Slow Mojo

Gary Gygax

Woody — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:06:00 +0000

The debt of gratitude I feel is immeasurable. Gary Gygax R.I.P.

My Goals

Woody — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:51:00 +0000

So, this post over at Eschaton made me realize I should probably clarify my goals to avert accusations of ethical hypocrisy. With apologies to Shakespeare, I would summarize my goal as: "Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war."

Then again perhaps using a metaphor that speaks of "war" isn't the best way to alleviate confusion. So how about we say my goal is to toss a few "Apples of Discord" into the ether and see what happens.

Hope that clears things up, or maybe I don't.

First Against The Wall

Woody — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:30:00 +0000

I can't improve upon Belle Waring's take: "This may be the single most wrong-headed thing I have ever read about politics on the internet, and I think we all know that’s saying a lot."

Update: Others are weighing in as well

Ezra Klein
Scott Lemieux

Candidates With Balls

Woody — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 03:03:00 +0000

I'd say Athenae's take on the recent election feels closest to The Truth ™ in my mind.

When the Ends Justify the Means

Woody — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:57:00 +0000

Bill Maher succinctly captures the essence of a post I've wanted to write for some time. For the Republican Party and it's followers, the ends justify the means. Bill manages to make the connection that Scientologists also subscribe to this philosophy, which isn't a connection I'd made before but certainly helps to illustrate the concept. It also means there won't be a level playing field in the national political arena for the foreseeable future since the Democratic Party can't use the same tactics without sacrificing their soul.

Conservative Christianity Causes Divorce

Woody — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:08:00 +0000

Those conservative christians just can't catch a break. Looks like the divorce fairy is a bit biased towards them.

Nietzsche Family Circus

Woody — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:36:00 +0000

All I really need to know I learned from Nietzsche.

Robert Anton Wilson

Woody — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 18:13:00 +0000

This little piece of news makes me sad. No other book has had such a profound impact on my worldview as The Illuminatus Trilogy.

Update (2006-10-06): Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt this way.

Clinton Was Teh Evil

Woody — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:40:00 +0000

Senator Santorum knows it's true, probably because he read it on the internets.

Conspiracy Theory

Woody — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:17:00 +0000

In case you weren't aware, I'm something of a conspiracy theory aficionado.

Return of the Dark Matter

Woody — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:53:00 +0000

As a followup to my last post (from almost a year ago, my does time fly) apparently now they've proven dark matter must exist. Can't we all just agree on the laws of physics once and for all and be done with it? No? Well, okay then.

The Einstein Strikes Back

Woody — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 07:37:00 +0000

So apparently theories of so-called "dark matter" have all been based on explaining anomalous experimental data that turns out to just be rounding errors.

Now F I Cooperstock and S Tieu of the University of Victoria have reworked the problem using general relativity in place of Newtonian gravity, and they find no need to assume the existence of a halo of exotic dark matter to fit the observed rotation curves.

(via Slashdot.)

Preaching to the Choir

Woody — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 06:48:00 +0000

So you're saying irrational belief is a bad thing?

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

I never would have guessed.

(via Pandagon.)

Klik

Woody — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 04:55:00 +0000

I humbly submit to you, the reader, that Klik is the most important usability advancement in the history of Linux since SLS slapped together the first distribution. With one giant leap, installation of desktop applications reaches near-parity with Mac OS X and leaves Windows in the dust. It's truly a revelation. Now if I could only figure out how to make it work with Gentoo (and yes, I'm aware of the irony).

Objective Media

Woody — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:24:00 +0000

Some days, I blame the media most of all.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Woody — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 11:35:00 +0000

I recently finished reading Susanna Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and I must confess I feel largely unsatisfied. This is not to be confused with lack of closure, as I feel sacharine, tidy endings are generally the most unsatisfying, and this certainly wasn't one of those. On the whole I don't regret reading the thing, however, much like the case of Neal Stephenson's trilogy The Baroque Cycle, I know of people who only got partway in before abandoning the book and I honestly wouldn't be comfortable arguing they made the wrong choice. The story was certainly better than the vast majority of dreck published these days, but I doubt I'll be pushing a copy into anyone's hands anytime soon, nor can I really ever see rereading it.

Hacker Howto

Woody — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 20:14:00 +0000

Nat Friedman has an excellent, succinct post on How To Become a Hacker.

Programming Languages

Woody — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:23:00 +0000

I would suggest that any fellow programmer out there who is interested in the advanced concepts of our art should take a look at the article A Critical Look at Programming Languages by Tim Sweeney. For anyone experienced in functional or logic programming there may be nothing new there, but for me at least it was a revelation. More than anything it was this article which instilled in me the desire to create my own programming language (thus planting the seeds of my own destruction). To this day I still get a thrill when I think of the phrase "function composition and the monadic combinators of Haskell". I'm still not clear what those are, but it's definitely something new under the sun for me to explore.

Also, for anyone interested in the actual Haskell language, but having trouble understanding how IO works, I'd like to recommend Tutorial #1 at the Lambda Complex. I've read a few entry-level texts on the language and this is the one that finally made things click together for me.

Finally for those of you who might be interested in the latest news from the forefront of Programming Languages, you could do worse than to stop by Lambda the Ultimate

TiddlyWiki

Woody — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:16:00 +0000

I just have to say that TiddlyWiki is one of the coolest hacks I've seen in a long time. For those of you who don't like to blindly click links, I think this blurb from the website sums it up quite well:

One of the neatest features of TiddlyWiki is that it is entirely self-contained in a single HTML file. It contains the actual hypertext document, and the JavaScript, CascadingStyleSheets and HTML necessary to both view and edit the document. This means that it is trivial to host a TiddlyWiki on a website, or to distribute one by email. And anyone with a reasonably recent web browser will be able to read and edit it.

If you don't know what a Wiki is you may not care, but my amazement at this thing has steadily grown in the few days since I ran across it. The WikiOnAStick idea in particular is my favorite aspect so far.