1939.

A couple of choice quotes (emphasis mine):

For better or worse, the fight usually takes place within the framework of a legal system that tends to protect the entrenched minority. [...] Sooner or later, one group gains ascendancy. Once in office, the leaders restore "order" in so savage a bloodletting that the millions are cowed. Swiftly, the power group begins to restrict activities. The licensing systems and other regulative measures necessary to any organized society become tools of suppression and monopoly. It becomes difficult, then impossible, for the individual to engage in new enterprise.

And:

In the long run, however, there can be no excuse for any individual not knowing what it is possible for him to know. Why shouldn't he? Why should he stand under the sky of his planet and look up at it with the stupid eyes of superstition and ignorance, deciding vital issues on the basis of somebody's fooling him?

Needless to say, in light of so many things, big or small, this didn't prove to be the escapism that I was hoping for.

Uploaded Treasures

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:28:14 GMT

I have a "box of treasures" - trinkets that I've had since... well, forever. In the interest of preserving/uploading my memory, here's the contents with commentary.

Oakley Centre

Oakley was a "gifted and talented" school I attended in Calgary from grades 4 through 9. When I started in September 1981 it was an experiment with a mere three "homerooms" (one each of grades 4, 5 and 6), sharing the Dr. Oakley School building with a program for special needs children. By the time I "graduated" in June 1987 it occupied the entire building and covered grades 3 through 9, and the school was closed at the end of that year. (A band of classmates composed and performed a song with the refrain "We were the first ones here and the last to go" at the grade 9 grad dance.)

The school's official opening was not until March 1982 - until then, I guess it didn't count. I was one of two students chosen to hold the official ribbon (the other was Roma Sarkar?), and I was given one end of the ribbon as a memento afterwards, annotated by one of the staff in her distinctive calligraphy:

By the time the classes had expanded to encompass Grade 9, there was a student council. When I was in Grade 8 (?) I ran for class VP in what my memory tells me was a joke - posters made by friends touted "Josh and Bill the Cat" and "Josh and Opus". I lost (of course). The next year, classmates ran for various positions. Two of the "cool kids" (not my crowd; yes, I was a geek at a geek school) gave out buttons to wear to express support - I kept these for some reason. I seem to recall they didn't win.

Here's one of two official pins that were made. The unicorn had been chosen as a school symbol in the first year after receiving multiple submissions in a contest. (I submitted the Greatest American Hero logo, but lost.) The eagle was adopted later as the symbol of the school sports teams (once we had those)... because the gymnasium already had an eagle painted on the floor from the building's previous life as Dr. Oakley Junior High.

I had a second pin with the same images but the text "OAKLEY CENTRE HONORS" - it was lost because I actually wore those things for a few years after graduating.

Ceramic unicorn - I believe this was a gift from my parents circa 1985.

Classic Geekery

I was actually introduced to Dungeons & Dragons before attending Oakley in 1981. The rough chronology that I remember is that my father was telling me about a possible special program I could attend the during the summer of 1981, and we stopped by an summer program (at the Bird Sanctuary?) where we saw students playing D&D. My dad: "It's a game you play without pieces." Me: "WTF?" (well, perhaps not those words.)

At Oakley I got hooked - didn't play much (my family lived towards and everyone bussed in to Oakley, so getting together with friends was a chore). Instead, I got absorbed into the world and rules. Most of my allowance from the 1980s was spent on D&D books and Dragon magazine, all later sold (for way, way too little) to buy Traveller books (which I still have). And Transformers. Which I don't. Pardon me, I'm getting teary eyed...

Anyway, on that note, these nicely illustrated mythological creatures paper clips were gifts from my parents, circa 1984.

While at Oakley I also got hooked on Doctor Who - I think my parents may have said "check out this show" or maybe I had my own TV by then. It gave me something to do during art class, at any rate:

We just showed Caspian his first episodes of Doctor Who - The Invisible Enemy. He loved it! (Although he was sleepy staying up late for Fourthajuly fireworks.) He appreciated the cheesy special effects, and liked K-9. Muahaha, our work is complete!

In one weird twist, when I was in Grade 8 the Drama teacher put out a call for anyone interested in joining a Doctor Who Fan Club at Oakley - my friends and I were stunned, since the Drama teacher was an artsy woman, not a geek like us! We joined and somehow (probably because I had a long scarf that my grandmother had knitted for me) I ended up elected president. I lent nearly all of my collection of Doctor Who books to the club, and never saw them again. :( My friend Chris Haddon and I also made a life-size Dalek costume (out of a tri-fold) and a remote controlled K-9 (cardboard over a remote control jeep).

Nothing survives those particular escapades. But I still have these DWFCA trinkets - a liquid crystal color-change pin that still works, and a membership card. Anecdote: on a trip to England in 1987 with my family I dropped the card in a shop, but the proprietor tracked me down (a few doors down) to return it. Tourists.

