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June 30, 2005

Here's a gorilla

Added a local photoblogger to the sidebar. Kind of makes me feel a little guilty for not taking any pictures lately. (But that's good - guilt is the best of the artistic motivators!)

Posted by eric at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

Pictures that need Homes

I found some really awesome pictures on Yahoo news.. I wanted to do something with them, but I think I'll just put them here and let them speak for themselves. Maybe I'll just jam them into posts when you least expect it, or when they make no sense whatsoever. Here goes.

Posted by eric at 11:51 AM | Comments (1)

Hazardous Material Indeed

I tried to upgrade my Qwest DSL package last night and ended up getting cut off or left on hold until the call dropped TWICE.

I called the number on the "Upgrade your DSL" brochure and it turns out they weren't able to upgrade me. They transferred me to customer service (dropped my call in the process). The operator even complained about a dropped call on the other line while talking to another department.

Qwest: "Spirit of service", but what about those ghosts in the customer call center lines?

Got pretty far along in the process before the last call dropped. I hope it went through. I guess I'll find out if my DSL suddenly stops working or starts going faster like it's supposed to.

Tried to come up with a comment for this story but discovered that I couldn't:

Peeping Tom pulled from outhouse tank

ALBANY, N.H. --A 45-year-old man was arrested after a teenage girl found him staring at her from below an outhouse seat, police said. Police said they pulled Gary Moody, from Gardiner, Maine, from the waste tank under a log cabin outhouse on Monday.

"We had to decontaminate him," said Capt. Jon Hebert of the Carroll County Sheriff's Department, adding that firefighters hosed the man down before police handcuffed him. "We treated him as if he were hazardous material," Hebert said.

Posted by eric at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2005

Hobos 'R Us

On roadtrips my family would always play this game.. See if you can hold your breath through the ENTIRE TUNNEL. It didn't occur to me at the time to ask why we might be doing such a silly thing.

Tonight, as I was watching a PBS thing on trains, it finally occured to me: If you were a hobo riding a steam train and you're close to the stack when you enter a tunnel you're going to suffocate. If you don't hold your breath.

Funny how most of the time you don't realize things are mysterious until they're explained. (Possibly explained. Would-be-neat-if explained.)

I also found this sweet sign on a fark thread (was discussing scientology with coworkers at lunch):

Posted by eric at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

Public Radio Hecklers

Maya Rudolph interviewed on local TV about filming the Prairie Home Companion movie:

I like it here, yeah, it's so quiet!

She was standing on one of the busiest (downtown) streets in the state.

I got to hear the sirens yesterday, I thought the world was coming to an end.

We had some spits of rain Monday, I'll give her that. Speaking of PHC, the site has a noteworthy apology to the fans about Saturday's show:

Saturday's broadcast from Chastain Park amphitheater was not the show it might have been, and I am awfully sorry. The show (which was taped on Friday evening) was troubled by a large number of loud drunks sitting in the expensive corporate seats down close to the stage. This is an odd experience for me, to be standing on the lip of the stage and telling the news from Lake Wobegon and hearing people yell at me, "Tell the one about the dog" and "How's the fishing this year?" and so forth. You could hear the wine bottles clanking for two hours.

Being marginally familiar with Chastain Park, I can say that this is about as surprising as jam on toast. (Stink on dog? BS on politician?)

Posted by eric at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2005

'Gonna Roll All Over You

I keep meaning to post something but when things are good the compulsion just isn't as strong. Same when things are bad. What I really feel the urge to do is mow down bad guys. With a tank. Not shoot them, just roll right on over them and let the treads do the talkin'.

I finally got to see Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" which has been on my list ever since I saw his amazing "Fitzcarraldo". "Stroszek" is decidedly less upbeat and surreal, a story about a bum and a prostitute from Berlin who end up in rural Wisconsin. The ending is bittersweet at best and disappointing at worst. Not sure I would recommend it.

I'm told that July 3rd there will be a guy shot out of a cannon and over the river that runs through downtown. There's a poster here. (Appropriately enough, it's the Cannon river.)

