One
So I got all my tax return filed, and I'll be getting a nice size return in the next couple of weeks. I might be able to afford a back yard this year after all, even though my house payment is going up. It's not property taxes (yet), but since the bank overestimated my escrow payment the first year, they underestimated this past year. This time they're being a bit smarter about how the payments work out, so hopefully the only adjustments will deal with property tax fluctuations.
In other news, I need to sit down with a few D&D 3.5 books and level up my fighter for one game, and my monk for a Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) game. And we're playing D&D tonight! I haven't chosen a prestige class, but I might not. Most of the intriguing ones I'm not qualified for, so I might go straight-up fighter.
Some of DC's "new 52" comics are ending their run at 8: OMAC, Men of War, Mister Terrific, Hawk & Dove, Blackhawks, and Static Shock. While I had already decided I was dropping all those titles as soon as the first arc was finished (I had dropped Mister Terrific and OMAC already), I may go ahead and grab all of them, just to have the whole set. I know I'm keeping (at least for the time being) Nightwing, All Star Western, Teen Titans, Batgirl, and Supergirl. Titles I am almost anxious to get rid of are Batwoman, Batwing, Wonder Woman, Demon Knights, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, and Catwoman. I nixed Red Lanterns, Voodoo, Resurrection Man, and I, Vampire after the first issue, and I have dropped Superboy, Frankenstein, Suicide Squad, Justice League Dark, and Legion Lost. My long-term opinions on the remaining titles are still up for grabs. I may see what the deal is with the new books that are coming in, but none of them excite me.
Political rant time, after the break:
Zero
My math from last post was off. The problem: Let 
I'll spare the boring details, but I really need to practice my calculus. 
I managed to pay off the lien on my car today, for $30 less than I expected, so I should be getting my title in the mail soon. One down, two to go. Due to changes in my insurance, I have also gotten a "raise" of $7.38 per paycheck. By no means am I a "rich man" now, though: I've been forced to delay my next mortgage payment by a couple of days so as not to short the bank. And for some reason my electric and gas payments didn't go out as expected, so I anticipate seeing nastygrams from both companies in the mailbox, but I'll be sure to pay them this weekend.
With the disappearance of my thumbdrive, I'm struggling to recreate the web application I had before. The problem is solely to do with variable scope, and it's making no sense to me.
var x; test=function() { x=5; } test(); alert(x);
Yet the result is [undefined] or something similar. My code is significantly more complex, but this is essentially the issue. And the above works just fine. I'll keep hacking away at it; hopefully I find the drive with the original code while cleaning this weekend.
Oh, what an exciting weekend I have: dishes, laundry, picking up lumber, sorting comic books, organizing tax documents... Despite the fact that taking the class precludes my participation in dance, it provides mental stimulation to last the week, so I shouldn't stay bored, even when I have dull tasks ahead of me. This week is probably an exception, since I'm done with my homework for Monday. It's a matter of transcribing scratch work to a piece of paper and scribbling my name on the top.
Not quite sure what the plan for tonight is. Either we start Caleb's campaign or play Necro/Inquisimunda or board games and/or I finish leveling up my D&D character (from 7 to 8). Thing is, "Magnus", my dwarven fighter, can chop through our current enemies like butter. And I like it that way. But I'm kind of wondering if I want to take a level of another class. I'm most certainly taking Great Cleave as my feat, but I'm not sure where to put my stat point. If I put it toward dex, by level 12 I'll have enough for another really wicked feat. If I put it toward int, I'll get an extra skill point, but I'm really not concerned about those. Oh, sure, my swim, climb, and jump could use a boost, but I'd rather fix that by getting better armor than upping stats. Besides, since they're cross-class anyway, I can't boost them much as it is. Truth be told, I'm enjoying our D&D campaign more than the HERO one. I'm still planning on GMing the next segment of HERO, to take place in Beetleburg at and around Transylvania Polygnostic University (Know Enough to be Afraid). Not sure who all will make appearances as my story is far from complete, but I have a few ideas. I need to have enough adventures and directions for the party to discover, and at least one that will entice them somehow, which means a reward is necessary. Clanks for everyone? Money? The sale of a boat (inside joke)? Possibly weapon upgrades from the local blacksmith shop.