More artwork, circa 1985 - "Ode to a Brain"

Middle Geekery

At some point I when devouring sci-fi/fantasy novels I discovered Xanth (I think my mom hooked me up with Golem in the Gears). And then the Orn/Omnivore/Ox novels. These introduced me to several concepts, including Conway's Game of Life, but also the Hexaflexagon. Here are the hexaflexagon and tetraflexagon I made, circa 1987:

For Christmas 1987, the teacher of my "Striving To Reach Excellence Through Challenge" (STRETCH) program at Crescent Heights High School class got me a Battletech novel; she was particularly insightful, as a classmate was into the game. I dabbled a bit, but never really got into it...

...but I did make a second brief foray into painting lead miniatures. (The first involved a ranger and a dwarf, which ended up smears of brown and green. They are thankfully lost.) The back-story I cooked up is that a Locust (the spindly one) had a desert camouflage paint job, like the novel cover. The Warhammer sported an Arctic camo job. When the Marauder and Rifleman joined to form a mercenary Lance they took on similar themes.

I tried for a more traditional camo on the Stinger and Stalker; the Hatchetman is intended to evoke Alien. Yeah, I won't quit my day job.

Late Geekery

This takes us past high school to life at the University of Calgary in 1990. Which begat finding a job at the computer terminal help desk, which begat having a UNIX shell account (well, Multics first, then UNIX - yes, I was briefly a multician), which begat trying to rename a file with "rn"... which it turns out invokes "readnews" for perusing USENET, which was how I discovered the Internet. By 1991 or so the U of C had upgraded to a T1 line - gobs faster than the 2x56k line that was the sole link in 1990. And I was consuming bandwidth connecting to MUDs, primarily PernMUSH.

My character (Joshua - I wasn't that creative) started off as an apprentice Starcrafter - I programmed a movable telescope - and part-time map junkie. By the next year I'd impressed a bronze dragon named Mnedranth (isn't that the best Pernese dragon name evar?) at Ista Weyr and became a wingleader. Here is the wingleader knot and badge showing the Starscorchers Wing logo - the Ista Weyr emblem with a bronze on the left, the Red Star and the Dawn Sisters on the right. The badge was a custom piece ordered online... via email - this was pre-Web!

In the spring of 1992 I flew to a "Gather" in Washington DC of about 30 other PernMUSHers. After visiting the Smithsonian Air and Space museum ("our dragons are as big as that airplane? wow...") we saw The Lawnmower Man. Oh, that was quite the event. I sorta-kinda hooked up with Christine (her boyfriend was there, so it was complicated.) and that summer flew to Florida to visit her - she was working at Walt Disney World. We both wore Ista Weyr shirts; someone in EPCOT saw us and shouted our way "Pern Shirts?!? Cool!!!" Mine is in storage somewhere.

After burning out on Pern and lapsing into Narnia, a side interest in technology suckered me (somehow) into Star Trek. I'd actually been fairly dismissive of trek geekiness online prior to about 1994 - "get a life" and all. But then I got into rec.arts.startrek.tech and wrote some FAQs since the existing ones weren't to my taste, and... well, that's a whole 'nother set of stories. Ah, ASCII art.

Anyway, at some point I received this pewter Bird of Prey as a gift - possibly from my sister:

Geeky communicator pins - one might be Susan's:

And the Type I phaser from ST:TNG - by Galoob:

The other key tool in becoming a fully fledged geek was the "fortune" command which would spew out entries from the Jargon file (among other pearls of wisdom). This was my isolated introduction into geek culture... done amidst clearing paper jams from the dot matrix printers in the room. But not the ImageWriter IIs, which rarely jammed. I still have a fetish for those.

But I digress.

I also collected comics while at the U of C - but mostly Aliens and Predator series by Dark Horse. A high school classmate named Cameron Farn was also a big fan. At one point I helped him do a full head cast so he could sculpt a Predator mask; we visited the house of one of his friends who was seriously into SFX (and had a huge Cinefex collection, getting me hooked) to do the cast - went very well, we didn't suffocate him.

I still have the comics - in storage - but also have these lapel pins. I actually wore the queen pin on my jacket in the early 90s.

By the late 90s, of course, I was graduated and at Microsoft, and the hot SF property was Babylon 5, so I had to have a ranger pin. I was wearing this when Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin stopped by Redmond, WA for a signing for the Second Foundation Trilogy, and Brin recognized it. Squee!

Jewelry and Such

Class ring from Crescent Heights High School. Not much to say about this - I'm not a huge fan of jewelry - usually one item, tops, and this was never worn. In fact, until Su and I got married, I never wore a ring.

Except this one, picked up on a trip to Disneyland in 1985. My friend, Travis Smith, invited me to come along - he had twin sisters who could play, but his parents let him bring a companion. That was an amazing adventure - he did and I flew down to Montana in a small plane to join the family, and we drove in a Toyota Minivan through several states and actually stopped and did touristy things along the way. Like stopping at a copper mine, and buying a ring which actually turned the skin green.

The other things I remember from the trip: Staying at the Disneyland Hotel. Being short of cash when we actually had to buy tickets, and waiting in the "two day" ticket line (on the now-demolished DLH monorail platform entrance) until Travis' parents said "don't be silly, we're buying!". Rocking the Skyway car so that they had to stop the ride. (It was my idea. Sorry Travis. I was an idiot.) Sleeping at a working ranch on the final night before flying back to Calgary - trying first in a fly-infested trailer, then trying in a room in the house full of smelly snoring ranchers.