On an off note, I don't like to be referred to as "single". "Hey single". Yeah, that makes me mad. Just because I'm the only one in the room...

Posted by eric at 10:01 PM | Comments (5)

June 27, 2005

I, for one, welcome our...

From Slashdot: [Scientists] create zombie dogs

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Posted by eric at 09:34 PM | Comments (1)

Proof Electronic Arts should be Destroyed

That's right, not just the buildings reduced to rubble but all recollection of its existance should be erased from our collective consciousness.

Why am I mad? I bought the retail, full-price Battlefield 2 (something I normally avoid) because I was such a fan of the original. B2, however, has some warts, including a server browser that doesn't actually list servers so much as haltingly display a random collection of names with only a slight possibility that you will be able to connect to or play on any of them.

So I fired up Gamespy Arcade which I was under the impression would allow me to get by this miserable excuse for production software. This thread on the Gamespy forums explains it all:

*Battlefield 2 Demo is released.
*GameSpy Arcade is advertised with Battlefield 2.
*GameSpy Arcade is bundled with Battlefield 2.
*GameSpy Arcade shortcut is installed.
*Shortcut reads: Play Battlefield 2 Demo Online with GameSpy Arcade

GAMESPY ARCADE HAS ZERO SUPPORT FOR BATTLEFIELD 2

Unfortunately, the poster confuses what Gamespy is responsible for with what EA/DICE are responsible for. EA and DICE decided to REMOVE support for the Gamespy browser even though the original Battlefield had it.

I would hate to be working at DICE right now. Sleep is probably a thing of the past.

Posted by eric at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Happy Monday. Did you know that the rise of agrarian societies might be the worst mistake ever made by humanity?

Had you ever even considered that? I have to admit the thought had not occured to me.

Also: Forget the regular del.icio.us interface. Use this.

Posted by eric at 03:42 PM | Comments (2)

Maybe you get the idea.

Posted by eric at 09:06 AM | Comments (4)

June 24, 2005

Camping trip/Bachelor Party this weekend, posting may be light. We'll see how it goes.

Posted by eric at 04:44 PM | Comments (1)

Happy Robot Fun Time

Japanese robots to guard shops and offices. What a great picture.

Posted by eric at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2005

Posted by eric at 08:42 PM | Comments (2)

Watch out, Grover's Mill

Just in time for "The War of the Worlds", an editorial piece about H.G. Wells in WSJ:

After interviewing Lenin, Wells called him "creative" and described communism as the best hope for reforming Russia. The man simply never met a collectivist movement that didn't intrigue him. "There is good in these Fascists," he said of Italians in 1927. "There is something brave and well-meaning about them." He despised Catholicism and mocked Jewish traditions as "nonsense." It was for views such as these that George Orwell delivered a blunt verdict in 1941: "Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany."

Orwell also was referring to the utopianism that distinguished so much of what Wells wrote. Whereas the author of "Animal Farm" and "1984" possessed a keen sense of how and why totalizing states go badly wrong, Wells was constantly drawing up plans for ideal societies driven by rationalist principles and governed by high-minded elites. This could lead to bizarre results: In "Men Like Gods," Wells envisioned a scheme of eugenic reproduction and centralized planning so perfect (in his mind) that everybody went shamelessly nude.

Not exactly ringing commendation. I've found that the couple works of his that I've read were bleak (although rational) and this does a little to explain why. Amusingly, in the first few pages of WoTW he predicts global cooling: The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour.

(Flying machine? They don't usually have walking legs.)

Posted by eric at 01:43 PM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2005

Lunar Olympic Officials Continue Search For Missing Pole Vaulter

The Onion is being pulled through a rift in the time/space continuum this week, giving us a glimpse of the year 2056.

Tonite on the Holovid

The People's Republic Of E!: Escape Pods Of The Rich And Famous
AOLTimeWarner-TurnerABCViacom: Brave New Nightly World News
VH1-1138: The Real World: Mare Tranquillitatis

Posted by eric at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

Food and Thought

Humans are the only creatures that cook their food. Our digestive systems and chewing abilities are smaller than those in other primates because raw foods take much longer to consume and digest.

