08 Nov 2006

A Brief History of Physics

Aristotle was perhaps the first in the Western tradition to look at mechanics in any sort of structured way. A philosopher, rather than physicist, Aristotle thought about the way objects interact with each other, particularly their motions.

One of the ideas to come from Aristotle's work is that objects "like" to remain at rest. This seems rather reasonable — put a book on a table and it remains still, push it gently and it will move until you stop. This begs the question, though — what happens when we throw ad object? Our hand stops pushing, but the object continues to move. Likewise when we roll a ball — we release the ball and it continues to move. Aristotle's answer was impetus.

When an object is moved by another (your hand, for example, throwing a ball), it accrues impetus. When the mover stops acting upon the movee, the impetus it accrued whilst being acted upon is used to continue the motion. Under this model, we would expect objects to exhibit straight-line trajectories (see figure one) rather than the parabolic trajectories (see figure two) we see when we throw an object.

Figure 1: A straight-line trajectory of the sort predicted by Aristotle's theory of impetus.

Figure 2: A parabolic trajectory of the sort predicted by classical mechanics.

A second idea of Aristotle's is that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. It does, at first glance, seem rather reasonable but it is, like the idea of impetus, quite easily shown incorrect.

The Aristotleans didn't bother to take observations or do experiments to support their beliefs and most of those that came after them were content to trust Aristotle. Thus for more than 100 years, our understanding of mechanics was fundamentally flawed. It is the resolution of this flaw that brings the next major milestone in mechanics: experimentation.

During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Galileo Galilei and other became amongst the first physicists when they used experimentation to confirm and reject their ideas about the motion of objects. Among Galileo's more famous experiments (though the story is now considered to be untrue) is his dropping balls of varing mass of the Leaning Tower of Pisa by which he showed that, contrary to Aristotle's account, the speed of a falling object is independant of its mass. It is precisely this power — to overturn wrong ideas, even if though they have been believed true for centuries, and to suggest a more complete understanding — that makes experimentation so central to all of the sciences.

This experimental focus was not the last development in the physics that we'll be looking at, though it did help pave the way for it. This next and final (for our purposes) leap was due to Newton — using mathematics to describe physics. After that, classical mechanics was essentially complete, with "only" quite a few decades of improvements and polishing before the introduction of relativity and quantum mechanics. It is physics at this level, the state of the art of classical mechanics circa the mid 19^th century, that we'll be studying in this course.

07 Nov 2006

Notes on a Course in Physics

Over the course of the next six weeks, I will be taking an enabling course in physics. Designed to prepare people without a formal education in physics to study it at an undergraduate level, the course aims to cover enough of a high-school physics syllabus to meet university entry requirements in approximately six weeks.

On this blog, I will post notes, links, and other materials that may be of use to others who wish to begin studying physics.

07 Nov 2006

My iBook is in the shop again

So my Apple iBook G4 is in the shop. Again. Getting repaired. Again. Having its logic board replaced. Again.

I love the system -- OS X is, hands down, my favourite operating system -- but I don't think I'll be getting another Mac. I need a computer that will work, not one that needs a major component replacing twice in two months. As soon as I can afford to replace it, I think I'll get a PC laptop to run a Linux or BSD and retire the Apple to desktop use or even as a household server.

04 Nov 2006

Lucas

Chickenfeed have been flogging some cheep DVDs lately and every time I'm in one of their shops, I have a look at what they have in stock. The last time I did so, I got a copy of Lucas — Winona Ryders' first feature film. I just got around to watching it tonight and, while it's really cliched in places, it does have a few redeeming features.

The fairly drawn-out love-triangle (or, square, or even pentagon, depending on how you count) could have been resolved a lot quicker. It would have been nice to see a resolution to the Rina-Lucas sub-plot, though doing so would have interfered with that time honoured '80s feel-good film tradition: the closing freeze frame of the hero triumphant. My view can quite easily be summed up as: O.K., but more Winona Ryder would have been nice (as though it needs to be said).

30 Oct 2006

A well-rounded practical experience

I've just put in my preferences for my Professional Experience 3 placement next semester. In the interest of a well-rounded set of practical experiences, I've requested a placement in either of the senior secondary colleges in Launceston — Launceston College and Newstead College. I did put both down as my first and second preferences for prac. this semester, but didn't reckon with exams, or whatever else made them decline prac. students (or, maybe, just me). Once I have some senior secondary experience, I'm planning on doing my internship at one of the private schools, hopefully Scotch Oakburn College or the Launceston Church Grammar School.

If everything goes to plan, I'll have had six weeks in public secondary schools (7-10), four weeks in a public senior secondary school (11-12), and about seven weeks in a private secondary school. I'll have covered the full secondary age range (12 y.o. to 17 y.o.) from a range of socio-economic backgrounds in both the public and private systems.

Tags: Teaching Practicum Plans

10 Oct 2006

A Second First Lesson

Today I took my first CAD lesson as teacher. I'd intended for the students to use this first lesson to being the self-paced tutorials for SketchUp, the program we'll be using. Rather than start the tutorials, most of the class had them finished half way through the lesson.

As a stop gap, I drew some simple figures on the board (just a few basic roof, door and window shapes) for the ones who finished earlier than I was expecting to complete and asked the students that finished even those to model items from around the class room. The main thing that I got out of this lesson is the need to have extension work planned and ready to go — making up extension problems one at a time doesn't work nearly so well when it's the whole class.

Feed back from my colleague teachers includes the need for me work on getting and maintaining the students' attention (e.g. when giving instruction) as I have a tendancy to try to talk over the top of them which doesn't work very well as a) I'm not loud enough, and b) they listening. I also need to make sure that I keep them on task.

This post was written ex post facto.

Tags: PE2 Education Practicum Teaching Computer Graphics / CAD

02 Oct 2006

The Teaching Begins

The second week of PE2 began with my colleague teacher off ill. This was a little inconvenient, but everything went well with the relief teacher. In the science lesson first up, the students had plenty of work to do on their inquiry projects which are due this Friday, but we could only use the computer lab for the first half of the period. This left some of them with little to do for half a lesson, but on the whole, they were on task and much more settled than they were during the lesson I taught last week.

During the two periods between recess and lunch, we had maths and both classes went quite well. Some of the students got their assignments on perimeter, area, volume and surface area handed in, whilst others will [hopefully] have them finished for my colleague teacher's return tomorrow. Many of the students that hadn't finished managed to get it polished off, and all of them worked relatively well, so it was good.

During the final period, I took my first IT class. As the grade tens were attending a whole grade event, I had the ninth grade students from mine and two other classes. As it was a one-off, I took them through a Google Earth my colleague teacher had ready. The students has to locate a number of features ranging from relatively easy (just type it in a Google Earth will find it for you) to more challenging (such as streets in towns Google Earth doesn't know about). All up I thought that it went pretty well, especially with the potential for disturbance posed by the mixture of three classes together.

After school ended there was a general staff meeting which, while interesting, I have no intention of writing about here.