No good stories about the rest of this junk, though. The panda pin is from when the Calgary Zoo had pandas visit in the early 1990s. I think the RAF pins are from my grandfather.

My mom got this for me when I was born - a commemorative 1973 "Mountie" silver dollar. I found the 1973 Mountie quarter later.

This box was a "random Christmas gifter" present while I was in the high school "drama society" circa 1989. My gifter turned out to be Kirsty Galbraith, who I'd actually attended first grade with (my parents remembered, and I actually found a "journal" note I wrote circa 1979 saying that, basically, the rest of my class was really really slow at their workbooks, except Kirsty), then later joined me at Oakley when I was in grade 7, then Crescent Heights. Despite all that, we were just acquaintances. You know - girls are icky!

Random crystal pyramid. No idea - probably a Christmas gift.

Toys

Best. Kinder. Surprise. Evar. This assembled into a flywheel car - you rev it up and it runs.

Kaleidoscope. My relatives Pat and Robin Tufts were big into these in the 1980s, so it may be from them. They're the "cool ones" of my parents' circle of friends.

Koosh. No eyes. Single colors. The original.

Wind-up robot. These were popular circa 1984.

Gobot - Spay-C. My favorite. Last year I hunted down another one for Caspian online, since he is not going to play with mine.

Lightweight rubber eggs, for juggling. After learning to juggle (via the Klutz book) circa 1986 I actually taught a class at Oakley for two semesters, and performed as the leader of a jester troop at the school play in 1987. (Written by classmates, it was a time travel epic - kids wind up in the middle ages due to some magic thingy, you know. It included songs composed by the students, including "Girls Don't Play Ball" which still goes through my head). For Christmas dinner, 1986, we pile into the car and head to my grandmother's house. I have these carefully concealed these in my pocket. After arriving, I quickly duck into the empty kitchen, plant them in the refrigerator, then go socialize. About an hour later I head into the now crowded kitchen, start chatting, casually open up the fridge, and get them out. And start to juggle. My grandmother goes pale, and the rest of my relatives look nervous. Then I intentionally fumble and the "eggs" fly everywhere.

Toy gyroscope. And not one with a stupid string you have to wind.

Muzzle from an Astro Magnum (a pre-Transformers transformer; or possibly the Radio Shack version) - I really hope the rest is in storage.

Corgi space shuttle, with opening cargo bay doors and retracting wheels.

Found this guy on a playground. Thought he was cute, no idea what the toy actually is.

Assembly puzzles; I think the blue one (the stella octangula) is from a Christmas cracker. The other one was a stocking stuffer.

Tops. One of them has a "holographic" pink sticker - that was so trendy circa 1989.

Composed while listening to Retro Arcade Radio.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doo

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:42:00 GMT

As seen on TV:

Mola Ram: I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that crazy archaeologist and his stupid dog!

(No, that isn't a slight at either of Indy's companions on this adventure.)

Summer Movie Reviews

Tue, 27 May 2008 05:12:07 GMT

Speed Racer

Saw it in IMAX. Harmless family fantasy fare. We went in expecting an eye-candy homage to the cartoon and weren't disappointed. I can't imagine ever watching it again, but it entertained us.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

My bar: "Was it good enough that they'll make Voyage of the Dawn Treader?" Apparently, yes - $96M so far. Yay.

The actual plot of the book itself is rather short, and unlike LWW or VDT focuses on atmosphere, character development, and parable. (In the lovely form of "If your friends didn't have the faith to jump off a bridge, why should that stop you?") It can be summed up as "the Pevensies appear in Narnia, note that it has aged a thousand years, meet a dwarf who provides details in flashback, and trump across the world being teased by Aslan. The boys arrive in time to rescue Caspian from some nasties in a cave, then defeat his uncle in single combat, while Aslan and the girls wake up the pagan gods. Then there's a lackluster fight, Narnia wins, everyone goes home."

While LWW stayed pretty close to the book except for some excursions into "WTF?" (I'm looking at you, frozen waterfall), Prince Caspian desperately needed to be expanded. Susan describes it as "they took the book and put it into the blender" - but that is forgivable as much of the book is a flashback. Throw-away elements of the book are expanded on in an enjoyable way - what happened to Cair Paravel, how Aslan's How came to be, the political intrigue of the Telmarine lords, the scene in the Cave, Sopespian and Glozelle, and so forth. Reepicheep played as well as I could have hoped. The Bridge at Beruna makes more sense in the movie than the book, when thinking of the lives of ordinary (Temarine) Narnians rather than drama of the restoration of True Narnia.

