2005-12-18 The basement is basically done. The process started in 1999 when we got a new boiler. This spring I did demolition. In August we hired a contractor and work began in earnest. Now we have 560 new square feet. I used Scheme 48 to draw floor plans, and to make the floor tile layout (much of which is pseudo-random).
We'll be going to China in the spring for a few months. If you know me and have any connections in Xi'an, please consider introducing me.
2005-03-14 People complain about the use of the term "semantic" in "semantic web" but I'd like to defend it, as follows: What RDF gives one is a way to make definite assertions about the world in such a way that they can be known by others to be assertions. RDF assertions carry meaning, can be true or false, and can be subject to verification, scrutiny, criticism, judgment, etc. just as any legal or scientific assertion might be. This framework is novel - nothing else in web-land provides anything similar. Whether a computer "understands" the information is not relevant - the point is that we humans can judge the assertions and their provenance, and the rules of inference to be employed, and we can use computers as our agents to manipulate assertions and make new ones. Just because an assertion was manipulated or derived by a computer doesn't mean that it lacks meaning.
It's just unfortunate that RDF has so many technical problems attached to it, since truth is such a fundamental and powerful notion, and the need for ways to manipulate it is growing.
The effort to restart Psyche continues. We're waiting for Stefan Cover to talk to the MCZ director about alternative ways for the MCZ to support it. Meanwhile, I'm planning on scanning all the back issues very soon - I have access to them, funding, and a vendor (for about 20,000 OCR-backed page images). In any case I'm hoping that by next January on-line publication will start, with me as managing editor and some of the editorial board from volumes 102-103 as science editors (we have four volunteers so far). I expect to publish ten or fewer articles per year, since that's about as much time as the staff can commit to.
2005-02-15 Yes, I know, I need to get BlogMax or something like that so that this page uses RSS.
I'm removing the adjective 'nascent' from the T project page. Also, I put up the T group photo from 1986.
2004-07-17 Just read Alan Kay's Smalltalk history. An odd sensation to be reminded of the mood of 1970's computing, and of why I went into this field into the first place, and of how the vision of computing as "amplifier of human reach" has wilted. I still feel that the "end users" should be customizing programs and writing their own in order to amplify whatever they variously care about and make the computer their servant; why this doesn't happen (basically the "why is programming so hard" question) is still a mystery to me.
Pointer lifted from Tom Gagné's blog: Unskilled and Unaware of It
2004-06-17 I took the 77 bus from Arlington to Porter Square and observed the following wireless network identifiers (SSID's): baby5, e^(i*pi), chaosreigns, jinko, WHNE, horsie, alamut, rustypatty, jingo, Bosnet, Goldstar, hastypastry, StorPik, Spiderwalk, ryleyconsulting, Rudy's Lair, CyberWireless, TERC Wireless, Heisenberg, pib, lisa. TERC had at least 3 different networks, one of which was on channel 13, which according to my understanding is not permitted by the FCC. The majority of networks were named "linksys".
2004-05-13 I'm receiving 400 spam messages a day. Spamprobe takes care of them. I don't bother checking for false positives, so my apologies if I miss something important.
2004-05-11 Hello again. I'm coming up on two years working at Millennium. I know a bit more about biology than I did before I started, and more about the pharma industry than I care to. Currently helping out with transcript profiling meta-analysis (i.e. looking at gene expression profiles across a body of experiments). I want to understand the BioPAX effort better than I do, and relate it to lambda-calculus of course.
We are using both jscheme and Common Lisp (Lispworks and OpenMCL) at Millennium.
Still thinking about programming languages.
My report on Psyche is pretty much done. Should be of general interest. I'm waiting to hear back from the MCZ; could take months.
2004-02-26 Working too hard. Trying to get back to ent club community site hacking (web.entclub.org); this will require burning some vacation days.
2003-12-17 My spam filter suppressed this interesting forgery. The second Received: header gives it away, but I wonder what would have happened had I called the phone number and asked them to authenticate themselves? The number has since been disconnected... (email address changed to thwart harvesters)
2003-12-08 Check out the new mumble.net main page. I'm very pleased with it.
I guess I talk about purchases a lot here. It's a consumer society, so why not join the fun? Now I'm looking at the Nikon Coolpix 5400. I'm looking for something that will be good for insect photography, and this camera appears to be even more featurely than the one used by M. Plonsky (check out his spectacular photos). How do the photography discount houses manage to shave $250 off the list price?