I haven't decided if/when I'm going to sign up for eHarmony again. I was encouraged to just go out and "do what I enjoy, and meet someone along the way", but since so much of what I enjoy is solo stuff, I'm not sure how well that'd work. Dancing isn't, but I won't be able to do that until May. Choir isn't, but we don't sit in a mixed order and I don't think there's anyone younger than my mom in the alto/soprano sections anyway. It's possible I'll talk with one of the girls in math class—a couple of them are attractive, but as crowded as it is and the fact that none of them are in my group, that's unlikely. If I put into practice frames 1 and 2 of xkcd 267, make up the future as I go, life will be much more interesting, and the most effective way forward I see begins with learning how Tesla coils work. And figuring out where to buy them.
Rollerblades
So, class. A couple of interesting things: the number of people taking the class is far more than I expected. 30 or so. About 12 girls, 18 guys, much more balanced gender-wise than I expected. And one deaf student. Turns out this course is required for Math Education majors—I wouldn't have expected them to take calculus, much less this. It's also one of the two options for an engineering student to get his Math minor (the other being Linear Algebra, which I have already taken).
So, after telling us to break up into groups, moving desks as best we could in the very crowded classroom, we were presented with a problem:
Let
She gave us about a half hour to work on this, and came around to our groups to see how we were doing, prompting us on ideas we had. A very good teacher, in my estimation. Anyway, we were so close to finishing when she brought us back together to discuss it, but part of our homework for Monday is to come up with a solution. If my calculations are correct, this area is minimized when 
This post here is also a test. Since Facebook took away their RSS automatic crossposter, and the LJ crosspost plugin I had was well out of date, I found two new ones which I'm trying out. I have one friend on LJ and lots on FB, and I'm not quite sure how this will work. The downside to both of those is the lack of support for math, which I use relatively frequently.
While I've finally gotten around to using my Christmas present from my parents, I have misplaced two SD card readers, both containing SD cards. One was the card from my old phone, and the other, well, don't remember where it came from, but they've gone missing. Probably the same place as my sunglasses, seeing as the last time I distinctly remember having all of them after returning from work on the 9th, and not being able to find them before leaving for work on the 10th. So I'm certain they're here, but I haven't been able to track them down yet.
I've already got an offer for a manager for my (to my knowledge) unique stage show idea: a laser-augmented theremin for generating the music, with Tesla coils providing the sound, and a Rubens' tube for additional visualization. What else can I add to the setup to make it more geeky? I kind of want to add a gutbucket, Jew's harp, and a steel drum. If we add the bagpipes and the lute, perhaps Professor Peter Schickele might discover another lost work by P.D.Q. Bach.
This Too Shall Pass
It's rare that I mention the name of the artist who performs the song that provides the title to my posts, but OK Go makes awesome videos. Also, I want a theremin. The lasers are just window dressing, but that'd be cool, too...
Anyway, after 461h 37m 56s work on a GeForce GTS 250 GPU, I halted polynomial selection for the particular C162 I was going after. Turns out that, if you have enough acceptable polynomials, it'll choose the best one of the bunch before moving on. So I can put it to my other computer if and when I so choose to continue work on factoring (sieving, then linear algebra). The result of this was immediate: my computer became usable once again! I had originally planned for the 300h that was supposedly its self-imposed time limit, so I was expecting to be without a machine for about 2 weeks, but this was pushing 3, and I really was itching to do some gaming, or programming, or something. My laptop and my other computer can handle some tasks, but aren't very well suited to others.