Tags: PE2 Education Practicum Teaching Science IT

29 Sep 2006

A Week Accompli

The last day of my first week began with the IT class talking about web-page design and Dreamweaver. The discussion about "the aspects that make a web-page good or bad" did not, in my opinion, go as well as it might have — many questions went unanswered and when they were, the responses tended to be focus more on content than design. Whether this was a result of the natural reticence of adolescents to single themselves out by volunteering the answer to a question or a lack of sophistication in their current understanding of design, usability and æsthetic appeal, I'm not sure.

In the second lesson of the day, the science group continued thinking about gravity. In particular, they looked at the formula for the magnitude of the attraction between two masses and the role both the masses and the distance between them has in determining the force exerted. One thing that I'll need to bear in mind during future science teaching is the utility of diagrams as a pedagogical device. Getting a student to draw a diagram of a situation and the forces at play really helped explain buoyancy to them.

During the C.A.D. lesson, the group finished off their current project and many of them began looking at SketchUp in anticipation of next week. Judging by their performance today, the next two or three weeks (I'm not sure if this class will be affected by the impending time table change) will be interesting for them and me both. If all goes well, there will soon be a few more objects in the Google 3D Warehouse.

Tags: PE2 Education Practicum Teaching CAD SketchUp

28 Sep 2006

Planning and Professional Development

Today was the fourth day of PE2 and I spent it mainly on planning and professional development. Before school started I attended the staff meeting where a number of issues were discussed, particularly enforcing the school's policy on mobile telephones. If teachers see students using mobile phones during class, we are required to confiscate them and hand them in to school office to be collected by the child's parent or guardian. The principal emphasised the need for consistency in our implementation of this policy and this is something that I'll have to work on as I returned confiscated phones at the end of the lesson several times on Monday.

During the first two blocks, I got the opportunity to take part in a professional development session on anger management. The session was given by a community social worker based in a near by major town and focussed on a programme for boys with anger management problems and their families that the school will be joining next year. It was a great opportunity and I got a lot out of it, but I would have liked to hear more about specific strategies for helping students deal with their anger.

Between recess and lunch I was in the C.A.D. class I'll start teaching next week. I managed to learn a few more names and I think that by the end of tomorrow, I'll know most of the boys' (the whole class is boys) names.

After lunch I spent the last two periods of the day planning for the IT class I'll start teaching next week. I'm going to take them through a unit on computer hardware, common components of computer systems and the like. I'm pretty sure I know what I'll cover and how I'll present it, so it should work out pretty well. After I finished at the school, I went in to Ulverstone's CBD and took a few photographs of buildings that I'll take the C.A.D. class to see on their excursion.

I think that's about it. I'll have to remember to phone my university supervisor tomorrow.

Tags: PE2 Teaching Practicum Professional development

27 Sep 2006

My First Lesson

I taught my first lesson of PE2 in a year ten science class today. Last term they began a physics unit on forces and today, to help review what they learnt last term and introduce some new material, I spent a lesson working with them on the subject of mass, weight, and gravity. I had them use spring balances and sets of weights to measure the force of Earth's gravity (~9.8 newtons). They then weighted themselves (and/or each other) and calculated the weight of their own mass on other planets.

I think that the lesson could have gone better, but my colleague teacher was fairly happy with it. I would have liked it if they had been more interested in what I thought would be an interesting topic and activity, but they did seem to get what I wanted to teach out of it. The main thing that came out of it for me is that I still need to work on ways to manage students, particularly my voice. I speak and shout (in the "speak loudly" sense, of course) in from my throat and mouth rather than my chest, so talking for longer periods tends to give me a sore throat, never mind having to control a distracted class.

On the planning front, we've decided that I'll need to get my unit on computer hardware for the IT class ready for us to review on Monday before I start teaching it next week. When I'm finished this post, I'm going to go and revise the plans for my Sketch Up unit to include some design theory content and a possible excursion and to fit in the shorter time span I'll have to teach it.

I might have the opportunity to take part in a professional development activity on anger management tomorrow morning depending on spaces, etc., which will be good (though I'm not sure when I was last 'angry').

Tags: PE2 Education Practicum Teaching Science

26 Sep 2006

The First Day of Classes

Today was the second day of PE2 and the first day of classes for term three. We've sorted out my time-table, office, computer and photocopier accounts, and keys and I have a list of things to plan and teach during the next four weeks.

I started the day with a double lesson Computer Graphics class. The students are going to spend this week finishing off an TurboCAD assignment from last term and starting next week I'll take them through my Designing with SketchUp unit. Part of the feedback I got from the lecturer is that the unit could do with some design theory, so I'm going to look at cutting down the work (one project instead of two) and adding in some discussion of design movements and the like. Hopefully it'll wind up being about three weeks.

After recess, I was with my primary colleague teacher in two maths classes. It was reasonably similar to my experiences during PE1 and left me even more convinced that my experience of mathematics as a high-school student was unusual.

After lunch I had a free block and began thinking about the lessons and units I'll be teaching in the coming weeks. Tomorrow I'll be taking one lesson of a grade ten science class looking at forces. I'm planning to get the students to use force meters to measure weight and then calculate the weight of various objects under various strengths of gravity.

Next week I'll be starting my unit on SketchUp as described above and a unit on computer hardware for a class of students in grades nine and ten. I expect them both to go fairly smoothly. In two and a half weeks the time table changes, due to interference caused by the student production, and I'll have a class of students in grades seven and eight for IT for the last week. As these students will have such a wide range of ability (while some can program, others haven't used computers much at all) I'll be covering Internet safety and basic computer skills with them.

After school ended I spoke with a teacher who had a few questions about getting audio materials from the Internet (streaming audio, podcasts, that sort of thing). In the course of the discussion, I mentioned the resources I have from the outreach programme at NICTA last year, so I might present those short lessons to a maths extended class.

That's about everything that's happened so far. I'm off to plan tomorrow's science lesson.

Tags: PE2 Education Practicum Teaching Plans

25 Sep 2006

QMAP Day

Today was the first day of my second practicum which I shall spend at Ulverstone High School. It was also a pupil free day, whether by coincidence or by design, I am unsure. During the course of the day, the teachers of the Central Coast cluster gathered at Penguin High School to participate in the Quality Assurance and Moderation Process. The day was broken up into three sessions -- two of moderating the assessment of work samples, and one of professional development.

During the first moderation session I was part of a group looking at work samples to be assessed for Being Numerate. We assessed a number of work samples from a class activity based on identifying patterns, finding rules and synthesising symbolic expressions of those rules. It was a relatively straightforward process and the group achieved consensus fairly easily in most of the cases.

During the second session, we looked as two work sampled assessed under Being Information Literate. As I experienced doing QMAP during PE1, everyone seems to have their own interpretation of the BIL standards and progression statements. The requirements about the safe, ethical, etc., use of information especially seems to cause much strife - why, some ask, should an other wise excellent piece of work be relegated to standard two just for a lack of referencing? In any case, it took us quite a while and a number of deviations from the QMAP protocol to come to a decision.

In the afternoon, I worked with a group of secondary teachers on "good questions" in numeracy. We used Bloom's Taxonomy along with the Being Numerate standards to explore questions we might ask of, and explore with, students about the concepts of money and finance. The suggestions and discussions we had were quite interesting.