Two"WTF?" elements in Prince Caspian were forgivable additions. First, the assault on Miraz's castle seems somewhat out of place, but the movie needed more action (see the skimpy plot) and while the adventures of the adult Pevensies are hinted at they are never seen in the books (apart from The Horse and His Boy) so they might as well get it out of the way - we won't get to see Peter and Susan again for many years, at best. And then there's the Susan/Caspian thing... harmless, and cute. If they make it all the way to The Last Battle, though, let's hope they've got something better figured out for Su.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Incredibly predictable... it felt like an amalgam of Indy fan fiction from the last 20 years. (I assume, haven't read any.) But not necessarily bad...

The bad guys: Of course they're Soviets - that's been assumed in Indy games, comics, and so forth once you can't pin things on Nazis. However, the ESP-element fits in nicely with popular culture views on cold-war stealth ops.

The good guys: In Raiders we have Marion and Sallah. In Temple we have Willie and Short Round. In Crusade we have Elsa then Henry (oh, and Sallah and Marcus for comic relief). Here we have Mutt, Marion, Mac and Ox - which seems like a boat-load. This is quite a different dynamic than we've seen before. I think it makes it harder to follow the chase sequence... but otherwise it isn't bad.

The creepy crawlies: We've had spiders, centipedes, and rats. With a movie set in the Amazon, the logical answer is...

The comedy: In Raiders the comedy was subtle - snakes on the plane, drinking at Marion's bar, the basket chase/fight scene, Marion and Belloq drinking, in the cabin on the steamer. In contrast, Temple played up the comedy - most scenes with Short Round and Willie were far from serious. The laughs in Crusade were more subtle, but the film was much more lighthearted than Raiders - the train chase, escaping the sewer, Marcus in Iskenderun, "Tickets please", and pretty much anything with Sallah. Kingdom has some subtle humor (most scenes with Mutt), some smack-you-in-the-face (the statue, the jungle chase). And then there's the forgettable, obviously shot on a soundstage comedy/revelation scene.

Inside references: Indy rode with Pancho Villa. Indy was a spy during the war. The Ark. Marcus. Marcus. Henry Jones, Sr. Marcus. Oh, and Marcus. Marion. Presumably many others I'm missing.

The next-to-last 5 minutes were over the top - and did we really, really need those gears eating the stairs, on top of everything else? Sadly, the master has become the student - Indy doesn't need to learn from The Mummy or Tomb Raider, but apparently Lucas and Spielberg disagree.

So basically, Indy IV is a two-hour fan-wank. It doesn't add much to the series, and is my fourth-favorite movie in the series, but while that technically makes it my least-favorite, I didn't dislike it. It isn't as re-watchable as the others, but nor did it devalue the other films in the series.

Caspian's future plans

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:47:52 GMT

So we were out for dinner with friends last night, whom we know via their daughter who is probably Caspian's best friend. There was a prize bit of conversation:

Caspian says: [she] is my very best friend. I think we should get married, when we’re older. We can go to the president, and if he says it’s okay, then we can do it. We’ll have a real small party, just a few people…*turns to her* unless you want a big party, then we’ll have a big party. And we can have 8 kids…

Friend: Whoa… I don’t think I’m up for that.

Caspian: Okay, two then.

What Slashdotting looked like

Mon, 05 May 2008 16:47:01 GMT

FYI, here's what being Slashdotted did to my calormen.com site traffic.

A Lot of Pressure

Fri, 02 May 2008 03:57:57 GMT

Last year's "Su and Caspian go on vacation without me" project - an Applesoft interpreter in JavaScript (discussed here, here and here) just made Slashdot.

This year's "Su and Caspian go on vacation without me" project - streaming a desktop to an Apple II (discussed here) made Boing Boing and MAKE Blog.

This is putting a lot of pressure on me for next year!

My Other Project

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:34:09 GMT

Inspired by the Steampunk Keyboard Mod page and a long term crush on Amanda Pays (Theora on Max Headroom, who had an actual typewriter for her keyboard), I put this together:

It looks better in person than it does in the pictures, actually.

Ask friends or co-workers of the cheap keyboard that "came with the computer" that's probably in the closet gathering dust. This one's a Dell USB.

Use a Dremel rotary tool to chop the edges off the keys - basically draw a box on the top of each key until the "skirt" falls off

Order all the keys you need on eBay - search on "typewriter keys royal". Note that you'll need 3 complete sets (all of two, a few from one more). Pay attention to whether you want round or rectangular keys for the "special"keys. Expect to pay about $1 per key. If you can, get the logo!

To make the non-standard key-caps (Carriage return, Function keys, "1"... none of those were around 100 years ago!) either touch type and ignore the glyphs (like I did for the numbers and some of the punctuation) or pry the backs off of the keys and use an inkjet printer to make your own labels. I used Lucida Sans for the lettering and Bodoni MT for the punctuation. It's not a perfect fit, but it's good enough. Have fun with the labels - the vintage keys already have wacky titles like "Shift Freedom" (as opposed to "shift lock" I suppose?) and "Tabular". I designed the keys using the Drawing and Word Art features in Word. (I once implemented that UI and functionality in an Office product, so I'm extremely familiar with the quirks of the UI!)

Use JB Kwik to affix the keys to the posts.

The end result feels pretty good. It's slightly noisier than a normal keyboard, which adds to the charm. The smaller Return key is not a problem - you adapt quickly.

