philiplu

12 ms·

91.
by philiplu 5y ago
If you think you'd like TAOCP, but with just the math, not the programming (hah), take a look at Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth, and Patashnik. I haven't read anything else by Graham or Patashnik, so I don't know how
92.
by philiplu 6y ago
I was expecting to see Arthur C. Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise" (where I first heard about space elevators), but it looks like this isn't aimed at technological ideas, more straight science. Though "telescopes&qu
93.
by philiplu 6y ago
I assume you’re referring to the night they left the plug out? Or did something else happen during the Inaugaral Day windstorm in 1993? For non-locals: Seattle is separated from the Eastside, the suburbs to the East, by Lake Washington. T
94.
by philiplu 6y ago
I’ve no idea how authentic the cooking was, but way back in the 70s and 80s, I used to watch Justin Wilson, the Cajun chef, on TV. Looks like there are a number of episodes on YouTube.
95.
by philiplu 6y ago
You can find the small tubes at hobby stores, with the supplies for Pinewood Derby cars for Cub Scouts. I went through several tubes during my son's years in Scouts.
96.
by philiplu 6y ago
I remember those large teaching slide-rules, but haven't seen one in decades. Great to know they still exist, if only as mysterious artifacts from the dark ages. Neither of my parents were mathematically inclined, but they were conten
97.
by philiplu 6y ago
For a more recent sci-fi treatment, check out "The Girl With All The Gifts" by M. R. Carey, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17235026-the-girl-with-a... . A scary dystopian near-future tale of Ophioco
98.
by philiplu 6y ago
What a blast from the past. I can draw a direct line from my encountering a slide rule to ending up as a programmer. I owe my career to that device. I was a nerdy 10 year old kid who liked doing arithmetic in 1970, but didn't know an
99.
by philiplu 6y ago
For more on this, see Olbers’ paradox - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox
100.
by philiplu 6y ago
Those are called aglets, and when I just now googled for “aglet manufacturers”, I got way more hits than I expected.
101.
by philiplu 7y ago
I learned programming from TAOCP, but that was in the mid-70s, when good expository texts were rarer. I mostly skipped over the math then, and tried to figure out the algorithms. Actually wrote a MIX assembler/simulator, which taught
102.
by philiplu 7y ago
Brings back memories. I wrote a MIXAL assembler/simulator to run on an IBM 11/30 (actually, a clone - the General Automation 18/30), back in the mid 70s. About 7000 lines of 11/30 assembly, all on punched cards. And y
103.
by philiplu 7y ago
Interesting. I didn’t realize there was a related plant worse than Conium Maculatum, poison hemlock. Which I am way too familiar with - they’re common here in the Seattle area. My neighbor owns a restaurant that specializes in using lots
104.
by philiplu 7y ago
I started at Microsoft in 1991, and remember RAID fondly. My favorite part back then (probably running on Windows for Workgroups): when you minimized the program back to its desktop icon, the icon animated for a few seconds, showing a can
105.
by philiplu 7y ago
H. G. Wells, “The Time Machine”
106.
by philiplu 7y ago
The problem is a bit underspecified, perhaps. 'n' is a positive integer, so 1, 2, 3, .... So the sequence is found by multiplying 1504170715041707 by 1, 2, 3, ... sequentially, then finding the remainder when you divide each of
107.
by philiplu 7y ago
Cliff Mass, a meteorology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle blogged about this last Friday[1]. There's a comment[2] from someone in the area who notes that some of those tumbleweeds were likely radioactive, since th
108.
by philiplu 7y ago
Sure, but they’ve got the Colossal Cave Adventure game on there, and there’s always one more twisty little passage to explore, and before you know it, you’ve blown through $100 in connect charges, even though you’re a poor college student.
109.
by philiplu 7y ago
Thanks for the link. I’ve never heard of Wildar before; what an amazing character. Someone had a lot of fun writing that Wikipedia article: “However, the story about Widlar bringing a goat to trim the lawn in front of his office, retold b
110.
by philiplu 7y ago
I used to hike up Granite Peak in the Cascades, maybe 6 times in the 90s and 00s. That’s about 4 miles in, 3800 feet up, to reach a fire lookout tower much like the one in the article. One memorable time, I got passed by a lookout staffer
111.
by philiplu 7y ago
I’ve been working steadily through Project Euler for the past couple years; about 2/3 finished. That’s introduced me to many fascinating parts of mathematics I never studied as an undergrad, 40 years ago. Chromatic polynomials are on
112.
by philiplu 8y ago
There’s a nice online collection of these style puzzles at https://www.brainbashers.com/today.asp . I usually do the hardest Slitherlink, Hitori, and Ranges problems daily, for years now.
113.
by philiplu 8y ago
I'm in the Seattle area. Every year in late spring, the cottonwood trees start emitting huge quantities of seeds attached to fluffy "cotton". It gathers in drifts on the road. The fluff is light enough to be tossed about b
114.
by philiplu 8y ago
Yeah, so much this. I did most of my programming in asm in the mid 70s to early 80s. C wasn’t available back then on most 8-bit systems I used (Z-80, 6502, 6809, 1802, SC/MP). C pointers made complete sense to me once 16-bit microco
115.
by philiplu 8y ago
I've got a slide rule to thank for my precocious early math studies. I was always interested in math as a young kid, and my parents got me a Post slide rule for Christmas 1970, when I was in 5th grade/10 years old. I didn't
116.
by philiplu 9y ago
Heh - that was partly me. The kernel team (i.e. mostly DaveC) mostly prescribed which instructions were allowed in prologues/epilogues. I was dev lead of VC's CRT team at the time (2000-ish), and got assigned to work on that and
117.
by philiplu 10y ago
Well, 25 years ago, he worked down the hall from me at Microsoft, writing docs for the Fortran compiler. Not sure if he ever wrote docs for the C/C++ compiler that I worked on (this was pre-Visual C++ or maybe just as VC got started),
118.
by philiplu 10y ago
Interesting. My first compiler experience, 40 years ago, could reasonably be considered nanopass. This was the IBM Fortran IV compiler on an 11/30 clone. IIRC, the code to compile was kept in the minuscule memory, while dozens of passe
119.
by philiplu 11y ago
I remember this one, from using a typewriter back about 45 years ago, when I was a kid. You could get a dual-color ink ribbon, and could shift the ribbon up to print in red instead of black. Haven't thought of or seen that for many d
120.
by philiplu 11y ago
He created the Colossal Cave Adventure from the Crowther original back in the 70s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Woods_(programmer)

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