Tags:

18 Sep 2006

Illiteracy

I read this comment on a story a few days ago and was appalled.

i am a 15 year old australian i think i am what americans would call a jok id prifer to run laps around a football or soccer field then reed eny thing i havent read eny thing in years but i started reeding this story at 11 at night and finished at 7in the morning i reeded 233 pages (i red some the night bifor) with out stoping and i reely injoyed it i reely want to know how it ends

I'm not sure which is worse, the abysmal spelling and grammar, or the idea that the writer hadn't "read eny thing in years." If I hadn't encountered students with such poor literacy before, I'd think that it was a joke.

20 Aug 2006

Undead and Unwed

I've just finished reading Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson (who has a blog) and published by Piatkus Books, the first in her Undead series. It was a good read and it is certainly an interesting departure from the other books in this genre I've read (though Betsy did remind me of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse).

I'm not sure if the next book will continue the theme (judging by the excerpt, I think not), but Betsy brought to mind David Eddings' description of his hero, Garion, as a "Sir Perceval":

Sir Perceval [...] is dumb — at least right at first... A dumb hero is the perfect hero, because he hasn't the faintest idea of what's going on, and in explaining things to him, the writer explains them to his reader.

In any case, I'll definitely have a look at the rest of Davidson's books.

Tags: Vampire, Supernatural, Romance, Novels, Books, Recommended, Reading

15 Aug 2006

1400

This is a test of the new Blogger Beta. There are a few rough edges (literally — some of the "buttons" have jaggies as a result of dithering with the wrong background colour) and the AJAX would be nicer wall-to-wall, but I have no doubt that the Blogger team will clean up the various other bits and pieces in no time at all.

14 Aug 2006

Alas, the knitting, it would not felt

I finished my knitting off last night and today I tried to felt it to no avail. I shall have a go using the washing machine and tumble drier, but the thought has occurred to me that perhaps the wool was treated to prevent felting?

In any case, I'll give it a go and if it doesn't work, I'll just use my knitting as knitting (instead of felt).

Tags: Felt Knitting Wool

13 Aug 2006

Internet language resources for the win!

I've been thinking about trying to learn another language for a while now. I'd really like to learn Japanese or Welsh, but I think that I'm going to start with French. As in all things, I think that the best way to go about picking up a new skill is probably to start with something I'm familiar with and two years of French at primary school have made me much more familiar with it than Katherine Kerr's books have done for my knowledge of Welsh; my anime habit has done for Japanese; or a few years of lessons at high-school did for Indonesian.

After a little bit of searching, I found the 'French for Beginners' podcast from the French Ecole. I'll post a review after I've listened to a few episodes.

Tags: Internet Online French Language Lessons Podcasts

13 Aug 2006

Internet cookbooks for the win!

Rather than buy a few cookbooks, or a guide to leather-work or knitting, I usually hit the 'Net. For some reason, though, I often have difficulty finding recipes for really basic things. All too often, All Recipes won't have a simple no-frills recipe or, more often, will have dozens and dozens of variations.

This is where sites like the Wikibooks Cookbook and Cooking for Engineers can come in handy. Concise, clearly written instructions based on personal experience (although wikibooks, like all things wiki, can be a mess of contradictory information) with all the constraints so implied — they are simple, realistic and provide few, if any, endless variations on a particular theme.

Tags: Internet Online Cooking

11 Aug 2006

Working with wool

This is the first of what will be a series of posts over the next few days. Each of them will cover a topic from my work at uni that I found interesting. This post, as the title may have hinted, will be about my work with wool in Curriculum and Method Studies: Technology Education 1B.

We started the semester with felting — take some wool fibre, apply warm soapy water, rub vigourously and hey presto! It's felt! All I've got so far is a beanie that I don't feel too bad about done and a number of bits and pieces of felt in a few colours that I don't have any plans for as yet. As our felt work is to be handed up at the end of next week, I've been thinking about what else I want to submit.

The goal of the assignment is to develop our skills through making a example pieces we can use as a teaching resource when we're out in schools teaching felting. As such, our submission is supposed to demonstrate a range of techniques. My beanie shows the use of a template (a piece of plastic slipped into the middle gives the beanie its basic shape and size) and felting several pieces together to get a pattern.

I'm planning on using another technique whereby the wool is bonded to a light fabric ("you need to be able to blow through it" according to the lecturer) during the felting process. This can result in interesting textures, colour effects, etc., especially if you use something like a lace or fishnet material. I can't see this being anything more than a sample, though one of the other students has made some rather interesting gloves using this technique.

If I can figure out how to roll them properly, I'll make a felt ball or two for fun — and because my few attempts today failed — and I imagine I'll wind up making some baby's booties out of the pieces I have on hand following the pattern we were given in class.

My last piece, if I can get it finished, will use knitted and embroidered wool in an attempt to add a design to a felt product in a more satisfactory way than by felting two pieces, then trimming them to shape and felting them together. I plan on knitting panels in my base colour and then embroidering them with other colours before felting the whole lot. If I can manage to knit enough, I'm also going to try to make a genuinely nice pair of baby's booties, rather than some made out of odds and ends, with little pom-poms and everything (I was just reminded of the technique for making pom-poms — the Patons web site is a great source of information on knitting and the like).

When everything is finished, I'll post a few pictures.

Tags: Education Textiles Design Felt Knitting Wool

11 Aug 2006

Megatokyo volume four

My copy of Megatokyo volume 4 (buy) finally came in and I bought it yesterday. It's good to see another Megatokyo book out and it's fantastic that it took so long to come in (having sold out, etc.).

The presentation is essentially the same as the first three volumes by Dark Horse. The only shortcoming I can see in the book is the binding — for some reason CMX couldn't manage to glue the pages level. It's no worse than the last book from Dark Horse and it is a fairly minor flaw, but it would have been nice if they'd put that little bit extra into the book's construction.

Tags: Books Manga

11 Aug 2006

A paucity of posts

I've been neglecting this blog quite badly. I had intended to post semi-regularly about my studies toward a Bachelor of Teaching but I've dropped the ball fairly thoroughly. As an attempt at redressing the balance, I'll post several entries over the next few days.

04 Aug 2006

Long time no blog

It's been quite a while since last I posted (here, or anywhere else), so I think it's about time for an update. Things are going adequately on the school front -- it was a little touch and go, but I managed not to fail anything last semester -- and I'm about to start a support job with a research project which will bring a welcome injection of funds (which have been rather tight lately).

On the "reading" front, I purchased my copy of Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages (companion and somewhat successor to TAPL) this morning. I've had a bit of a flick through it and it looks really, really interesting. Hopefully having spent almost $200 on the two books will provide an added incentive to not only start, but finish, reading them and hopefully even work through the problems.

I've been thinking about typography and book design lately which has suggested, amongst other things, that I see if it'd be possible to get my copy of ATTAPL rebound with some extra pages. It would be nice, for example, to insert the extended version of chapter 10 - the essence of ML type inference and to "fix" any errata with updated pages. I imagine, though I haven't bothered to investigate at all, that this'd be quite a difficult and expensive thing to do for a single copy, so it'll probably be a long while before I do it, if ever.

Before that though, I've been focussed on getting through Logic by Greg Restall. I'm almost half way through and while I'd have preferred a slightly difference syntax (I prefer ∧ as conjunction, rather than &), it's easy to read and is much more accessible than most other books I've seen with titles like "Logic".