On an unrelated note, my deck is done! Well, it lacks a few finishing touches: a nail here and there to keep the inspector happy, and some concrete for the posts at the bases of each staircase. Some trim would be nice as well, but I think I'll put that off for a while. Saturday the goal is to haul the unused lumber back (they buy it back!) and relieve myself of the scrap wood via the lumberyard's dumpster. This should gain me, oh, $60-80, and lots of space in the garage.
Speaking of cash money, next Friday I will once again own my car. The lien will be gone, as will one debt. And I do intend to celebrate, though I'm not sure how yet. Go see a movie? Treat myself to a steak dinner? I'm sure I'll figure something out.
Haven’t Met You Yet
It has been a while since I've posted. This particular post has been in draft form for...weeks, at least. More'n a month, for sure. But I've kept adding to it instead of posting more often. Does this reflect poorly on me as a blogger? Or because my audience is so small, does it even matter? Anyway, I've re-opened comments because of Facebook no longer automatically crossposting, but we'll see how much spam that turns up.
More musings on my "Pabulum Prognosticator" application:
My map functionality works quite well, actually. Enter an address, and MapQuest will resolve that to coordinates quite nicely. If it's off, move the marker where the restaurant (or your location, depending on what it's asking for) really is. There are zoom and pan buttons on the map, but the mouse works too, an inset map, and a geolocation button to resolve your actual position. The latter doesn't work so well if you're sitting behind a distant proxy, but should do alright otherwise, especially on mobile devices. My directions call will use coordinates rather than addresses anyway primarily to deal with misplaced geocoding.
Terminology is difficult. I'm putting together a glossary, and I'm sure I'll need help with that. Seems that the word "barbecue" has different meanings depending on the region. Also, I can't use "Ice Cream" for a place like Orange Leaf, because they don't serve ice cream, so I thought about using "Dessert" but that could include pie, sopaipillas, etc., which I'm not sure I want to include. If people want to go out for frozen dairy products, I don't want to indicate they should go to a pie shop, unless they also serve ice cream (or frozen yogurt, or custard, or gelato, or sorbet, or...). And I don't want to have a bazillion items in my "cuisine type" selection. This should be an overall style, more detailed menu items can appear underneath, for example "American" for "cuisine type" and "chicken fried bacon", "quesadillas", "bierocks", and "hummus" for "menu items". Even that's difficult to say, because there are places around here with their own unique dishes that don't fit under nice menu items. And by the time this spreads around, menu space will get crowded very quickly. This is turning out to be more problematic than my earlier issue of prioritizing/weighting random choices. If one member of a group is a vegetarian, hopefully whoever set up the restaurant in the system knows whether or not it has vegetarian options, for instance! Are they Lent-friendly? Do they have options for low-carb diets (or whatever the current fashion is)? I also need to find a way to accurately codify hours of operation. I've got an idea if people can conform to a standard that would allow for those locations which are open multiple times per day, at odd days of the week, say, Mondays and Thursdays from 10:30am to 2:00pm and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 4:00pm to 7:00pm. This would work out as
- 1030-1400 1600-1900 - 1030-1400,1600-1900 1600-1900 -
There's a "library" out there called jQuery. Perhaps most web developers are aware of it. Honestly, I haven't been terribly impressed. I may, however, use it for its widgets, specifically the date picker. Initially I see only two places where that will be used, but I have another idea for the future which would make heavy use of it.
Stylistically, I have some ideas. I'll definitely use a serif font, but whether I stick with a standard, like Georgia, or go with something fancier, I don't know. Depends on what I can find. Caudex works while I'm developing, but I really don't think it's worthy of deployment. As far as color goes, I'll probably start with a green scheme, while working on a variety of colors. And my page will likely be a narrow column, one that should work equally well on mobile as well as desktop browsers, because frankly, there's not a lot that needs to be displayed at any given time.
So that's, y'know, coming along. More importantly, the freeze ray is almost up.
