Friday Notes (Sep 26, 2025)

I’ve been dog-sitting Ms. Bentley Beans since last Saturday. She’ll be hanging out with me until at least the first of October. We’ve been enjoying the fall weather, though it has actually been slightly muggy for late September. Not like the swamp of late summer, but enough to soak my tee-shirt and make Bentley pant a little during our walks.

As usual, I take Bentley’s visits as my own vacation and spend most of the time hanging out with her and catching up on reading and TV.

Sadly, Friday Notes won’t write themselves, so while Bentley snoozes, I blog.

Bentley and I are both getting older, so our walks aren’t as far-ranging as they used to be. To make up for the lack of variety in paths starting from my place, I drive us to various local parks for at least one walk of the day (there are usually three, sometimes four, plus a short trip to the mailboxes to get the mail).

Bentley likes the car ride as much as the walks. Head out the window like any dog. It’s gotta be a rush for them — moving that fast and being blasted with many smells. Each time I glance back at her, she’s super focused and intent. It was fun watching her develop car-ride chops.

We had a strong storm pass through here Sunday night. Knocked lots of leaves and branches off trees — the leaves were probably about to fall anyway given the season.

The storm produced a fair bit of hail, too.

Nothing very large, but it went on for minutes. We have screens over the gutters, so the hail followed the roof geometry in terms of where it ended up accumulating. One pile formed on the sidewalk leading to my front door. I’ve never seen hail pile up there like that.

Those gutter screens are recent. Hail probably used to end up in the gutters and then down the drainpipe as it melted. On the other hand, I don’t recall hail going on for so long before, so maybe the sheer amount had something to do with it.

Regardless, for whatever the reason, I definitely have never seen a pile of hail this size outside before. (There was evidence of an even larger pile by the garage.) The amount covering the ground seemed a lot compared to past hailstorms. Maybe I’ve just been lucky — hail can be very damaging.

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I admit to being easily amused. I get a kick out of:

Three different math operations on a pair of twos all deliver the same result. It’s cute.

It works because they all mean the same thing. Two plus two is two twos; two times two is also two twos; two to the power of two is two times itself twice and therefore also two twos.

Four is interesting in being the lowest possible number of things you can use to make a square shape — four is the lowest square number (other than one, which doesn’t count because it’s special).

While we’re on cute math, can you solve the following for x & y:

The restrictions are because it’s trivial if x=0 or y=1. If x=0, then y can be anything (other than 0, because 0⁰ is undefined). And if y=1, then x can be anything at all (because x¹ = 1×x = x).

Answer in the next Friday Notes.

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I can’t recall what triggered it — a comment or a post somewhere — but I was reminded of the first computer I owned, the Timex Sinclair 1000:

It featured a simple built-in BASIC (basic BASIC), membrane keys, RF to hook to channel 3 or 4 of a TV (depending on which was free), and could save and load programs using a regular cassette tape recorder.

This was in the early 1980s. In the late 1970s, I’d taken CS classes in college and used the computers on campus, but this was the first one I owned. I also bought the case with a real keyboard on top — the computer’s circuit board gets installed it in the keyboard case giving you larger unit with a real keyboard. I also bought the 16K memory expansion pack — the thing came with only 2K of RAM onboard.

Actually, that was the first electronic computer I owned. Long before that (possibly as early as the mid-late 1960s), I had this:

The Digi-Comp I. Made of plastic and some metal wires (metal for strength, not for carrying electrons). The machine had three bits — the readout you see on the left could display either 0 or 1. The metal bits are the vertical wires. These catch on the white cylinders used to “program” the computer. Those are slid onto fingers on the three horizontal red pieces in the middle.

One machine cycle consisted of pulling out and pushing back in the white tab on the lower right. You could program simple applications — counters or whatnot. I recall a simple elevator simulation of some sort.

A lot of fun for someone already well down the geeky path. And interesting considering my career became software design.

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At first cars weren’t safe, but we made them safer. At first airplanes weren’t safe, but we made them safer. We improve our tools to make them better for us.

In the form of LLMs, “Ai” is just a tool we’re making better. But consider this: If we ever achieve true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — machines that think like us — we will have for the first time in human history a tool that can resist our efforts, that can fight back.

Here’s a good video that takes a deep look:

Robert Miles is an Ai Safety researcher who has been doing this a while. I’ve followed his YouTube channel for years and always found him knowledgeable, rational, and reasonable. And he has definitely got a point here.

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I’ve solved the infamous Barber Paradox.

IF the town barber shaves all men who don’t shave themselves, WHO shaves the town barber?

There is a simple resolution. When the town barber is home shaving himself before going to work, he’s an ordinary citizen shaving himself and thus excluded from the set of “all men who don’t shave themselves”.