11 Jul 2006

Maria-sama ga Miteru

I just got caught up on my reading of the Maria-sama ga Miteru translated by Lililicious. Revisiting marimite brings back my wish that the books (other than the first) were available in English.

30 Jun 2006

Resources for Teaching Pythagoras' Theorem

I've decided to make the lesson plans, materials and such I write freely available under an Attribution, NonCommerical, ShareAlike license from Creative Commons.

The first lot of material I'm making available are the lesson plans for teaching Pythagoras' Theorem that I developed last semester (and wrote about using). If you're interested in teaching, mathematics, or teaching mathematics why not have a look at my free lesson plans.

28 Jun 2006

Mizuiro Jidai

I've just finished watching the first episode of Mizuiro Jidai. If the first episode and the AnimeNFO entry are anything to go by, it seems like one of those slice of life/high-school school/drama/romance shows. It was OK (for something drawn in 1996), but I'm not sure I'm willing to download the next 46 episodes (forty-seven!).

Animesuki | BT Tracker

27 Jun 2006

Interactive and Media Programming

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm hoping to work on some materials for computer science education this semester. The gist of my current plans is a core of basic computer science material (very basic data structures and algorithms) backed up by a range of individual and small group projects. I hope to provide a wide enough range of projects to ensure that most students will find something engaging enough that they learn (even in spite of their wanting only to use the Internet).

I'm currently anticipate designing projects using some, if not all, of the following pieces of software:

Haskore

A computer music system based on Haskell.

Pan (or Pan# or one of the several variations on the theme)

A functional graphical processing language similar to Haskell.

Pivotal

A document centred presentation of Haskell.

FunWorlds

An interactive 3D animation package in, you guessed it, Haskell.

1. I like functional programming, in general, and Haskell, in particular.
2. I don't like the languages usually taught to students (Java, VisualBasic, etc.)
3. I think that a different, more fundamental, approach might help (supported, I think, by the experiences of teachers using SICP in high schools in the U.S.).

27 Jun 2006

Inclusive Education

I'm currently sitting in a lecture about inclusion and inclusive schooling. We're discussing a case-study about a primary school class and approaches that we might take to differentiating our curriculum and practice for students with disabilities. In particular we're considering a hypothetical student with Down Syndrome in a grade 5/6 class. We've had some interesting points raised including the inherent inclusivity of the Essential Learnings and the possible effects of differentiating the curriculum (will we be, in effect, "dumbing down" the curriculum?).

More later.

Tags: Inclusion Education Teaching

23 Jun 2006

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling

Still on a musical note (sorry), I just bought Once More, With Feeling the cast album of the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It really demonstrates the versatility of the Buffy cast -- most of the tracks would, in my opinion, be releasable as commercial music. They sing really well for a bunch of actors and Josh Whedon did a really good job on the songs. If you're at all fond of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I recommend you get it.

Tags: Listening Buffy Sountrack Music

19 Jun 2006

LaTeX output for HsColour

On a somewhat related subject to my last post (the one about LaTeX), I've just started working on adding LaTeX support to hscolour. The structure of the program has made it easy to add support for LaTeX output: all I had to do is add two items to a pattern match (for option handling), and define a function to render the code to LaTeX (plus a few helpers to escape LaTeX special characters, etc.).

Once I've managed to get it working adequately, I'll submit a darcs patch to the maintainer.

See also Malcolm's posts about hscolour: one and two.

Tags: Haskell LaTeX

14 Jun 2006

Classical-y Music

I've been looking around on iTunes Music Store today and managed to spend more than $20, mainly on classical-y songs.

I started off looking for a good recording of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, my favourite Andrew Loyd Webber musical. A few track from the musical, and another also by Linzi Hateley (who sings the part of the narrator in the London Palladium cast), I moved on to that other staple of the musical genre (or, at least, my taste in musicals): Gilbert & Sullivan. After a few track from a number of renditions of The Pirates of Penzance (The Mastersingers track The Pirates of Penzance is particularly good, I'll have to look at more of their music), I moved on to classical music proper.

I only wound up buying a couple of tracks from the album Enchantment by Charlotte Church (of whom I'll have to buy more) and Ode II Joy (From Symphony No. 9) by OperaBabes (whom I'm also going to have to get more of).

For some reason, I've also been interested in Russian music lately — probably as an outgrowth of the interest in choral works — so I also bought Kalinka from the Alexandrov Red Army Choir.

If anyone has any suggestions of good music in similar vein to the above mentioned track and artists, please leave a comment so that I can chase them up!

Tags: Opera Classical Music Musicals

12 Jun 2006

Suzuka

I've been watching fansubs of the anime series Suzuka lately. Suzuka is about a boy (Yamato Akitsuki), a girl (Suzuka Asahina), their friends and the track and field team of an athletics oriented high school in Tokyo. It's been a while, but Suzuka reminds me a little of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (another sport-related dramatic romance).

Hopefully, I'll get around to downloading and watching the rest of the series (I've watched 12 of 26) soon.

You can find more information about Suzuka at Animesuki or A.N.N..

04 Jun 2006

David and Leigh Eddings

I've just begun rereading that masterpiece of epic fantasy, David and Leigh Eddings' series: The Belgariad. I was given The Pawn of Prophecy as a gift one birthday and it became my "gateway drug" to the realm of fantasy. I've since read it so many times that it has quite literally fallen to pieces (annoyingly as that cover is no longer in print). Even after these ten or so years and probably near three or four times that many readings, it is still able to capture me more completely than nearly any other book I've read.

If you haven't read the Eddings' work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Get thee to a bookshop and grab The Pawn of Prophecy or The Diamond Throne (book one in the Eddings' other great pair of series: The Elenium and The Tamuli).

Tags: Reading Epic Fantasy Novels Books

28 May 2006

Wanted: LaTeX packages

I've got a hankering to dig out my incomplete thesis and polish it off as an excuse to really get up to speed with LaTeX. As such, I'm looking for LaTeX packages that accomplish a number of tasks:

Unicode and symbols

The main thing I'm after is a package that will allow me to '∧' instead of '\wedge' in my LaTeX source and have it Just Work^(TM). A single package that provides consistent symbol handling would be nice too.

Metadata support

While hyperref can be used to add PDF metadata, and xmpincl can include an RDF license when using pdftex, you still need to do it all yourself. It'd be nice if there was a module that would do it for you.

Font handling

A single, consistent way to handle real fonts. I like Computer Modern as much as the next person, but once in a while I'd like to be able to use another font without having to wrestle with TeX.

28 May 2006

Any Dream Will Do...

Just finished watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Mum has had a tape of the soundtrack for many, many years and often played it in the car. As a result I was able (read: compelled) to sing along to each and every song.

Tags: Watching Musicals

28 May 2006

An Interesting Find

27 May 2006

Transactional memory with data invariants

A few thoughts about a Transactional memory with data invariants by Tim Harris and SPJ.

26 May 2006

Fundamental Constructs in Mathematics Education

Fundamental Constructs in Mathematics Education. John Mason and Sue Johnston-Wilder (Eds.). (buy)

After an introduction to the beingness of the thinghood of constructs (named, described phenomena as far as I can tell), this book launches straight into extracts describing some of the most important and influential experiments in mathematics education. I've read the first chapter which describes a number of experiments that have been used to investigate the way children learn mathematical concepts. So far it has been a good deal more readable than I was expecting.