I enrolled in (and paid for) "Intro to Advanced Mathematics" at WSU for the Spring semester. And I bought the textbook. I've skimmed the first half of chapter one and flipped through the pages, and I think it will be a thoroughly interesting course. Perhaps made somewhat easier that I already understand what is meant by most of the symbols (e.g. ∧, ∨, ¬, ∈, ∪, ∩, ∅, ∃, ∀, etc.). It begins with informal/propositional logic, and I may find the EE tricks of Karnaugh maps handy. Statements like "P→Q" and its accompanying truth table still seem odd (it's equivalent to the statement "¬P∨Q"), but I'm sure I'll get used to it. There are still plenty of other symbols used that I'm unsure about, and a few different algebras I'll need to learn, but I'm excited. There looks to be a tiny bit of graph theory in the book as well, which is cool. Seven Bridges of Königsberg, anyone?
The song referenced in the title (yes, I enjoy listening to the occasional Michael Bublé—P!nk, Sade, and Maroon 5, too, don't make fun) also references my impending plunge back into the online dating scene. I intend to sign up again myself come January when I can once again afford it, and I think I'm going to be more...aggressive about it this time. One way (of many) in which I think eHarmony is deficient is that it doesn't indicate whether your matches are currently paying members, so I could be attempting to communicate with someone who has found their match and gotten married but never indicated so on their profile, or someone else who got fed up with the service and cancelled. There's also the age thing. I'm still sent occasional matches in the range 21-24, but I feel a tad uncomfortable with the age difference. Now, my parents are 8 years apart, which would be a girl of 22 for me, but the (three) girls I've dated (regularly) so far have been between 5 months younger and 3 years older than me. For some reason I feel far more comfortable with that. Also, so many of the girls I've been matched with have, in their list of five things they can't live without, some form of alcohol. I can these right off the bat, 'cause I'm a teetotaler. Not a religious thing, I just don't drink. A friend left a bottle of beer in my fridge 8 weeks ago and it's still there. I wouldn't mind if my girlfriend has a drink now and then, but if getting drunk is your idea of a good time, then goodbye. Coffee, well, I don't drink coffee either, or hot chocolate, or tea, but those don't bother me as much. I'm not expecting to sign up and find in three seconds the red-headed, freckle-faced, green-eyed girl of my dreams (though that would be nice), and I may never find one again with those physical attributes, but in addition to being "truly compatible" as Dr. Neil Clark Warren keeps droning on about, there has to be some chemistry. Of the three dates I managed in the 20 months I was previously a member of the service, one had the personality and friendship potential I was looking for, but there was no spark. Also, I wonder how picky I should be. I mean, the alcohol thing I've already made up my mind on, but what about other issues? Politics, religion, how soon she wants kids? Around this area, most people I meet are pretty conservative, politically and in religious/Christian subjects. Politically I lean libertarian (in some areas), and I don't interpret every bit of the Bible literally. I listen to, but stay out of, debates on these subjects with the people I do hang out with. Also, though I want one, maybe two kids someday, right away (or even for the first few years) is definitely not desirable to me. My brother and sister-in-law can have their 5+ kids if they want. My cousin can have her 13. Not gonna happen here.
Statistically, putting together everything in a Drake equation-like form (inspired by this), there are approximately 12 local girls with whom I could have an excellent relationship. I didn't use all the same factors: location, education, age, and marital status were the major ones I used. I estimated reciprocity at 5%, which could be high or low, really. I've only ever asked 8 people out, and, while 4 agreed to a date, one did not reciprocate, and, well, I'm still single. Two of those were "long-term" (more than 6 months), one ended badly, the other amicably. So do I pick 37.5%, 12.5%, or, what I did, estimate that I've had excellent luck so far, and pick a lower number? One statistic not included is the number meeting my criteria on eHarmony. I used the local population with the other local statistics, which puts my random-encounter probability quite low: 1 in 1000 chance if I went out every day of merely encountering one of these girls, much less interacting with them. Anyway, if eHarmony works, and if 1 in 20 dates go on to a second, after 10 people I have a better than even chance of finding one that will last. Statistically.
