nondeterministic . net

TLV-EWR-BOS arriving on 4th March 2006 at 10:37am.

BOS-EWR-TLV departing on 6th March 2006 at 11:30am.

EECS Area II visit day. Apparently I’ll be here "unless otherwise noted."

See you then?

Subject: FOAL notification

We are pleased to inform you that your submission to FOAL ‘06 has been accepted […]. The workshop will be held in conjunction with the annual Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD 06), to take place in March 2006, in Bonn, Germany. The workshop will be held on March 21.

Subject: Your application to MIT EECS

If you have not already heard from them, you will shortly receive a letter from the EECS department at MIT, informing you that you have been admitted to the graduate program in Computer Science at MIT next fall.

That pretty much sums things up.

What’s wrong with this image?

No, it’s not that I’m listening to podcasts. I like my IT Conversations and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and The President’s Weekly Radio Address very much thank you, even if the delivery mechanism is pure Internet meme.

No, it’s not that I’ve infected my computer with nefarious DRM-laden purchases from the iTunes store. I’m OK with the restrictions when buying a couple TV episodes to watch in the airport, or downloading free sample tracks.

And no, it’s not that my iPod’s device name doesn’t continue the clever theme of having a computer named nondeterministic-turing-machine and a hard disk named Infinite Tape… I’m not sure what the continuation would be anyway.

It’s that a glaring reminder of how the poor security model of Microsoft’s operating system encourages users to use privileged accounts as a matter of course has insinuated itself into my iTunes source list like an ugly Bonjour-borne "shared music" boil, lest I forget the deeply diseased nature of the network beyond my lonely machine. Mr. Administrator doesn’t even share any music. All he does is raise my blood pressure.

Grrr.

According to the BBC, several thousand 11 to 15 year old Londoners were asked, among other things, whether or not they would like to be scientists.

Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".

Yes, well, that’s a real morale-booster. Now if I could just find my goggles and lab coat…

Also, is the BBC following some quotation punctuation rules I don’t know about?

Posted from Ben Gurion Airport. Written in Brussels Airport, 17:40 CET.

Monday

• "Who verifies the verification tools?" Is that like who watches the watchers?
• Dinner: fondue. I opted for cheese. It was very good. I thought of the last time I had fondue, which I think was at home, with the fondue forks with the multi-colored ends. And the last time I had fondue in a restaurant, which I think was somewhere in northern New England during a skiing-related venture.

Tuesday

• Dinner: salmon with cream sauce of some sort. Tried a Belgian beer recommended by the waiter, who later revealed his bias: it was brewed in his home town. Comestibles again quite enjoyable.

Wednesday

• Final day of the conference. Although it was the Monday sessions of the meeting that were devoted to administrative business, the morning’s several hours discussion on an integration-heavy project deliverable really brought into mind-numbingly boring focus the bureaucracy that comes with being an EU ‘network of excellence.’

  [continue reading “Leuven in summary”]

Now in Leuven. Thrilling photographic evidence is up on flickr. Conference begins tomorrow.

The El Al safety video (I know, who really watches those) is a combination of computer-generated and hand-drawn (at least stylistically speaking) animation. You’ve got the father, son, and the son’s teddy bear. When the father puts the oxygen mask on his son, the son then takes the cap of his bottle and covers the bear’s nose. Very heartwarming.

[continue reading “Say cheese”]

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Until you join Dogster. That kinda gives it away.

I liked the comment at Ars Technica that went something like, "yeah, I heard a rumor about something called ‘MacBook’ but it was such a stupid name I didn’t believe it." Hear, hear. My take? Very rev. 1. Be wary and have a few T-bones to throw as you approach.

And keep your eye on Chandler.

As seen on the Course 6 jobslist (why am I still on that?)…

If you can wield the Java Swing API like an Olympic champion hurls a shot put then I might have some work for you.

You mean like, spin it around and then throw it away from you as fast as you can without breaking your arm or having it smash into someone’s head? Any day of the week!

Eiffel and the SmartEiffel compiler.

Pro: design-by-contract is a very powerful programming methodology and is especially appealing if you have a theoretical background.

Pro: the Eiffel type system has “not kidding around” written all over it.

Con: a standard library that doesn’t have everything and the kitchen sink feels incomplete when you’re used to Java.

Con: compilation via translation to C means you can get errors like

main1.c: In function '_T112C112l147c27':
main1.c:5096: error: '_basic' undeclared (first use in this function)

when the compiler has a bug (and you do, too).

Discuss.

Once upon a time I thought my father was weird for using some crazy text editor that made no sense to me.

Now I have to respond to his comment(s) and defend my decision to hack up a system in sh & company because I find it easy to prototype in shell script, and I have an irrational dislike for Perl.

But I wouldn’t dream of hacking it up using anything but the latest version of that crazy text editor.