Tags: Mathematics Education Books

19 May 2006

Eurovision 2006

I've just watched the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest for 2006 on SBS. The only comment that springs to mind is that it is a travesty that Poland's entry Ich Troje didn't get a place in the finals.

Tags: Music Listening Eurovision

11 May 2006

Categories and Tags

As on my other blog, I've added support for tags and categories to TR[W[WL]]OACSS using Del.icio.us. Readers with a browser that supports JavaScript should see a list of categories at the top of the sidebar.

It's not terribly useful yet (in particular, the tag and category links lead to the whole Del.icio.us tag, not just those items that are posts on this blog), but we'll see how it goes.

Tags: Blog Meta Organisation

10 May 2006

The Other Shoe Drops

Today was the third day of Professional Experience One and the other shoe dropped. Continuing with the material I've planned, the first class ripped along, even those who were absent yesterday and needed to catchup.

The second class was another matter entirely. A number of them managed to finish everything and I was really happy with three or four of them in that we've managed to resolve their initial confusions and get them to the point where they are completing problems quicker than 90% of the class. Other students in this class managed to avoid completing much at all, even when I was stood next to them trying to find out if they needed assistance or were just being lazy. Some of this is to be expected (they were distracted by an event being held after my class), but I'm not sure how I'll be able to get through to them if they're like this tomorrow.

Tags: Education Teaching Practicum

09 May 2006

Teaching; A Second Reaction

My second day of teaching went quite a bit better than the first. I managed to address quite a few of the points my colleague teacher raised yesterday as well as improving my structure and delivery. Where yesterday the way I presented the examples and instructions wasn't as effective as it should have been introducing a new unit of work (I think that I was still stuck in 'university seminar' mode rather than 'high-school lesson' mode), I think that the main thing lacking today was the polish that will come with experience. One reflection of this is that the comments provided by my colleague teacher amount to one-and-a-bit pages today rather than the three pages of notes on yesterday's lessons.

The most glaring omissions yesterday were:

1. my lack of action toward learning the students names;
2. my poor use of the whiteboard to reinforce and record explanations; and
3. the structure of the lesson.

09 May 2006

Categories and Tags

I've added support for tags to this blog using Del.icio.us. New posts will be tagged with links to the appropriate tag on my Del.icio.us account and readers with Javascript enabled should see a list of categories at the top of the right-hand column.

I'll need to experiment some more before I make up my mind just how useful this'll be.

Update: It looks like Technorati has managed to index the tags on the last two posts.

Tags: Blog Meta Organisation

08 May 2006

Teaching; A First Reaction

Today was the first day of my first block of professional experience at a high-school in Tasmania. I'm teaching a unit on Pythagoras' Theorem (which states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides usually written: a2+b2=c2) to two classes.

I introduced the topic by drawing a right triangle on the board, labelling its angles A, B, and C in ascending order, then labelling the sides a, b, and c after their opposite angle. C is obviously the right angle, and c is the hypotenuse. I then stated the proposition that: a2+b2=c2; illustrated that proposition by way of drawing a triangle abc with a square of the appropriate size on each side and proposed that we would, as a group, be proving that it is true (that it is a theorem).

I introduced the students to two different dissection proofs of Pythagoras' Theorem:

1. The first dissects two squares (a+b)2, one into a2, b2 and four triangles 0.5ab; and the other into c2 and four triangles 0.5ab. We can describe the relationship between the areas of the two squares as a2+b2+2ab = c2+2ab. The 2ab on each side cancel each other out (being trivially equal) and we are left with a2+b2=c2. Q.E.D.
2. The second proof beings with a diagram of the square c2 (drawn using four right triangles arranged within a square (a+b)2). If we draw within the c2 four right triangles arranged to leave a gap in the centre (a square of (b-a)2). These five pieces taken from c2 can be rearranged to form a2+b2. Q.E.D.

1. introducing myself;
2. beginning with a question (to find out what they already know and get them thinking about the topic);
3. writing pertinent terms on the board (like "Pythagoras' Theorem" for example);
4. structuring the lesson into 'direction' and 'doing' blocks effectively; and
5. three pages of other bits and pieces.

06 May 2006

Three new philosophy books

I've just bought three new philosophy books: Logic by Greg Restall (buy); Conspicuous Consumption by Thorstein Veblen (buy); and On The Public by Alastair Hannay (buy).

I happened to spot Logic on the shelf and needed to buy it. Hence, now that I've got a bit of money to spare, I have bought it. I expect it will be brilliant.

I've already read one volume from Routledge's Thinking In Action series and, as previously noted, I really liked it. Hopefully On The Public will be just as good.

I've liked some of the other books in Penguin's Great Ideas series, so I hope that Conspicuous Consumption will be just as interesting.

Tags: Logic Philosophy Books

05 May 2006

The Fun of Programming

The Fun of Programming edited by Jeremy Gibbons and Oege de Moor. (buy)

My copy of The Fun of Programming came in the other day and I've been looking through it. It has chapters covering a wide range of topics:

1. functional data-structures, amortised analysis, etc.;
2. testing and specification with QuickCheck;
3. programming with folds, unfolds, etc.;
4. music programming;
5. representing financial contracts;
6. graphics programming;
7. hardware description;
8. combinators;
9. arrows; and
10. phantom types

05 May 2006

The Cloudbuilders

We've just read a sci-fi story called The Cloudbuilders in my ICT curriculum class which, as far as I can tell was written by Colin Kapp in 1968. While a little formulaic (though, being nearly 40 years old, it probably helped to define the formula) it was an interesting read and did result in an interesting discussion of technology education touching on educational approaches, little white lies, paternalism, etc.

You might be able to find more information through Google but there doesn't seem to be a great deal on the first page.

29 Apr 2006

The Gold Falcon

I went into town today and saw that Katherine Kerr's new book The Gold Falcon is out. I'm just over fifty pages in so far, and I've already squee'd twice (something I'm not generally disposed to doing).

Update: One thing that is different about The Gold Falcon compared to Kerr's earlier books is a distinct lack of parts and chapters.

Earlier volumes in the Deverry series had, to the best of my recollection, a normal proportion of chapters for novels of their length and were typically divided into several parts each set in a different era as events required, or invited, the introduction of some historical context. The Gold Falcon, on the other hand, has a few pages to reintroduce the central plot (about which is constructed several hundred years of engrossing stories and characters) and a single part spanning the current era and some 400-odd pages. No chapters, no detours through eras past, nothing.

Finally: Having finished the book, I'm struck by just how much I like Katherine Kerr's writing. I found myself, with every revelation, thinking "I remember him, or her, or that;" I could identify the origins of her characters by their patterns of speech; I could foresee some of the problems the characters encountered but the eventual outcome (of the next few books) is still very far from obvious.

One point that did occur to me is that if I hadn't been reading the Deverry books for years I might think that certain aspects were somehow inspired by recent events. The desire of the main martyrdom expressed by Alshandra's worshippers and the problem of dealing with them is reminiscent of fundamentalist Moslem suicide bombers and the problems (or, more accurately, failures) that Western countries have had in responding to them.