One anthropologist suggests that this is a driving factor in much of human history and socialogy. (From "Love in the Time of Coriander"):

"It seems difficult for me to deny the evidence that the evolution of man came with the discovery of fire and cooking," Wrangham said. "Cooking changed the biological design of humans, and that fact is the basis of paleo-gastronomy," he added.

"Being able to spend a low percent of time eating made hunting possible and expanded the range of humans out of Africa and into Asia," Wrangham said. Cooking also prompted the sexual division of labor: men, being bigger and stronger, hunted, and women provisioned and cooked.

Cooking created the human family or civilization, where humans not only assumed tasks suited to their skills but also put those skills to work in taking care of one another. You hunted for the group or family, as well as yourself. Or, you cooked for the hunter, as well as yourself.

The presentation was for a group of "Culinary Professionals" and I have no idea if it was peer reviewed.

Posted by eric at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2005

Hey You, the girl with the Funky 70s Sunglasses

To the girl in the parking lot: Please do not kill me.

I realize you're in a hurry to get to the municipal lot and blast your classical music or whatever it is you do while sitting in your car around the time I usually arrive. But please, I'm just a working stiff.

I know it was as much a surprise to you as it was to me that the door I was opening came into time/space conflict with the parking space you were zinging into. But that doesn't excuse the sheer speed of the zing.

We can work this out amicably. But not if I'm a corpse.

Posted by eric at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2005

Hey You Moron Minnesota Drivers

If you're in the passing lane and I'm blowing by you doing the speed limit, then you're doing something wrong.

Posted by eric at 06:45 PM | Comments (4)

A conspiracy theory I like!

(From The Corner)

CONSPIRACY THEORY! [K. J. Lopez]
A readeR:

I think this squirt assault on Cruise was a setup – by Mr. Cruise.

See, there’s been all this press lately about how unhinged he is. So what better way to turn it around than show how calm he can remain facing down a four man crew after being assaulted. Notice how well it was filmed, and how clear the audio was? Notice the absence of Cruise’s security retinue that allows this to go one for what seemed like a couple of minutes.

It did seem a little strange to me, even though I'd only just groggily turned on the morning news. Even if totally untrue, it's still a good one.

Posted by eric at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Posted by eric at 12:08 AM | Comments (3)

June 18, 2005

Shakedown Cruises

Today, in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart, I found a 3-disk, 9-movie, 14-hour "Martial Arts Masters" movie pack for 5 dollars. It's got movies like "Shogun's Ninja" and "Ninja Wars". Oh yes, I can sense your jealousy from the office chair in my parent's basement.

Unfortunately I didn't make it out of there without spending another $30 on various pieces of crap. See -- that's how Wal-Mart gets ahead. You go in trying to get something on the cheap and more often than not you do. But on the way to get that one item, you pick up 2 or 5 more irrestistably cheap bits. Damn the Chinese and their cheap labor.

What's the deal with all the comments on the last two posts? Please don't tell me it has anything to do with "angst".

Spent the day sailing around Buffalo lake. Maybe something fun tomorrow, who knows.

Posted by eric at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2005

This Day In Music

What was No.1 on the day you were born?

Physical - Olivia Newton-John

Speechless. My brother has a much better one:

Islands In The Stream - Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton

Posted by eric at 09:49 AM | Comments (6)

June 16, 2005

That's all it is

Posting around here has been a little spotty lately, just part of a wave of general apathy that's swept over me the last week or so. Flag burning ban? Meh. Wall of the Berlin Wall? Yawn.

Food hasn't been tasting quite as good. Things that normally amuse me have been unbearably dull. People I usually enjoy seeing have just brought me down. As I was weeping into my fries last night, I realized what's going on here: I have got to change my oil. I'm like 1000 miles overdue.