Obscure factoid of the day: it is impossible for any object to orbit the earth (with only gravity providing the acceleration) in less than 84 minutes 20 seconds. Unless you want to dig a trench that circles the globe and can drain the excess water...somewhere.
Here's an excellent quote on education from David @ Popehat (now in my quotes database):
Do we want to be pragmatic above all else? Is it unwise for the ideal to temper the real? Folks who discern that they’re puppeteers or poets, calligraphers or critics, artisans or artists, shouldn’t bear blame and suffer disdain for rolling the dice on their dreams. They only merit mockery when, failing, they whine about how their society’s public policies didn’t long indulge them.
The pursuit of a culture of literary salons is not a path orthogonal to hard-nosed capitalism; when successful, it’s a symptom or index of thriving capitalism. And although taking the risk when times are lean may be ill advised, the humanistic goal of chasing a cultural dream isn’t inherently wrong or risible. To the contrary, the humanistic goal is the point not only of the risk, but of capitalism itself, rightly construed.
Four days until Christmas. All my shopping's done, the wrapping/cards are not. If you haven't done your shopping yet, it's too late for the post office, but you might consider these Etsy shops for the future!
Absolutely
Facebook will stop automatically cross-posting these on 22 November 2011, which means I'll have to link every single one of 'em manually.
How would you like a car that gets 4490000 MPG? There are a couple of caveats to that, of course, though the vehicle in question does exist. It only operates at 7K (-266.15°C, -447.07°F), must be driven on a conductive surface, has a wheelbase of about 100nm (3.94 millionths of an inch), and is powered by a scanning tunneling electron microscope.
Two eggcorns I came across in this morning's news trawl: shoe-in (instead of shoo-in) and re-role (instead of re-roll). Another was discussed on Language Log: furled (instead of furrowed) regarding eyebrows.
Why is the standard 0.1% resistor value 920 instead of 919? 
Something a bit odd for web developers: Chrome, at least, does not support HTML5 geolocation with local files. I hacked together a script to get a taste of it, and all I can test without uploading it to a server is one error mode. I don't have versions of IE, FF, Safari, or Opera here that support it, so those will have to wait until I get home.
Meanwhile, my Google Maps API geocoding page still works. However, due to some frustrating wording in the Terms and Conditions, specifically in sections 10.1.3(b) and 9.1.1(b)(iii), I think I'll be going with MapQuest. As a matter of fact, reading their feature list, it appears much better than Google's! Adios, Google!
I've dumped Google for search, and now for maps, but they still have my e-mail, my RSS, and my phone. While I'm disappointed for Iranians regarding the recent changes to Reader, I'll still use it.
Anyway, that's all I've got for now. My next post will be linked from FB, if I remember. If you want to bother keeping up with my occasional ramblings, bookmark http://findingmyname.com/wp/.
Counting Blue Cars
So I went to a hockey game last Saturday. It was my first time in Intrust Bank Arena, which is a real nice place. I still don't think that a new place needed to be built; renovations on the Kansas Coliseum would have sufficed, but, whatever. Anyway, the Wichita Thunder were playing the Allen Americans. This is the CHL, but it turned out to be quite an exciting game. Not, I'm sure, for the players, as the game went into OT. No goals scored in OT meant a shootout. At the end of 5 shots, it was still tied, so the shootout continued, and Wichita finally won! Three home games, three OTs, three shootout victories. The away game in Tulsa was won in regulation.
I believe I have been stung by a wasp; I would guess this happened sometime Saturday, but the area didn't begin to hurt until Sunday evening, and it still hurts. So I went to the pharmacy, and they recommended hydrocortisone, but that was ineffective. So their next best idea was a topical analgesic. This does seem to work, if for a limited time. If the rash is still there on Monday, I'm going to the doctor.
