Category Archives: Life

Blast From the Past

Leave a reply

I found this program called Cathode that does an incredible job of recreating the experience of writing code on a CRT display, ca. 1980–83. Many was the hour I logged on the Lear-Sigler ADM-3A — in those days time was logged, so you could pay for it. That was incredibly unfair since the I/O (for l’users) was throttled down to 4800 baud.

CRT Recreation

Check it out. Then give it up, before the ergonomics make you blind.

As a sort of colophon, the code I’m editing here is genuine K&R C, from the Old Testament. There are two anachronisms:

  1. I’m using vi to edit it, but in the day I was busy getting all carpal with emacs. I had no choice here: there might be an Emacs on my system, but if there is, I can’t remember how to get out.
  2. I wrote this code in 1992, by which time we used terminal emulators like Kermit on PCs, instead of real terminals. However, it was a recreation of something I wrote in about 1983 to translate English into “Klingonese.” (Not the stuff used by Star Trek fans. That came later. I’m talking STA KANG, PUSHJ JRST.)

To be fair, I don’t think I ever wrote C on the ADM-3A, or even a VT-100. I don’t think the DECSystem-20 even had a C compiler. All my C was on the VAX, which had HP-2621A terminals.

Neil Peart Interview

Leave a reply

Interesting (but brief) interview with Neil Peart about Clockwork Angels and other topics.

…I’m less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you’re guarded. Certainly there is a line that seems perfectly clear to me about what’s to be shared and what isn’t, but it’s not always so clear to others. Extroverts never understand introverts…

I got the singles (“Caravan” and “BU2B”) back in April of 2011 when they came out, and the album back in June. It’s okay, but I prefer their stuff from Hemispheres to maybe Hold Your Fire (or even Presto and Roll the Bones) compared with stuff from Counterparts and later in the 1990s. It came with a PDF booklet, which I guess I ought to have read. If it had been on a CD, or a 12″ album, I’m sure I would have read the liner notes. As it was, I didn’t even realize it was a concept album. In a few weeks the novelization comes out: Clockwork Angels: The Novel

There was also this bit:

A realization I had lately: it is impossible to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and be a Republican. It’s philosophically absolutely opposed—if they could only think about what they were saying for a minute.

I know a lot of my seminary friends would agree with him about that. As for me, well, that’s a wall I’ll just keep beating my head against. (Bonus questions: is the point even to “follow” his “teachings?” Is Jesus just a teacher? Can Christians be involved in politics at all? That was a live question for the first century of the Reformation, and still today informs much of the tradition: Amish, say, or Quakers.)

Lit Nights Lead to Dark Days?

Leave a reply

Depressed? Turn off the lights and go to sleep. That’s the conclusion of a study recently announced in Time magazine:

A study from Ohio State University Medical Center found that hamsters with chronic exposure to dim light at night showed signs of depression within just a few weeks: reduced physical activity compared with hamsters living in normal light-dark conditions, as well as less interest in sugar water (a treat for the hamsters), greater signs of distress when placed in water, and changes in the brain’s hippocampus that are similar to brain changes seen in depressed people.

I just spent the past three months in the Alaska summer. Hmmm.

But the upcoming Alaska night won’t be a solution, because I live in an age of cheap, bright LEDs, and all my gadgets have too many of them. See the story in Popular Mechanics.

The LED indicator proliferation is due partly to the litigious nature of consumer culture. (Hedge cites manufacturers’ fears of “failure to warn” lawsuits.) But most LEDs are added because product designers see no reason not to. “Often in the world of design, if you can afford to do something, you do it,” Hedge says. But even if a functional case could be made for each of these lights individually, in aggregate they just create sensory pollution and dilute the message each light ought to deliver: “Hey, something’s going on with this device.”

I love the accompanying illustration. It reminds me of my bedroom.

“This was not a boating accident!”

Leave a reply

…well, actually, it was a boating accident, according to the Anchorage Daily News:

Two women are dead after their canoe capsized on Eagle River on Wednesday afternoon, police and fire officials said.

They had PFDs and other people were with them and still they died. Authorities are investigating.

Earlier this summer, I was trying to learn how to canoe in order to go for a float trip down the Gulkana. But I lost my enthusiasm for the project about the 117th time the canoe tipped me into Campbell Creek.

It’s not that it wasn’t fun. Even I, in my state of complete naivety, could tell it had the potential to be very fun. But not so fun I couldn’t walk away from it.