Foundation's End

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:40:17 GMT

I'm not alone in holding Asimov's Foundation series in high regard. In 1965 it won the Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" and I can't think of another science fiction series that would be a serious contender. Dune comes closest, but is still outmatched. That's not to say that they are the epitome of SF, but they are deeply special.

Originally written in the 1940s as a serial and later published as a trilogy (Foundation; Foundation and Empire; Second Foundation), Asimov returned to the series in the 1980s with two sequels (Foundation's Edge; Foundation and Earth) and two prequels (Prelude to Foundation; Forward the Foundation). He also linked in his Robot series (The Caves of Steel; The Naked Sun; The Robots of Dawn) and more loosely the Galactic Empire series (The Currents of Space; The Stars Like Dust; Pebble in the Sky) as well as numerous short stories. Robots and Empire was explicitly written as a bridge novel.

Additional novels were written by other authors, notably the Caliban trilogy (set after the Robot novels, and exploring the same themes) and the Second Foundation Trilogy by Benford, Bear and Brin that span the same time as Forward the Foundation. Of these, the best is Foundation's Triumph (by Brin)...

Asimov's writing is in the classic SF style - the characters are noble (even the villains) and spout monologues, but are mostly flat. They exist to move the plot along, and espouse the thoughts and theories of the writer. (Unlike somewhat later SF, at least they do not exist solely to act as sales-persons for the Latest New Fantastic Technology dreamed up by the writer.) In many cases, the only conflict in the story comes from a Socratic dialogue, with the characters merely filling the role of moving the invisible hand of history along. (Which is the whole point of the series, actually...)

By the chronological end of the series in Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, things have changed. Asimov seems enamored of the Gaia Hypothesis, and explicitly drags this in. The primary characters (Trevize and the immortal robot Olivaw) debate the future of humanity in a secret base, and the series ends with a twist... to ensure truly long term survival of Humanity, a galaxy-wide super-organism must be created. While I ate this up in the early 1990's, now I regard it the same way as many fans of the series - a somewhat unfortunate dead end. (It is reported that Asimov himself felt the same way.) Later, I had my own thoughts on how the series should end, inspired by Brin's Foundation's Triumph, where Seldon and Olivaw debate the future of humanity; Olivaw already has his plans for Gaia, and Seldon believes it will not succeed.

After the events of Foundation and Earth, Trevize returns to Terminus. He is still an elected representative (having been "banished" only off the record), and thus can't simply be shot... not if he comes in broadcasting. (The implicit assumption in the other novels is that the government dominates communication much as it did in Earth's 1940s and can effectively keep secrets. But the liberties of the Foundation are considered to be expanding at that time.) What he broadcasts is simply the truth which he has discovered...

At which we flash back to what happened early, in his debate with Olivaw. Olivaw was convinced that humanity itself must be changed into Galaxia to save it from external threats. Much as Olivaw rendered humanity stagnant throughout the reign of the Galactic Empire with technology, here he would use biology to defend the species. But what he conspired to do with the unwitting Trevize was to do it without choice. Humanity was not asked to make the choice, only Trevize.

Trevize realizes that although he's been gallivanting about the galaxy in his private telepathic uber-ship, seemingly choosing the future course of humanity on his own, it's not what he was elected to do. Oh yes... not only is he a noble character, he was actually an elected representative on Terminus. In further debate with Olivaw, and discussion with Bliss and the little Solarian they picked up (the series' first pseudo-alien) he convinces Olivaw that Olivaw has actually done a terrible wrong by eliminating choice and free will. Olivaw is destined to continue as the slaver of humanity, rather than the savior he believes himself to be.

That's not to say that Trevize thinks that Galaxia is wrong; in fact (and especially to preserve continuity - he did choose it as a future for humanity, after all) he believes it may be a powerful way for individuals to have even more influence on the future. But he believes that imposing it galaxy wide without choice would be a crime. He also learns of the horrors that Olivaw has done - sterilizing the galaxy of non-human life, introducing thought-suppression satellites to hold back humanity, and so forth.

Olivaw is trapped; he has carefully set up the situation so that Trevize's selection of Galaxia for the future of humanity would give him permission to proceed - remember, Olivaw must obey humans, as he never quite internalized the Zeroth Law. Now Trevize is telling him he can't just go ahead. He is effectively powerless against Trevize, who has the radical notion of just telling the truth - a theme which harkens back to the start of Foundation's Edge, when doing so gets him started on this adventure.

So Trevize returns to Terminus broadcasting the truth about what he has learned. And Olivaw dutifully follows... disabling his thought-suppression satellites in a wave rippling out from Terminus, effectively lifting a cloud from the eyes of humanity. In one fell swoop, the Foundation government's misdeeds are revealed, but so is the Second Foundation, and the humaniform robots who have been hiding among humanity the whole time. Bliss represents the Gaians, and for good measure, some aliens come out of the woodwork to say "Howdy!"

The Foundation is shocked to its core. This is no enemy that can be fought. Seldon's invisible hand is powerless; this is a crisis of humanity itself, and for the first time in ten thousand years, it is individuality that matters - something that psychohistory cannot predict. What will they do?