Psyche's managing editor is retiring from that post soon, and the journal has been suffering badly ever since Frank Carpenter became unable to take care of it, but rather than let it fade into oblivion I'm wondering whether it can be rescused by electronic publishing. To this end I've started to do some research in this direction.
2003-10-16 Inspired by UK Scheme hacker MJ Ray, I've started working on my own for sale page.
2003-10-13 The Powerbook is very nice (except for the weight). It's nice to have a quiet office - no tower fans. Olivia can watch DVD's, listen to music, 'do letters', etc. when we travel.
Cable control is a problem; I wish it had a dock.
I think I'll wait a while before buying a better monitor (19" LCD?). What I need is an improvement in my keyboard situation - the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp keyboard I have works fine except it doesn't have an 'apple' (a.k.a. 'windows') shift, making it difficult to manipulate Mac applications and depriving emacs of a meta key (yes, I know I could probably fix this...).
Product endorsement: Honeywell Chromotherm IV thermostat. The heating system here has substantial intertia thanks to its massive radiators. For example: If the thermostat is set to 68 and the house is 68 and the heat has been off for a while, and then you set the thermostat (pre-Chronotherm) to 69, then it takes 30 to 45 minutes for the radiators to heat up enough to start to influence the house heat. The thermomemter shuts off the heat, but by then the radiators are full of heat and the room temperature continues to shoot up to about 74.
The Chronotherm fixes this - they don't say how it works but it must use some kind of adaptive control that figures out (based on 'experiment') how much inertia there is and controls the boiler appropriately. The product literature doesn't say that the thermostat solves this particular problem, but it does. I can now schedule daytime and overnight temperature setbacks and the house is always perfectly comfortable. It also handles temporary overrides wonderfully.
The entomological club community web site project is taking up what little spare time I have. I'm hoping that we'll attract lots of photos and eventually get a writeup on Science's Netwatch page.
2003-07-03 After much agonizing I decided to buy the 12" Powerbook. It is very nice. This was a compromise on weight - 4.5 lbs - but not on anything else as far as I know. Maybe in three years the industry will have figured out how to make a quality, lightweight laptop.
I ruled out Sharp, Sony, Fujitsu, and Toshiba out of a dread of Linux setup time and incompatibility, a continuing horror of Windows, and in some cases worry over quality and support. I think I must be an IBM/Apple/HP snob.
Now I will consider going wireless...
2003-06-02 Rob C. asks whether an iBook would suit my laptop "needs". Probably not... Mac OS X is a fine OS these days, and I have a soft spot for Apple, but iBooks weighs in at 4.9 lbs, and Powerbooks start at 4.5 pounds. I think my limit is about 4 pounds.
Besides IBM, Fujitsu Lifebook P-2120 (2.8 lbs? 3.4 lbs?) looks like it might work - but the 10" display is too small.
2003-05-06 Looking for software (for Mac OS X) to help a three-year-old learn to read, play music, and maybe program. I've played with ToonTalk, which is fabulous, but I think it's a bit beyond her right now.
2003-05-05 Just returned from a trip to the Bay Area. Eric T. pointed me to the following interesting places:
2003-04-21 Looking, rather idly, for a new laptop for personal use. Lightweight (< 4 lbs), lots of pixels (pref 1280x1024 but 1024x768 would be ok), GNU/Linux- or other free Unix-capable. A brief search turned up the Thinkpad X, 3.5 pounds, which is reputed to run Debian Linux perfectly well.
A tablet PC might be nice instead.
Also shopping (idly) for:
2003-04-07 Alan R. pointed me to this thing about comparative programming language syntax. I need to send corrections (no 'format' in Scheme) and additions (Algol 68 'if'/'fi', 'do'/'od', etc.)
2003-02-26 Need to give the π-calculus (Milner 1993?) another chance.
2003-02-19 Richard K. sent me this, about visits to points with integral latitude and longitude: www.confluence.org
2003-01-06 Roy and Haridi might be the first good text on programming languages, but unfortunately I haven't found the time to read it yet. (Peter van Roy and Seifi Haridi, Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming.)
2002-10-18 After I whined about how terrible window managers were, Richard K. directed me to the ratpoison mouseless window manager. But I don't have the time to figure out how to tell my Linuxes (Debian at home, Red Hat at work) how to use it.
2002-03-26 Richard K. directed me to a sophisticated cat door.