My effort to factorize C129 of A276[1706] should be complete by mid-day tomorrow. Polynomial selection took 31 hours; I estimate a total of 32 for the lattice sieving, and what...another hour for the linear algebra? Not sure I want to put my computer to any tougher test, at the moment, anyway. I'm curious as to how long the Lucas or Proth tests would take (on my computer) to prove the primality of the 20562 digit probable prime discussed in this paper. Since the largest proven prime is 12978189 digits long, this wouldn't be breaking any records, but it would refine Mills' constant further.
Scratch another title off my comics list: Green Arrow. Not that I didn't enjoy #1-3, but there's too many titles right now, and I'll focus on the good ones, like Justice League, Supergirl, Action Comics, and the Green Lantern titles. Some, like Animal Man, Catwoman, and OMAC I intend to dump as soon as the first arc wraps up. And there are a few, like The Flash, Deathstroke, and Teen Titans that I'm as yet undecided on.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to finish the balusters on my stairs, go watch In Time with some friends, and pull out my 日本語 flashcards again. For now, I'll watch one more episode of Top Gear and head to bed. Not my normal Friday routine, but I guess it works.
Prisencolinensinainciusol
Factoring the number 10129782222676470346432741615649995887638076164970362895219749477442527367273098030827926769209766970626919 took 3.85 hours. But I think someone beat me to the punch... I admit, I don't really understand what's going on in the first two steps. The linear algebra step (the third and final step) makes sense to me, although it's certainly best left to a computer, because the arrays the GNFS deals with are...quite large. I'm wondering if I could figure out the GNFS by working an example by hand (or by Python) on, say, 91. At only two digits, perhaps it's small enough to factor this way just to gain an understanding of the method. I'm reading someone's thesis to try to get some insight.
The last known term of the aliquot sequence of 276 (n=1706 as of this writing) still has a composite 151 digit factor (2391345652091880829266640978165791965931695304984227945610212060317008763704029331161240541496545425996146584929342230821483171396442125504020574241549 again, as of this writing). I will stand by Catalan's Aliquot Sequence Conjecture unless/until it's proven wrong, and I will keep following 276 whenever it strikes my fancy to do so.
Isolation
I really like coming home to a clean house. I miss being able to afford the service more often, but for multiple reasons, I had the maids come in today. They do a good job, even if they have interesting ideas of where to put some kitchen items. I was hoping, though, that my glasses would turn up during their cleaning. One of the many baffling things that's happened this week. They were on my head last night when I went to bed at 2am, and when I got out of bed at 7:30am they were nowhere to be found. I don't remember taking them off—I barely remember hitting the pillow—but they have to be somewhere. To the best of my knowledge, no one attempted to determine the velocity of my glasses with a great deal of accuracy while I slept. So I'm wearing my old pair for now. The prescriptions are very similar, but different enough that it's noticeable. They did uncover my missing needle threader, which is nice, but not that important since I don't sew buttons on very often.
My last post came a couple of hours before I made an amazing discovery: Marian Call. Go to her website, listen to her music, and buy her CDs! She's geeky, creative, gorgeous, and has an amazing voice. As an early birthday present to myself, I bought all 4 CDs and have been enjoying them since.
A public service announcement: next time you go to the airport, remember that reciting constitutional rights to the TSA is considered disorderly conduct.
We (the Wichita Symphony Orchestra Chorus) began rehearsals this evening for the annual holiday concert. While most of the songs are familiar, the arrangements are not. While it's not like we're performing Bach, it will take a bit of work to get the right notes. Plenty of time, though, before the show, I think. But we're in dire need of more voices! As usual, there are more than enough sopranos, but only 6 basses showed up tonight! A little top-heavy, for sure.
Well, that pretty much wraps up my last day as a twenty-something. I'll complete my 30th trip around the sun at 8:21am tomorrow morning (since I was born at 9:35am 30 years ago tomorrow—I'll let solving the 1h 14m "discrepancy" be an exercise for the reader)
No Rain
"Did Asimov have a freaking time machine in his basement or something?". Via Bruce Schneier and Decrepit Old Fool:
In his 1956 short story, Let’s Get Together, Isaac Asimov describes security measures proposed to counter a terrorist threat:
“Consider further that this news will leak out as more and more people become involved in our countermeasures and more and more people begin to guess what we’re doing. Then what? The panic might do us more harm than any one TC bomb.”