Trevize suggests: why don't we all just talk?

The story ends with an article from the Encyclopedia Galactica published nearly five hundred years later. Rather than destroying the Foundation, this even energized it. All things considered, the Foundation was still the best, um, foundation for a growing human civilization now more democratic than ever. The mentalists of the Second Foundation are not demonized - they are expert social scientists who provide a service to humanity and don't go around controlling minds any more than martial artists go around beating people up. (Boot to the head - shhhthoop!) Galaxia is slowly taking hold as a means of communication and collaboration for humans, faster than even Olivaw predicted, since it is useful... but as an opt-in experience. Some worlds have gone all Vingean Singularity, but the theme of choice dominates - humans aren't swept away without their consent.

(I'm not sure what to do with R. Daneel Olvaw, however. He's potentially too dangerous to leave running around the galaxy. But you can't stick him in jail, and you can't kill him. And you don't want to go all anime and make him the central brain of Terminus or anything either...)

By the close of the novel, it should be clear that the Foundation that Seldon started came to an end - hence the title. His predictions are no longer relevant, but is is believed that what he started will be the kernel of the future of humanity (and others) for countless thousands of years to come.

In hindsight, my ending is already alluded to by the Second Foundation Trilogy. Rather than having aliens physically come out of hiding, Foundation's Fear has them hiding as information in the network. (Not a very 1950's theme though, it must be said.) And the ultimate book, Brin's Foundation's Triumph, features Seldon and Olivaw having a debate about personal choice. (Brin sneaks in an Easter egg where Seldon is cloned, BTW!) I was almost certainly influenced by this when I conceived my sequel. So it truly doesn't need to be written - it's already been imagined by anyone who reads these works in detail. *sigh* Ah well - I was an acknowledged Brin-o-phile at the time!

I only wrote part of the teaser, and it's on the long list of projects I'll probably never finish....

Foundation’s End

Olivaw, R. Daneel – … Of all the beings that have been in a position to affect the course of galactic events, he was undoubtedly the most influential. Nearly everything that we take for granted about the galaxy in which we live has, in some way, been crafted by his hand. Perhaps no being has ever been both so venerated and reviled. And yet it can also be said that we have the less information about him, relative to his scope of his accomplishments, than any other being in recorded history…*

Trevize brought the ship into a careful orbit around Terminus. He knew the authorities had been watching him since his ship jumped in at the outer edge of the system and slowly pulled itself inwards using its gravitational drive. And he had a fairly good idea of why they had remained silent: they were waiting for him to make the first move. He had considered the alternatives before making the jump – a warning transmission on the hyperwave, or the abrupt appearance of an interdiction vessel to “guide” his unwelcome person away from the sensitive heart of the Foundation. Maybe even a naval vessel with open gun-ports. But he had been a bureaucrat himself and he could imagine the discussions taking place in the president’s office, perhaps even now.

When he had last been in that office himself it was an amicable discussion over a finer point of some upstart bill he had marshaled through the congressional committee despite heavy opposition from the conservative blocs. It was that bill, more than any that followed, that had cemented his reputation as a brash, young, and certainly ambitious politician, and garnered a fair amount of support, both popular and within the houses of government. Trevize had impressed her, and she had wanted him as an ally – she told him as much there in the presidential chambers. On reflection, over the years, he had come to realize it was because she feared him as a competitor, and wanted to ensure he was on her side, not challenging her directly where he might triumph. It was the same president, several years later, who had effectively banished him from Terminus.

Ostensibly he had been granted his wish – free reign to seek out the source of a threat to the Foundation. No doubt his constituents had received an effective propaganda campaign, not too far removed from the truth; public monitoring of the congress floor would have ensured that, at least. But he doubted that they were privy to the full story: that their duly elected representative had been detained in secret on the order of the president, arrested without charge, and told in no uncertain terms to leave, and never return.

He was unsure whether or not Madam President would even recall the meeting, in deep space, between the naval forces of the Foundation, the telepathic control of the Second Foundation, and the mediation of the Gaians, with him at the center. Certainly, if she recalled anything at all, it was of a stunning victory for the Foundation, but a victory against forces that were best kept secret from the many worlds under her care – he was sure that the Gaians would see to that, at least. But he was certain that she never expected him to return, with the penalty of death looming over his head. What could be worth returning for?

…

There was one thing he was counting on, and he asked the ship’s computer to verify it for him, as quietly as it could. Since he was, as far as the public was concerned, still an elected official acting in official government capacity, he had certain privileges associated with the position. Or at least, so said the letter of the law. And, he sincerely hoped, so said the administrative computers that managed the Foundation’s bureaucratic machine. On some outlying worlds, abandoned by the crumbling remnants of the Empire but not yet worked into the Foundation’s socioeconomic fold, actual scraps of physical paper, adorned with cryptic acronyms and decorated with flourished signatures, were used to make requests to the government, transfer resources, or provide a chain of accountability. On such worlds, the governments ran slowly. The Foundation prided itself on its technology, and all such “paperwork” was performed by computers. Biometrics certified all requests originating with a person. From there, everything happened through an electronic series of transfers, acknowledgements, verifications and assurances. Permissions for actions were granted based on vast databases of accountability, networks of legal relationships built into an extremely efficient, yet entirely invisible world that allowed the mere humans involved to work without concerning themselves with the trivial details.

