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awk is remarkably fast
Remember a few days ago I'd been fiddling around with various languages to generate 1D cellular automata? The timing I got for this was surprising:1 hr 8 minutes -- the old CoCo computer5 minutes --...
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Easy use of graphics on computers
I've been falling down a very deep rabbithole.A few days ago I'd been wondering if there was an easy way to make simple graphics like I used to all those years ago on my early computers. The thing that...
View ArticleI haven't been updating as much as I should
Damn facebook has sucked so much time I don't do much blogging anymore. I have an account on Dreamwidth, which is the same as LiveJournal, but without ads, however I haven't been updating it much...
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Voting for lunatics and crooks
Today I helped Mum and Dad make their postal vote in the QLD election. I was horrified that of the 6 candidates, 3 are anti-science morons and one is a right-wing liar who is probably also...
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Tinkering with Puppy on a UEFI laptop
Well, last night was definitely NOT fun, though it certainly was interesting. I spent almost 6 hours trying to resurrect my computer. The kind of Linux I use is Puppy Linux, which has a number of...
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Curved space
It's 3:30am and my mind keeps ticking over the same annoying thing. I keep trying to think of some way to see gravity as curved space without it collapsing into contradictions. I can see the attraction...
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Galatea - amazing interactive fiction
My favorite work of Interactive Fiction (IF) is "Galatea" by the incredibly talented author Emily Short.So, what is IF? You have probably heard of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, where you are able...
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Getting close to the end of my current novel
I've been writing my latest novel, Breathe, for too many years. I got the idea for it back in 2015, while I was writing my short novel, Shirlocke, but it really took me a year or more to get started....
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playing hevc videos on old mplyer that doesn't support that format
Woo hoo!!!! I just enjoyed a lovely bit of Linux magic. My favorite Linux is a bit old, but I have it working just how I like, with a lot of programs installed and a lot of things I've set up exactly...
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What we should do, but are too stupid to take the hint
We've recently been slapped in the face by reality a couple of times, but seem unable to collectively realise the obvious message.The bushfires have been getting worse every few years until last year...
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The power, beauty, majesty and duty of reality
It seems to me, realising that a blind, unfeeling universe gets to be conscious through us, and thus able understand itself via our minds (for we are the tiny, infinitely precious, conscious bits of...
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a little story analogy for free speech
You're having a pleasant afternoon stroll in your neighborhood. With its tall trees, much shrubbery, plentiful birds, and lack of fences, it looks like virgin bushland, but it's actually fairly well...
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a little story analogy regarding climate change denial
You're on your way to a business meeting that could make you a lot of money. Ahead is a bus and a small car parked on the side of the road before a bridge and a lot of men milling around. Several of...
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Blackmail threat
I just got a threat from some piece of shit out there on the net.He posted from IP 94.70.164.115 at an address in Athens marked by the red pin in the map. The idiot thinks faking my name in the "Send"...
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theory of mind and helping people
Theory of mind is an interesting concept. It lets us understand what another person sees. We generally develop this ability at about age 4 years.Here is a common way it is explained: A father phones...
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Disappeared page
An opinion piece was published at Forbes a couple of days ago, but has mysteriously disappeared. Even stranger, when checking the Internet Archive I found the article there, but when I began to read...
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happiness
(A lovely friend, Dorejejaguar, prompted me to write this last night.)I've often wondered why I'm happier than most people. After reading a fair bit on the topic I've come to the conclusion that I was...
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odd-even weeks or calculating fortnights
This calculates even weeks, that is, it can calculate fortnights:expr \( `date +%s` / 604800 \) % 2 >/dev/null || echo "even"or if you want odd weeks:expr \( `date +%s` / 604800 + 1 \) % 2...
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matching a pattern in thesaurus output
There must be a simpler way to do this. I was looking for words similar in meaning to "back" or "previous" or "before" but beginning with the letter "d".My awk is a bit rusty so I used sed, which I...
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am, pm
Is anybody else confused by the abbreviations "am" and "pm" when applied to 12 o'clock midday and 12 o'clock midnight? It seems to me not only arbitrary and confusing, but actually wrong.The...
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