Posted by eric at 09:05 AM | Comments (16)

June 15, 2005

Jobs Speech

From a commencement address by Steve Jobs:

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

Posted by eric at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2005

Don't Get Any Ideas

Err.. Normally I try to keep things PG rated around here. So don't see the comments for the below post if risque ASCII art isn't your thing. I didn't post it, but it's almost a shame to take it down.

Sorry for the "made you look".

Posted by eric at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2005

Futures Past

I love movies that have futuristic events already in the past. Like 2001. Our problems are so much more mundane than conscious machines. Granted, most of the time they're not seriously trying to predict what life will be like XX years from now and the farther out they go the less likely things are to come true. How much longer is it supposed to be until Zephram Cochran invents the warp drive?

Hindsight is better than 20/20. Hindsight is clairvoyance.

We get to see people's biases played out in past-futures. Astrophysics and biogengineering advance. Psychology and cars don't. (Gattaca) Cars and computer graphics advance. Government oversight doesn't. (Minority report) Etc.

I once heard that futurists tend to overestimate the big things and neglect the small ones. Sounds about right to me. I mean, the Jetsons. What was that about?

Posted by eric at 11:51 PM | Comments (4)

Mesoscale Madness

Two storm fronts appeared to merge over northern Rice county. Great contours, luckily there was nothing severe about them.

Posted by eric at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)

Matt Neubert was dancing on my car at the parking-ramp-top dance party last week. :(

More here. Before you get the wrong idea.. well.. Go ahead, doesn't bother me.

Posted by eric at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2005

PJ blogging

Sweet. It looks like Tommy Hook (purple guy, from below) has a good start on his own character self-immolation.

Los Alamos Whistle-Blower Blows It On Lap Dance:

• Mr. Hook wanted to go to a topless bar so he told his wife that he had gotten a tip from someone who wanted to meet him late at night. (Pretty darn good excuse).
• He drives to a topless bar called “Cheeks” to meet the tipster, who’s probably named Tiffany or Amber.
• He goes in and gets one or more “table dances”
• He consumes six beers.
• On the way out he gets into an altercation and gets his ass kicked.
• He thinks, ‘how am I going to explain getting my ass kicked at Cheeks to my wife’?
• He realizes that if the beating was related to the Los Alamos case, he’d be seen as a righteous victim by his wife, the media and all.

The story was a real stretch to begin with. Cheeky, if you will.

From the India desk:

I AM ENRAGED! SERIOUSLY, FURIOUSLY APOPLECTIC! No, not over flag burning, that's so passe: Two governors make big deal about small change.

Posted by eric at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

Boogey or Bogey?

I finally got that sleep I was looking for, and I'm fixin' to get some more. Posting may be a little light this weekend.

Just whatever you do, don't bother renting the movie "Boogeyman". Doesn't matter how much you say you like bad movies, just trust me on this one.

Posted by eric at 12:43 AM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2005

It's Late and...

Traffic spike from people looking for the leg story. Woo.

First mosquito bite of the season, and it's pushing the middle of June. (For Minnesota, this is amazing.) Yaaaayy.

I am so tired. Why can't I sleep?

Posted by eric at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

What is inSPOT?

• A localized business finder?
• A dalmation breeding service?
• A hokey-pokey DJ?

Of course it's none of those, it's "the STD Internet Notification Service for Partners or Tricks". From my mailbox this morning:

Thanks to whoever sent it, you're a pal.

Posted by eric at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

Unfriendly Skies

Hmm.. My seam problems look a little trite in comparison to this (gore ahead):

Man's leg lands in yard
Police suspect remains are from airline stowaway

FLORAL PARK, New York (AP) -- The body of an apparent stowaway was ripped in half during flight Tuesday and his leg crashed into a suburban neighborhood, where a homeowner found the severed limb in the middle of her lawn, authorities said.

Pam Hearne heard "a loud crash" and later was stunned to see a foot clad in an Adidas sneaker and a sock in her yard, said Officer Thomas Blanchard. The leg, with hip and spine attached, dented the shingled roof of her garage before bouncing into the lawn.

...

Peters said a Customs agent that met the flight at the airport found another leg hanging from the wheel well.