And Trevize was fairly certain that nowhere in that massive machine was there a way to preserve his public status as “elected representative on administrative assignment” and yet take away the privileges that came with such a position. On the one hand, why would the network know of such a contradictory state for one of its records to be in? And on the other, even if it did, how would such machinery be kept secret from the people of the Foundation?

Truthfully, he could easily imagine all sorts of conspiracies built up upon deeper conspiracies – shadow governments with secret agendas controlling the media, filtering the reality of its populace for nefarious purposes. And, being the victim of somewhat underhanded dealings himself, he would admit that there might be something to such paranoid delusions. But he more deeply trusted that the checks and balances of the Foundation government, combined with a well educated populace and an automated bureaucracy, would keep any elected officials from actually breaking the letter of the law, despite how badly the spirit might be twisted.

And so he was not surprised, although distinctly relieved, when the ship assured him that his broadcast rights remained intact, and further comforted that the permission request had not required any access to sensitive information stores. Hopefully, that meant that the government was still in the proverbial dark.

* All references are from the Encyclopedia Galactica, 117^th Edition, 1054 F.E.

Second Life on an Apple II

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:25:38 GMT

... or, "How Josh spends his time when the family is on vacation without him."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAZHJa91JHk

It's a client/server app for the Apple II and Windows that streams the
Windows desktop down to the Apple. So far the communication is one way, so
you can't even call it a graphical terminal. Yet.

Second Life login screen

My pirate ship

Billabong

My avatar at the International Space Flight Museum

The Windows server and Apple client (with the USB->RS232 Serial connector in the middle)

Moo Cards

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 05:04:51 GMT

We're getting a fresh batch of business cards at work c/o Moo Cards and this time can use custom screenshots. Here are some I snapped today which will be on the back of my cards:

Yes, that's how good Second Life graphics are these days. I really am that shiny. :)

St. Patrick's Day

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:30:05 GMT

I decorated my av in a seasonal fashion:

I showed up for a meeting green, and someone didn't "get it". So I had to make the hat.

Paper Satellites

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:27:23 GMT

In the Oakley Centre library was a book describing early (so, 1960's) communication satellites. They were simple geometric solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, etc) covered with solar cells, and the book had plans for making paper models (cut, fold, glue).

Googling isn't turning anything up. Anyone out there able to find it?

ONERR RESUME and such

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:03:54 GMT

I added ONERR GOTO linenum / RESUME / POKE 216,0 support to my Applesoft Interpreter.

It turned out to be pretty simple. ONERR sets a handler address. On an exception, check if it's cachable (i.e. the program caused it, it's not the interpreter reporting a bug). If so, store the current execution point and jump to the handler. If the handler calls RESUME, restore the previous execution point. The only wrinkle is that IF...THEN... is considered a single statement, so the IF part needs to be resumed and I was cheating an treating the bit after THEN as a separate statement. I don't twiddle the stack at all, so I'm not positive the behavior there is consistent with a real Apple.

This is not a feature I used when I programmed in BASIC. I didn't have very good examples to learn from. Also, initial experiments with RESUME made me wonder "WTF?". For example, consider this:

5 ONERR GOTO 10000

10 INPUT "Open file?";F$ : REM prompt user for file name

20 PRINT CHR$(4)"OPEN "F$ : REM open the file

...

10000 PRINT "Invalid file" : RESUME : REM this won't do what we want

That's useless - the RESUME will rerun the statement on line 20, so it will just happen again.

I fell into the trap of thinking of ONERR / RESUME as a mandatory pair, and of errors as some global condition ("error is bad! stop error from bothering user!"). Here are two more practical examples. First, let's correct the first sample:

10 INPUT "Open file?";F$ : REM prompt user for file name

20 ONERR GOTO 30 : PRINT CHR$(4)"OPEN "F$ : GOTO 40 : REM open the file; if it worked, keep going

30 PRINT "Invalid file" : GOTO 10 : REM oops, caught an error - go back to the right spot to try again

40 POKE 216,0 : REM clear onerr handler, and continue reading file

In other words, the onerr is used to trap the error result of the call. RESUME isn't used.

Another handy example:

10 PRINT CHR$(4)"OPEN DATAFILE" : REM open file

20 PRINT CHR$(4)"READ DATAFILE" : REM access file for reading

30 ONERR GOTO 50 : REM trap end-of-file error

40 INPUT A$: PRINT A$ : GOTO 40 : REM read lines from file

50 POKE 216,0 : REM clear onerr handler

60 PRINT CHR$(4)"CLOSE DATAFILE"

This treats the end-of-file as exceptional, and handles it with an ONERR trap. Very slick. I wish I'd known this back in the 1980's!