All up, this is another awesome book in the Deverry series. It takes a bit of a departure from the previous books in its structure, but the end of the saga is in sight.

Tags: Fantasy Books

28 Apr 2006

Teachers, students & the law

I've just finished reading Teachers, students & the law by Andrew Hopkins (published by the Victoria Law Foundation). It covers a number of legal issues important to teachers and school staff including the duty of care, mandatory reporting of abuse and rights and responsibilities.

The thing that really surprised me in reading this book is that corporal punishment may be permitted in schools in the Northern Territory and non-government schools in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. I wonder when these states will catch up with the rest and abolish corporal punishment in schools altogether...

Tags: Education Law Books

28 Apr 2006

A Final Post On 'On Education'

I've just finished reading On Education by Harry Brighouse. It is, without exception, the most accessible, well written and well presented philosophical work I have read. This should be essential reading for everyone involved in education; teachers, administrators, policy makers and the community at large.

The next time I have $30 to spare, I'm going to get On the Public (buy), another volume in Routledge's Thinking in Action series.

Tags: Education Philosophy Books

26 Apr 2006

Cad, Arrogant Cad

Watched Moonraker again last night. Was surprised at how repulsive I found Mr. Bond. Perhaps shouldn't have been. I much prefer Pierce Brosnan's Bond; if nothing else he doesn't come over as such an arrogant cad.

Tags: Watching Films

24 Apr 2006

The Relativity of CSS Units

The Surfin' Safari Blog has three posts on making the CSS pixel a relative unit (and the fact that, to an extent, it already is). Anyone interested in graphics, display technologies, the web or related topics should read them: I, II, and III.

Tags: CS Reading Web

20 Apr 2006

The Teaching of Programming

Having decided that computer science isn't really my thing (I prefer it as a hobby, rather than a career), I'm now training to be a teacher and, as such, spend a certain amount of time thinking about ways to present material. One of the topics that is of no small interest to me is the teaching of programming, as distinct from teaching programming languages.

I spent some of the 2.5 hour bus trip back from classes in Hobart today thinking about ways to present monads. As a result, I've decided to write my very own version of that mainstay of the Haskell community — Yet Another Monads Tutorial. The goals of this project are twofold:

1. to try to solidify my understanding of monads, their uses and theory; and
2. to present programming in a way that very few or, more likely, no students will experience before advanced undergraduate CS classes.

20 Apr 2006

Integrating support for undo with exception handling

Integrating support for undo with exception handling by Avraham Shinnar; David Tarditi; Mark Plesko and Bjarne Steensgaard.

This paper appears to have as its object a solution to similar problems as those addressed by software transactional memory; i.e: maintaining memory consistency. Where STM provides transactions that can be used to implement multithreaded programmes much more simply that traditional explicit locking approaches, this paper uses a similar mechanism to handle unexpected failures (uncaught exceptions) and roll-back the effects of the failed code.

he authors describe their implementation of an undo mechanism in Bartok, an experimental optimising C# compiler and CIL runtime. Their system extends C# with a try_all block which acts as a catch-all exception handler. If an exception propagates is raised within a try_all block and is not handled before it reaches the scope of the block, then the roll-back mechanism is engaged.

The main difference between Haskell's STM is the goal: where STM is concerned with maintaining memory consistency in the face of concurrently executing threads, this system is concerned with simplifying error handling and recovery.

Google | CiteULike | Del.icio.us | LtU

Tags: Programming CS Papers

14 Apr 2006

More on "On Education"

An already noted, I recently purchased Harry Brighouse's new book On Education and I've just now finished reading the first two chapters. These present arguments supporting the propositions that:

1. we ought to education students to be autonomous (i.e: capable of deciding upon a way of life that suits them; able to follow such a way of life; etc.); and
2. we ought to educate students so that they are able to engage with the economy, and not to fulfill certain economic needs.

14 Apr 2006

Going Away; or Catching Up

I'm going away for a few days tomorrow (or, having looked at the clock, today) and do not plan on checking my e-mail, my news feeds, or in anyway interacting online. Hopefully, this'll give me a chance to catch up on some reading and get to some of the half-dozen papers I've been wanting to read and post here.

More in a four or five of days.

13 Apr 2006

Appleseed

I bought Madman Entertainment's special edition DVD of Appleseed today and I've just finished watching it. The art is absolutely beautiful — equalling, if not surpassing, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex which is the current top of my ooooh-pretty-shiny-art list.

One thing that struck me while watching it is that while the mecha and environments were absolutely gorgeous, the characters had a rotoscoped look to them (especially the shadows and hair) which seemed a little strange at first but definitely grew on me.

Another thing that noticed (though it took until I watched the trailers afterwards) was that the scene where Deunan leapt from the top of a building to mount her Landmate bears quite a strong resemblance to the scene in Ghost in the Shell when Major Kusanagi leaps off the top of a tower wearing optical camouflage. I'm not sure if it was homage to GitS, a coincidence, or Masamune Shirow likes that shot enough to have it used in this film too; but I'd prefer to think it the homage.

In short, this is yet another kick-ass film based on Masamune Shirow's work. If you liked the art in GitS:SAC, the philosophy of GitS and MMI, the watch-ability of Dominion Tank Police and want it mixed with more mecha action than you can shake a stick at, you'll love Appleseed.

12 Apr 2006

On Just Education?

Justice and On Education, both by Harry Brighouse.

My first Harry Brighouse book (Justice) left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. While the text is well written, accessible and far from dry; the content is interesting and the design is reasonably attractive, what I have read of it so far (about 60 pages) gives the impression that it has not enjoyed the benefit of a copy editor, or even spell and grammar checked in a word processor. Needless to say, this detracts somewhat from the impression of scholarly rigour.

While Justice was an impulse purchase (motivated by recognition of the name of a blogger I read), my buying On Education was a more deliberate — motivated not only by my enjoyment of Brighouse's writing, but a nascent (or emerging, I'm not sure which) interest in education and its philosophy. From a quick flick through, I get the impression that this book will have much higher production values than Justice did and, hopefully, won't have contain the same evidence of a lack of copy editing.

Along with On Education, I also bought Teachers, students & the law and VectorWorks 10 For Windows & Macintosh, the former because it looked interesting and was cheap, the latter because it was recommended and will come in useful if I wind up teaching technical drawing.

Tags: Education Philosophy Books

11 Apr 2006

Transactional memory with data invariants (DRAFT)

A few thoughts about a draft paper Transactional memory with data invariants.

11 Apr 2006

Threads Cannot Be Implemented As a Library

Threads Cannot Be Implemented As a Library by Hans-J. Boehm. In PLDI'05. (PDF)

I read this paper for a presentation I had to do for Advanced Run Time Systems last year. Using Pthreads as an example, Boehm points out that implementing threads purely as a library can result in a number of errors which are difficult to find and resolve. The paper presents three examples:

• concurrent modification — where races are introduced by optimisations ignorant of concurrency requirements;
• rewriting adjacent data — where race conditions are introduced when variables protected by different locks are packed into the same memory location;
• register promotion — where register promotion optimisations can modify protected variables outside of an atomic region.