Alternately, the town barber is female and also excluded from the set “all men who don’t shave themselves”.

Russell’s actual paradox, of course, is more complicated.

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A true story involves a guy I’ll call John (because no one in my circle of friends has that name). Some time ago, I used to host a regular group of friends every Wednesday night for chat, beers, and maybe a late movie…

One day I’m in Best Buy and bump into John. Who invites himself to my Wednesday night thing. Very much against my wishes, but what can I say? The genuine response is, “No, I don’t think you’d fit in,” but how can you say that? Even a polite no thankyou doesn’t work because it leaves an explanation hanging.

Having him show up — usually first to arrive and last to leave — changed the dynamic of the group considerably. The simple truth is that John isn’t on our level — isn’t in any way thoughtful, analytical, or science minded. Unlike everyone in my invited group.

Basically, John never grew up. He’s a comics guy — and his knowledge of comics history and minutia is beyond impressive — but it’s über-geekery — incredibly niche and well into “who cares” territory for most (which is rather the definition of a geek).

I know because I am one. But I know to seek the like-minded (or blather on in my own blog). And I can — at least a little — read a room and realize when no one is interested.

There is an episode of The Prisoner (1967-1968), “The Girl Who was Death”, where the protagonist (Patrick McGoohan) drinks a glass of beer and sees on the bottom the words: “You have just been poisoned”.

John had gotten some stickers with that, so one Wednesday he helps himself to several of my beer glasses, secretly applies his stickers, fills the glasses with beer, and hands them out. Which in my mind was high-handed and not at all appreciated. And now I gotta peel his stickers off my glasses. Thanks, John.

The guy was a vexation to my spirit and ruining my Wednesday night thing.

But what do to. What can you do?

The situation delivered itself. John sent out a misogynistic meme photo, something about WIFE standing for some infantile bullshit I refuse to remember. I replied, said it was infantile, and don’t send me stuff like that again. There are some things I won’t stand still for. Impose on my good will, fine, whatever, but that crossed a line.

He stopped coming, which made me much happier (albeit not entirely thrilled with how it was accomplished).

I felt bad for a long time for creating what I thought was a bad party dynamic, because John sometimes came to major parties (the “regular” group is smaller). We just ignored each other, but that’s annoying. Parties should be 100% fun. That’s their raison d’être.

What I didn’t find out until recently (at a smaller party at my place) is that I wasn’t alone in my negative reaction to John. He was one of those group members people felt they had to invite to their parties, because history, but hoped he wouldn’t show.

Made me feel a lot better. Vindicated. I thought I was harshing everyone’s mellow over my dislike of the guy, but that wasn’t the case at all.

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August this year was reasonable. It’s usually the month that, if I haven’t done it in July (or even June), I’m forced to start using the A/C.

I hate the A/C. What I actually hate is closed windows. Winter is bad enough but being cooped up inside in summer is worse. At least in the winter you can dress warm and go out and play. When it’s in the 90s — both temp and humidity — there’s nothing you can do.

This August we barely hit 90 (Fahrenheit), and that only three times. And there was a weird cool spell late in the month. July was also cooler than norm and also had a pronounced cool spell [see Friday Notes (Aug 29, 2005)].

I never did turn on my A/C this year. Soon it will be time to turn on the furnace and — damn it — shut the windows.

Compared to previous years, August lacked the highs we typically see. That cool spell definitely stands out as a bit unusual.

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I missed posting for Autumnal Equinox on the 22nd (last Monday; I was busy having fun with Bentley). Of the four natural holidays I celebrate (two solstices, two equinoxes), this one is the most depressing. It means six months of more night than day.

Now I’m anticipating the Winter Solstice — the promise of returning light. Can’t happen soon enough.

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I’ve been getting used to Windows 11 (but still not liking it). Seems to have a number of bugs and misfeatures.

Which is neither here nor there. What’s relevant is that I installed Ultra Fractal 6 on the new laptop. I installed it two laptops ago but never got around to installing on my previous one (the HP with the pinstripe screen).

I know why I didn’t. Mandelbrot (or other fractal) zooms are fun for a while, but they get old fairly quickly (for me, anyway). I enjoyed it on the Dell for a while but eventually put it aside.

I thought it might be fun to play with again, so I installed it on my new Lenovo (and it turned out to be fun again, at least for now — the images here are from one of my first sessions).

It’s already getting a bit been-there-done-that, but I want to see if I can learn things about the different boundary regions — the “needle”; the “seahorse valley”; the “elephant valley”.

At the very least, I think I’ll use UF6 for some (more) posts about the Mandelbrot.

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Stay fractal, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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