Story doesn't indicate what happened to the rest of him.

Posted by eric at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

The Seam

I've heard about this problem before but never thought it would happen to me: The seam in the coffee cup got me.

You know that little bit of overlap in the construction of paper cups? They try to make it as small as possible on the little rolled-up portion of the lid but there is just enough of a ridge there that coffee can seep out.

And onto your shirt.

Now granted, I was at a linux users group meeting so I probably didn't lose many points for my "urpie" coffee drips. For awhile I was completely baffled about where they came from as I was under the impression I had learned how to drink things without getting them all over myself. Then I noticed that the seam and the sipping hole were in unfortunate alignment.

Posted by eric at 09:04 AM | Comments (3)

Posted by eric at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2005

Extreme Instability

Temperature's 90 right now, dew point of 65. Good reasons for the tornado watch out now too. :)

It will be a big mess out west of here tonight, but most of the real serious stuff will likely stay in South Dakota. I just checked -- Minneapolis's weather is about the same as Atlanta's right now.

Posted by eric at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)

Something Rotten In...

Okay. I'm going to pitch a plot idea for you. There's an auditor sent to work at a top-secret government facility. At first, life there seems normal but after digging beneath the surface things start to seem off. He starts asking people questions they don't think he has any business asking. Money disappears. He finds evidence that corruption is rampant and that people in charge are willfully negligent.

Eventually he ends up preparing to testify before a regulatory panel about the abuses. He receives a call one night from someone claiming to be an auditor at the same facility who has information that can help back up his case. They set up a meeting at a seedy club and the auditor goes and waits for more than an hour.

The man from the phone call doesn't show. The auditor gets back in his car to head home, but is suddenly dragged out and thrown to the ground. He is beaten and kicked in the face while his attackers warn 'If you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut.'. Notably, they don't bother to steal his wallet or his running car.

So it's not "Pelican Brief" or "Prey". Worse, it appears to be what happened to Tommy Hook who was a whistleblower at Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Posted by eric at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

Darth Jobs

So it's true, Apple has gone over to the Dark Side and will start using Intel chips next year. (The /. thread on this is understandably amusing, and you won't have to surf far to find shocked people.)

What I found really interesting, however, is this Ananadtech article that benchmarked some of the internals of OS/X and compared it to linux systems of comparable speed. The conclusion?

Mac OS X is incredibly slow, between 2 and 5(!) times slower, in creating new threads, as it doesn't use kernel threads, and has to go through extra layers (wrappers). ...[The G5 processor's] database performance is completely crippled by an asthmatic operating system that needs up to 5 times more time to handle and create threads. ... The whole "multi-threaded Mach microkernel trapped inside a monolithic FreeBSD cocoon with several threading wrappers and coarse-grained threading access to the kernel", with a "backwards compatibility" millstone around its neck sounds like a bad fusion recipe for performance.

This won't change with the switch in architecture.

Posted by eric at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2005

PDF no page in hand

When is a magazine not a magazine?

Sorry, I'm not trying to be philosophical, I'm just mad. You see:

Queue is now available in a handy electronic edition that is a page-per-page match to the print edition you've been enjoying.

Beginning with the July/August 2005 issue, Queue will be available to you instantly via email the very day it is published.

No problem, that might be kind of convenient if I want to quote some text or paste a code snippet. But...

Beginning with the upcoming July/August issue, your future service will ben online only. You will no longer receive a print copy of Queue; instead we'll send you an email letting you know when and where the current issue is posted and what is in it.

We trust you'll like Digital Queue as much as you've told us you like Print Queue. And why wouldn't you? They're exactly the same except for the wasted paper.

It's a good thing I'm not an ACM member just for the magazine subscriptions. And why wouldn't you? -- what kind of presumptousness is this? Personally, I'm definitely going to prefer a paper magazine better than an online version of identical content. They're a RELIEF from staring at a screen. A portable medium that requires neither my chunky old laptop nor an outlet.

They're exactly the same except for the wasted paper. Guess ACM doesn't think much of the print version of Queue.