11 Apr 2006

Learning Content Management Systems

.LRN -- a free software educational content management system based on the OpenACS platform. Quite difficult to get installed (a task that I have not yet managed to complete).

Moodle -- an open source educational content management system written in PHP.

Rhaptos -- an open source educational content management system based on Plone (which, in turn, is based on the Zope application server). Uses MathML and supports a number of browser plugins for advanced features.

OCW -- MIT use a system based on Microsoft Content Management Server. (See: 1 and 2).

UCalgary have a learning object repository.

Heriot Watt University, Cranfield University and the University of Birmingham collaborate on EEVL, "the Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing".

Chalkface are publishers of online courses, lesson plans, photocopy masters, etc. for secondary education in a wide range of subjects.

09 Apr 2006

Wondrous oddities: R's function-call semantics

Wondrous oddities: R's function-call semantics

As much as I disliked using R, it does have some very cool features. The post above describes R's function calling semantics which are not only very different (probably unique), but also very well suited to R's domain.

09 Apr 2006

Great Moments in Logic...

Great Moments in Logic... by Greg Restall.

A short survey of 30 important logicians, philosophers and mathematicians and their 'great moments' in logic. Well written and very accessible, anyone interested in philosophy, logic, mathematics or their history will find it worth reading.

Del.icio.us

Tags: Logic Reading

08 Apr 2006

Stark Effect

Stark Effect has a number of MP3 tracks up ranging from We Like Repartee (dictionaraoke -- songs sung by the pronunciation guides from online dictionaries) to Wonderbottle (Christina Aguilera Genie in a Bottle vs. Oasis Wonderwall). Take a look.

Del.icio.us

07 Apr 2006

Magical Lists

A not very recent post (I'm trying to catch up; only 970 messages to go) to the Haskell-cafe mailing list pointed out that jhc treats (:), [] and (,) as normal data constructors. Some might see this as removing some of the magic from lists, but I see it as sharing the magic around. The number of times I've been annoyed that (:) is hard-coded for lists boggles the mind.

05 Apr 2006

Even Spammers Need Subsidising

Even spammers, it would seem, need to subsidise their operations with advertising. In the screen capture above, you can see that this Nigerian scam email has a couple of ads (for Yahoo! messenger) appended to it. This is probably the result of some bit of filth spammer sending their message from Yahoo!'s web-mail service to an e-mail list instead of doing the job properly. It appears as though spammers standards, low though they have always been, are slipping.

04 Apr 2006

Order of Operations

A recent experience reminded me of some posts on Math and Text, a blog on mathematics education. So Long, Aunt Sally! discusses mnemonic devices for the order of operations (and reasons that such are a Bad Thing^(TM)) and Order of Operations motivates the standard order of operations in terms of error reduction (performing those operations which will most effect the magnitude of the result first will reduce our error in the event that we've misread a number).

Both of these posts interest me as I think that they both contain within them interesting insights to mathematics as seen by most of us (the non-mathematicians). The standard mathematical notation (that is, infix operators interpreted according to the standard order of operations) has a long history and is very much embedded with our understanding of maths. Unfortunately it is also rather poorly suited to expressing complex sentences: it requires that we interpret sentences with respect to a specific order of operations (exponentiation, multiplication/division, addition/subtraction) and use grouping operators (parentheses, brackets and the like).

This shortcoming is, however, addressed in a class of expression languages called prefix and postfix languages. The difference between an infix language (like the standard mathematical notation), a prefix language and a postfix language is suggested by their names. An infix language situates operators in-between their arguments, a prefix language writes operators before their arguments and a in postfix language the operators follow their arguments.

Where there is an ambiguity in infix languages as to which operators ought to be evaluated first (Left-to-right? Inward? Outward? According to precedence?), sentences of pre- and post-fix languages have only one possible interpretation. In these languages operations are performed in the order that they are written and we can express every sentence without using grouping operators (like brackets).

In an infix language, the sentence "1+23" is ambiguous and can be parsed in two different ways: "(1+2)3" and "1+(23)" (see figure 1). Without a system of operator precedence, there is no way in which we can determine which of these two interpretations is "correct." In a pre- or post-fix language however, these two different interpretations are actually written differently. In postfix form, they can be written as "1 2 + 3 " and "1 2 3 * +" respectively.

Figure 1: Parse trees for the sentence "1+2*3" with main operator being + (left) and * (right).

1. Read a token;
2. If it's a value push it onto the stack;
3. If it is an operator:
   1. Pop the appropriate number of arguments off the stack;
   2. Perform the operation on those arguments; and
   3. Push the result of the operation onto the stack
4. Repeat until there is no more input and the answer will be the [single] item remaining on the stack.

04 Apr 2006

Films; French and Otherwise

I've watched a couple of good films recently. First, a couple French films distributed in Australia by Madman Films.

The Dinner Game (or Le Diner De Cons) is a wonderful comedy about a yuppy and the man who was to be his guest to an "idiots dinner." This is a fabulous film and everyone, lover of farce or not, should see it.

Tais Toi (Official site). The description on the Madman site is better than anything I could come up with, though it does spoiler the entire plot. Starring Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno, this is one of the best films I've seen this year.

MirrorMask (IMDB) sees Helena transported from her own life (travelling and performing in her family's circus) into another world. Stephanie Leonidas makes a wonderful heroine and her engagement with the almost entirely artificial world around her is testament to her ability as a actor. While the prevalence of special effects was a little overwhelming and the characters did occasionally seem a little detached from the mostly animated world around them, the art and design was absolutely gorgeous. Graphic artists and anyone who like Neil Gaiman's work would do well to see this film.

02 Apr 2006

Dead Witch Walking and Pure Dead Magic

Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison.

Dead Witch Walking is yet another paranormal romance. In a similar vein to the works of Laurell K. Hamilton, Tanya Huff, Charlaine Harris, Kelly Armstrong, Sherrilyn Kenyon and many others, this blends aspects of the thriller; the fantasy; the crime and the romance novel into one compelling whole.

Buy | Amazon

31 Mar 2006

Permission-based ownership: encapsulating state in higher-order typed languages

Permission-based ownership: encapsulating state in higher-order typed languages by Neel Krishnaswami and Jonathan Aldrich. In PLDI'05.

I'm still puzzling through the examples, but it looks pretty cool. The essential idea is to use the type system (an extension of System F with references and ownership called System F_own) to ensure that the internal details of modules cannot be messed with.

They give an illustrative example involving customers in one domain, banking machinery in a second and account details in a third. The customers are allowed to call the banking machinery, and the banking machinery can access the account details, and all other access is invalid. The goal of System F_own is to prove these sorts of properties.

ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike

31 Mar 2006

Gold Falcon

I saw a little display in Birchall's today advertising the imminent release of Katherine Kerr's latest book Gold Falcon (excerpt). This is very, very good news — if they're sending posters out to bookshops, then it's all but certain to actually ship!

22 Mar 2006

Google Page Creator

I just got an email telling me that I've got a Google Page Create account.

I've got a demonstration page up at http://thsutton.googlepages.com/home.

21 Mar 2006

Essential Language Support for Generic Programming

Essential Language Support for Generic Programming by Jeremy Siek and Andrew Lumsdaine.