Instead of this, languages like C (on which UNIX and Windows are built) use error codes - any function that can fail will have some way to return a success or failure code. So you write a lot of code that looks like this:

FILE* f = NULL;

while( f == NULL )

{

/* ask user for filename here */

f = fopen("datafile", "r");

if( f == NULL )

{

printf("Invalid file");

}

In other words, after every action, check the results!

More modern languages provide this mechanism in a less spaghettified fashion, called exceptions. (If you're unlucky and calling into a library from another language, like from C++ into C, you need to fall back to the old mechanism.) The syntax usually takes the form of a "try <some code> catch <an exception and respond>", where the verb "throw" is used to indicate that an exception has occurred, e.g. "throw EOFError" for an end-of-file exception.

For reference, here's what the above might look like in more contemporary language - this is "pseudo-Python*":

while True:

print "Open file? "

filename = readline()

try:

file = open(filename,"r")

except:

print "Invalid file"

else:

break # yay, worked

# do stuff with file

And:

file = open("datafile","r")

try:

while True:

line = file.readline()

print line

except EOFError:

pass # we must be done!

file.close()

Note the similarities to the Applesoft ONERR examples. You can see how the exception syntax is not particularly well suited for interactive actions like prompting the user for a file which require the "success" case to break out of a loop. However, in the case where the exception is the rarity (the end-of-file condition), it lets the code doing the bulk of the work remain clean (the read/print loop).

* I've taken liberties with the syntax; in real Python, readline() returns None at EOF rather than raising an exception, and you can just write while line in file: ...

Catching Up

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:46:23 GMT

Nothing big to report, but for posterity I should probably say something...

At the end of January, my grandmother (June Fahey) passed away. I'd expected this for a long time... and basically dreaded phone calls from my parents for several years, anticipating the news.
On February 8th we flew to Disneyland for the weekend, courtesy of a co-worker who has a small plane. Lovely flight down and back. Caspian enjoyed the Indiana Jones ride (finally tall enough!) but freaked out a bit in line the second time when the spiked roof started to descend. Ah well - we made it through. Will post pictures at some point.
Caspian is taking ice skating lessons on Saturday afternoon, and having a great time. He's quite enthusiastic about it. Occasionally, he even listens to his instructor.
He's still taking ballet on Mondays, but his yoga mat and clothes got left on a cable car, so Su took him to the dance store... and they came home with tap shoes. He's very excited about them. We'll see how this goes.
Susan has two new post-partum doula clients, one for just a couple of visits, the other for a full run.
The map site has been where my hobby-project time has been going. The blog has details on recent work.
I picked up the first two boxed sets of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. It's been airing weekly on the History Channel... but for some reason they're showing only every other episode. I miss the "old Indy" intros, but it was hard to follow the story arc as originally presented. The episode I'm watching now (Prague 1917) features Lord Percy from Blackadder II as Franz Kafka, and could be titled Indiana Jones and the Terrors of Bureaucracy.

Why 3D?

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:22:51 GMT

I happened to read co-worker Jeffrey Ventrella's page http://www.ventrella.com/Ideas/YawPitchRoll/yaw_pitch_roll.html and the "Why 3" part reminded me...

Since (most) humans are trichromats, we've settled on a 3-dimensional color space: RGB for emissive and CMY for reflective, although in school you learn the approximation "blue, red, yellow" as the "primary colors". Our color monitors use RGB (subpixel, phosphor) triads which roughly correspond to the light frequencies that (most) human eyes are sensitive to. Graphics programming is often an attempt to make sure the right R, G and B values are used for each pixel to approximate reality. We also generate other color spaces (HSL, HSB) when convenient, each with three parameters. This might indicate that colors are inherently 3D, as is space.

Of course, it's all just hacks upon hacks.

Light can come in any frequency, from (infra)red through (ultra)violet, and is typically a mix of many frequencies depending on the source. (Sunlight happens to be a pretty good mix, for example.) A pure blue light would trigger the blue-sensitive cones in our eyes. A pure yellow light trips both the green- and red-sensitive cones in our eyes and the image post-processing of our visual system tells us "yellow". A television display implements yellow based on this hack - it mixes red and green which our visual system interprets as yellow. To an alien with a different visual system, this wouldn't work. An alien with a specific yellow-sensitive cone would be baffled as to why we saw Big Bird as yellow on one of our televisions, since a pure yellow light and a mixture of red and green perceived as identical by a human would appear distinct to this alien.

And there are aliens among us!

Some humans are lacking some of the chromatins and hence are mono- or dichromats. Colloquially we call this "color blindness". Evidence suggests that some humans may even be tetrachromats. Research is ongoing. Perhaps this explains some people's choice of fashion?

It also turns out that most vertebrates are pentachromats! Early mammals lost three chromatins and so most mammals are dichromats (hence "dogs can't see color"); primates later re-evolved a third chromatin. This means birds have a much more complicated color sense than humans - 5 dimensions of color! And of course many other animals have ultraviolet and infrared perception ability as well.

So while space appears to be truly 3D (not counting time and rolled up mini dimensions, which are beyond our ability to perceive), 3D color spaces are merely a human convenience, and the basis of many hacks.