Posted by eric at 03:12 PM | Comments (3)

More Alien Huntin'

More X-COM.. Wow. I find it amazing that, even with graphics like these, a 10 year old game can still spook me in my seat -- something Doom3 never managed to do.

The poor rookie recruit above doesn't stand much of a chance with that cattle prod versus 3 floaters. Hopefully he has enough time units left to prime & toss a grenade.

X-Com is "turn based" sort of like chess but with the added twist that you can save some of your "time units", basically a currency for actions, for the other team's turn. So, if you've got some TUs left over and an alien walks into view on their turn, your solider has the option of reacting -- hopefully shooting the alien dead.

The flip side is that they can also store up TUs, so it's not uncommon to round a blind corner and have your troops shot dead. This is especially problematic on larger UFOs with many small rooms and tight corridors.

There is an amazing variety of weapons, from area-clearing rockets to stun prods and mind control devices, but they're all simple to use and have the same interface. The environments are varied and never dull. The sounds and ambient music are spot on. Clearly, I could go on... (And I'm barely a quarter the way through the game!)

Posted by eric at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

June 05, 2005

Weekend Evaporation

I "accidently" managed to get an old favorite of mine working: X-COM: UFO DEFENSE.

You are the supreme commander of an organization dedicated to stopping the alien menance. You can build bases, intercept UFOs with your fighters, shoot them down and, best of all, take a squad of troops to plunder the crash site and shoot little gray aliens.

It has a great story, great game mechanics, great atmosphere, and best of all it's all in 320x200. (The below is in-game resolution.)

You know what? It's so good it doesn't matter. Only Civ 3 comes close IMO. Enough typee, I must playee.

Posted by eric at 10:02 PM | Comments (2)

June 04, 2005

Backed & Stacked

Got caught in an hour-long traffic jam with no warning and no apparent source. Watched the people in cars around me growing increasingly more agitated. One hour spent parked and all of the sudden things just opened up, everyone drove away.

For anyone who was stuck on I-35 at Lakeville from 4:30-5:30, I feel your pain. Gal in the black Honda Accord: Not cool.

Posted by eric at 10:18 PM | Comments (1)

June 03, 2005

Persistant Execution Visualization Trace

New features for Limb, including an editor with an interesting and quite possibly useless visual aid:

The slasheriffic red line (yes, just one) overlayed on the source code is the actual path the interpreter took while executing the program. Every time a function is invoked, a line is drawn from the point of the call to the point the function was declared. Every substatement such as a variable creation or if block is also added to the list of points, creating another line. Thicker lines indicate multiple "passes" over a single block of code, and in this example they are especially evident because the interpreter is executing a recursive factorial function.

What you can't see here is that this is animated, layed down progressively as execution procedes. A caret (not visible here) marks the current point of execution.

I'm toying with the notion of using this kind of visual execution representation as a visual debugging aid or perhaps even an educational example. I'm a very visually-oriented person and I often recognize blocks of code simply by their shape. I would like to find a way to visualize code execution instead of using textual debugger watch lists.

Also added: function calls -- as expressions that return values -- floating-point numbers, in-place variable instantiation (local A=5 in...), and a couple of other minor details.

Posted by eric at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

They just can't help it

From a Guardian article on neurology.

(Sorry about the image.. I should know better than to use GIFs.)

Posted by eric at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)

I'm in a rat in a cage

I'm in a rat in a cage

Just a little on the inside, sorry.

Posted by eric at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

June 02, 2005

CWE

These are great, Crying, while eating:

Lindsay

What she's eating:
Blueberry pancakes and V-8

What she's crying about:
Material goods no longer make her happy

Posted by eric at 09:41 AM | Comments (2)

Cupid's Functional MRI

Nothing like a coworker getting married to remind you that you'd need carbon-dating to find any evidence your own skeletonized love life. But psychology marches on: Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain.

In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.

It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.

The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn.

...

In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their lovers.

Ouch, how do you get signed up for that study?

Posted by eric at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)