Category Archives: Basics
One of the first blog articles I wrote concerned the idea of Yin and Yang. It’s a topic I’ve touched on several times since (and revisited in particular talking about men and women). I reference the concept so often, because I think the duality of opposing concepts is a fundamental truth about the universe.
It’s not the only truth, of course, but it’s a very useful way of seeing things and understanding them. We see duality everywhere! Sometimes it’s something versus the lack of something (heat/cold, light/dark, full/empty). Sometimes it’s truly opposing pairs (north/south, positive/negative, male/female).
Today I’d like to expand on the concept and tell you about the Johari Window.
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Leave a comment | tags: duality, ego, four-square, Harrington, how others see us, how we see ourselves, id, Luft, others, psychology, self, self-awareness, self-help, Sigmund Freud, super-ego, Yin and Yang | posted in Basics
Those who know me know that I’m not big on calendar holidays. Even my birthday tends to pass without fanfare. That comes from being single, the island that supposedly no one is. After a lifetime of Christmas and New Years’ being ordinary days, you get used to it.
But I do honor the Solar Event Days because (as I’ve mentioned many times) light is so important to me (and because I’m a geek). Christmas may not mean much to me, but the Winter Solstice does! The days finally start getting longer! Summer Solstice is a day of mourning for the opposite reason.
Today — the Autumnal Equinox — marks the halfway point.
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9 Comments | tags: autumnal equinox, Earth, equinox, fall, moon, POV-Ray, summer, Sun, winter | posted in Basics, Science
The other day I was Wiki Walking and ended up reading about the Rare Earth Hypothesis in reference to the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation. We’ve discovered that most stars in our galaxy appear to have planets of some kind, although ones with human-friendly environments may be quite rare. The presence of a plethora of planets presumably provides a potentially large factor for at least one part of the professor’s pretty problem.
But it’s possible that some of its other factors are extremely small. They may be much smaller than anyone had imagined. They may be so small as to ensure that we are alone in the galaxy.
It’s even possible we are alone — or nearly alone — in the universe!
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8 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien vistors, aliens, Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, Golgafrincham, Hitchhikers Guide, Prime Directive, Rare Earth Hypothesis, Star Trek | posted in Basics, Science
I’ve been indulging in a break away from computer things, so it’s been a while since the last post. I haven’t really set any publication schedule, so it’s not like I’m out of compliance. (I have at times been out of luck, out of town, out of wack, and out of my mind. I’ve also been “all out of love,” and speaking of which, I’ve even been out of air! (supply… see what I did there?))
The problem is, the longer I don’t post, the harder it is to get back in the saddle. Since I’m still kind of in break mode, I thought I’d share another item from my files. It’s a riff on the (very general) differences between the male and female approach to life.
Here is the story of Roger & Elaine.
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13 Comments | tags: dating, men, women | posted in Basics, From My Collection
I’ve been playing with Python and POV-Ray, catching up on movies, enjoying the continued nice weather, and even getting in some reading. Yet it’s still weird how little I seem to get done considering the days are all mine. (And I still haven’t fully shaken the sense that all this free time ends at some point.)
For now, I plan to focus on project work—the previously mentioned Python and POV-Ray playing—so there may be a pause in the posting while I putter (possibly a plethora of pauses). Please stay tuned!
In the meantime, I have some questions:
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28 Comments | tags: atheism, Joy, meaning, POV-Ray, purpose, Python, spirituality, suffering, theism | posted in Basics, Life, Philosophy, Religion, Science
Yesterday I introduced you to the idea of words as numbers. There are many ways to create a map between words and numbers. For example, we could assign them the number that represents their position in the dictionary. That would make words that start with “A” have smaller numbers while words that start with “Z” would have the largest numbers.
There are also ways to treat the words themselves as numbers. We can interpret the letters the same way we do digits. Each letter has an assigned numeric value, and then a string of letters—just like string of digits—forms a number. The scheme I showed you yesterday allows us to treat (only!) single words as numbers.
Now let’s extend this so that entire sentences—or even entire books—become numbers!
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2 Comments | tags: big numbers, number systems, numbers, positional notation, Rudy Rucker, words, zero | posted in Basics, Math
Today I’d like to introduce you to a concept I picked up from mathematician Rudy Rucker in his 1987 book, Mind Tools (The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality). I’ll warn you now that there is some math ahead (but no math homework—unless you want to). It won’t get any more complicated than multiplication and addition, but we will be dealing with some extremely large numbers (so large they are more ideas than numbers).
The end result is that we’re going to tie together the written word with numbers. I’m going to show you how every word, every sentence, every book, magazine and blog article can be reduced to a single (very large) number. That we can do this provides a foundation we can use to discover some amazing things about mathematical reality.
It may sound dry or intimidating but stick with it! You just might find it worthwhile.
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10 Comments | tags: base 10, base 2, binary, decimal, number systems, positional notation, Rudy Rucker | posted in Basics, Math
The week is off to a weak start. Last week I thought things at work would finally start to move along on my project. But it turns out the guy who told me “next week” didn’t expect me to read his email until last Monday. So this week turns out to be the week he thought he’d have something.
No word so far, and he didn’t answer my email this morning.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the data chain, oh, it’s a big disaster that makes me shudder. Late today we got an opportunity to test just one link in the chain I’m trying to build. Tests failed, so it’s back to the vendor.
I’ll rant about that later (and you’ll be free to leave). First, I just want to share the only time management tip I ever learned that turned out to be hugely useful.
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6 Comments | tags: Babylon 5, bill, Captain Kirk, cow, Fruitcakes, Jimmy Buffett, Shadows, time management, tips, Vorlons | posted in Basics, Brain Bubble, Life, Rant
It’s a gray skies snowy Sunday afternoon, the fireplace is turned on, Bull Durham is on the TV machine, and I’d rather play with POV-Ray, snooze or get back to reading Terry Pratchett‘s Going Postal than spend hours working on a blog post. Sunday should be a day of rest or, at least, of difference.
I’m not particularly stuck on Sundays; my Lutheran background programs me for Sundays, but there are other ways to keep a Sabbath.
I do think it’s important to observe one day a week that is tuned differently than your other days. I think it’s mentally and spiritually healthy to change your pace one day a week. Dedicating a day helps insure following the practice.
Saturday thousands died for my amusement; today my desiderata is pax and nepenthe, so I thought I would share a Desiderata with you.
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20 Comments | tags: Desiderata, Les Crane, Max Ehrmann, Mr. Spock, nepenthe, pax, poems, poetry, Sabbath, serious poetry, Terry Pratchett | posted in Basics, Quotes, Writing
In Monday’s post I started writing about light and color. I described how white light can be created by adding three primary colors (red, green, blue), and how mixing any two result in secondary colors (yellow, cyan, magenta).
I went on to describe how subtracting two of the secondaries gives you the primary color they have in common, and how subtracting all three filters out all color, giving you black. The secondary combinations are the negative of the primary ones (e.g. blue is “anti-yellow”). I also touched on how color is the “pitch” (frequency) of light and that X-rays, radio waves, microwaves and gamma rays are all forms of light.
Today I continue the topic by exploring some details and nuances.
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5 Comments | tags: blue, cyan, green, ink, light, magenta, primary colors, red, secondary colors, yellow | posted in Basics, Science
Logos con carne 