The Presidential Assistant said irritably, “In Heaven’s name, man, what do you suggest we do, then?”
“Nothing,” said Lynn. “Call their bluff. Live as we have lived and gamble that They won’t dare break the stalemate for the sake of a one-bomb head start.”
“Impossible!” said Jeffreys. “Completely impossible. The welfare of all of Us is very largely in my hands, and doing nothing is the one thing I cannot do. I agree with you, perhaps, that X-ray machines at sports arenas are a kind of skin-deep measure that won’t be effective, but it has to be done so that people, in the aftermath, do not come to the bitter conclusion that we tossed our country away for the sake of a subtle line of reasoning that encouraged donothingism."
I definitely need to update my collection of Asimov.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out the best graphics tool to use for my fractal programs. The C language was essentially required to write my escape time algorithm (Mandelbrot) that uses arbitrary precision complex numbers. So far I've done IFS and L-Systems in Python, but that's not good enough. IFS because all it generates for me is a data file I have to plot in gnuplot, L-Systems because there are some...quirks regarding the turtle module that are proving to be a challenge to sort out. Another thing regarding IFS: I can't just throw matrices at it, Python doesn't do those natively. Oh, sure, there's numpy, but that's an additional layer of abstraction I'd prefer to avoid. And I could write my own simplistic matrix-handling module, but that requires additional work. Not that C does matrices either, but OpenGL does, and, as a graphics framework (well, mostly), could be what I'm looking for. Now, while OpenGL is more 3D than 2D, it can handle the 2D stuff, and might make zooming a bit smoother, if I do things right.
You may recall, from this post, my use of SDL in creating these. That was relatively painless, but SDL stands for Simple DirectMedia Layer. OpenGL doesn't have "Simple" anywhere in its name. But I'd rather go that route because it does allow for the 3D, and it'll compile and run on Linux and BeOS and Amiga and whatever in addition to Windows. On top of all of this, I'd like to see if I can't figure out a bit of OpenCL and WebGL.
I got a letter from State Farm, touting their new online system and all the stuff you can do on it. Eager to try it out, see what was available, I went to sign up. It kept rejecting my password, despite the fact that it met every requirement specified. My third or fourth attempt got me one that it liked. "between 8 and 35 characters, at least one alpha character, at least one number or special character, may not include username, no characters may be repeated." That last one reduces security, but, oh well. Still well over 75 septendecillion possibilities, if my calculations are correct. I don't know if my agent has to do something to make my account viewable, or what, but so far the system seems utterly useless. Pretty, but useless. Mostly ads for other aspects of their business, it seems, bits that I don't use.
In other programming news, I'm learning the Google Maps JavaScript V3 API. It's got some quirks, alright, but it is functional. Although, why does it give 15 decimal places for position? At 0° latitude, that corresponds to just over 111pm. Picometers! We're talking radius of a silicon atom, here! Five decimal places is about as many as are needed to be practical—that's an accuracy of about 1.11m. Anything beyond, say, 9 is probably overkill on a map, and that's being generous. Each pixel at 9 decimal points would resolve to about 0.1mm. Seeing as my monitor (the one I'm composing this on, anyway) at its current, optimal resolution displays about 4 pixels per millimeter, that's plenty. But I digress.
HTML 5, in all its sloppiness, will help me get to where I want to be when it comes to my pabulum prognosticator. If I make this sort of progress on a weekly basis, it might be in alpha stage come Christmas.
Einstein's definition of relativity, in an abstract from a short paper in 1938, was "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." Likewise, relativity greatly affects how time passes on Friday for me. That time between midnight and 7:30am passes far too quickly. Between 8:00am and 5:00pm, time slows down exponentially, and speeds up as soon as I leave the office. Before I know it, it's Saturday.