This paper presents an extension of System F called System F^G. The motivation for the work is in the construction of generic algorithms and, more importantly, the verification of their use. It looks to me as though the authors have taken a little bit too much of C++ on board.

The concepts of the paper are very similar to Haskell's type classes (according to section two, the main difference is that type classes are designed to allow Hindley-Milner type inference) and the associated types seem to me to be filling a similar role as functional dependancies. I found it rather interesting and it's the first type system paper I've read since I achieved a vague understanding of type systems.

ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU

19 Mar 2006

Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C#

Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C# by Nick Benton.

This paper presents the solution to the Santa Claus problem in the Polyphonic C# language. Polyphonic C# is an extension of Microsoft's C# language with concurrency primitives based on those of the join calculus. It was intended for use in "orchestrating distributed applications built on asynchronous messaging," but is "equally applicable to programming with multiple threads in a shared-memory environment."

This is, the authors claim, another piece of evidence supporting the claim that the join calculus is an effective basis for concurrent, as well as distributed, programming.

Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU

19 Mar 2006

Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy

Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy by Benjamin H. Barton.

An interesting paper from the Michigan Law Review. The author interprets the Harry Potter books as presenting a particular view of government (libertarianism) based on J. K. Rowling's rendering of her fictional Ministry of Magic. The structure, corruption and abuses by the Ministry of the populace (and Harry and his friends in particular) are presented, if I recall correctly, as an allegoric parallel of the U.S. and U.K. governments. I'm not sure how much of this aspect of J.K.R.'s work is intentional but, Barton's analysis is certainly compelling (even if I don't agree with the politics of conclusions he reaches).

SSRN | CiteULike | Del.icio.us

19 Mar 2006

An efficient implementation of SELF a dynamically-typed object-oriented language based on prototypes

An efficient implementation of SELF a dynamically-typed object-oriented language based on prototypes by Craig Chambers, David Ungar, and Elgin Lee. (PS)

I read this paper for a compulsory milestone papers course at the ANU Department of Computer Science. In it, the authors describe the techniques used to implement that the SELF efficiently. SELF was unusual (and still is, in some respects) in that it was a dynamic, prototype-based object-oriented language. The techniques pioneered by the SELF team formed the foundation upon which most modern virtual machines, including the various JIT technologies for Java, are built.

This paper and SELF have been discussed at Lambda the Ultimate on a number of occasions.

DOI | ACM | Google | CiteULike | Citeseer

18 Mar 2006

Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I

Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I by John McCarthy.

A milestone paper in computer science, this is one of, if not the, first LISP paper. This contains one of the earliest descriptions of garbage collection, functional programming and several other topics. It doesn't contain anything particularly enthralling for modern readers, but that is due to the fact that everything that is in it has been absorbed into every aspect of modern computer science.

One thing that I found interesting was the syntax given for conditional expressions:
(p1 → e1, …, pn → en) where p_i is a propositional expression (one that is either true of false) and e_i is an arbitrary expression. The value of a conditional expression is that of the first e_i such that p_i is true (or is undefined).

This is quite similar to the description of structures in the ρ-calculus given in Matching Power.

ACM | DOI | CiteULike

18 Mar 2006

On the Revival of Dynamic Languages

On the Revival of Dynamic Languages by Nierstrasz O, Bergel A, Denker M, Ducasse S, Gälli M, Wuyts R.

This paper reads a little like propaganda for dynamic languages. The discussion on Lambda the Ultimate (linked below) raises some interesting points and points out some of the inconsistencies in their argument (static languages can't prove everything, so let's use dynamic languages which prove nothing).

That aside, the authors do discuss some interesting language features. First-class namespaces can be used, as they describe, to implement horizontal sub-classing (a compelling use case has been discussed on LtU). Similarly, their desire for pluggable type systems seems a little reminiscent of the approach that the PyPy project has taken with object spaces. On the other hand, I don't really like their suggestion that image-based languages are the way to go (I much prefer to write code in my favourite editor, manage it using my favourite version control system, etc.). All up, it's an interesting read (if only for the descriptions of the various language features the authors like).

DOI | CiteULike | Del.icio.us | LtU

08 Mar 2006

Yet Another Blog

I've just started yet another blog: The Education of an Educator. As the title might suggest, this new blog will focus on the classes, discussions, readings and experiences I have during my training as a teacher. All of the relevant posts I've made here are already posted there, as is some new material, so go and have a look.

Update: the new blog has now been deleted and the content (what there was) migrated back here. Wordpress may be nice, but it failed to save drafts and make posts one too many times, especially when compared with Blogger which has not yet failed me once. The only thing that Blogger lacks over Wordpress is categories, and I could emulate those with Technorati or Del.icio.us if I could be bothered.

08 Mar 2006

Design and Technology

This week's practical session we started working on the first three of the C.A.D. worksheets we're using to learn VectorWorks.

In the lecture, Robyn talked about the format we'll need to use for the essay we're to do later on in the semester (Harvard referencing, etc.). After a recap of last week's material (technology as systems and processes rather than just hardware; the drivers of technological development; the dichotomy between science and technology; the situation of technology within a social context) we watched the first part of 2001: A Space Odyssey (the bit with the apes). I'm still not entirely sure what we're supposed to have gained from that other than an appreciation of just how cultish some cult films are and that tools provide an advantage.

Next Robyn talked a bit about ways to communicate with others. Specifically, she discussed a list of "don'ts"; things like judge, criticise people, diagnose, threaten, divert, question, rationalise, etc. Some of these are fairly self explanatory and other took a little more explanation than the single word she started with. Say that we ought not criticise, question, advise or use logic in a discussion didn't make a great deal of sense until she narrowed them to ad hominem criticism, excessive and provocative questioning, giving unwanted or inappropriate advise and rationalising problems and concerns.

After a discussion about these issues to do with communication, we watched part of another video; this time on Philosophy for Children.

07 Mar 2006

Teacher Identity

This morning's professional studies lecture was about teacher identity. Dr. Cole covered a number of topics beginning with the question: "What is a teacher?" He contrasted the rather anachronistic view of the teacher as authority and disciplinarian whose primary relationship with students is one of power (he drew parallels to similar relationships between Britain and the rest of the Empire) with a stereotype of the "progressive" teacher who is full of enthusiasm, a drive to change the world and is soon run down by the relentless grind. He then described a more realistic view of the teacher as a (small) part of the educational institution: a system whose structure, goals and values are fixed and within which we must work.

Dr. Cole talked about assessment and its role as part of the learning process rather than a separate and distinct thing (undertaken alone in a sterile environment).

He finished by talking about professional development and how we can become more professional:

• Action research -- reflecting on our own practice and the practice of others, and using this to guide our own development (i.e: acting upon research we do).


• Expert status -- most educational systems offer some form of "expert status" certification.


• Student relationships -- we can teach more effectively when we have closer relationships (e.g: empathy) with the students. This can be difficult when we are limited to two periods a week, etc.


• Team teaching -- we are not alone. Working together with our peers and colleague teachers can help us improve.


• Work within the school -- we must locate our own values, goals, etc. within those of the institution.

07 Mar 2006

Professional Studies Tutorial 1

In our first professional studies tutorial, we formed our Professional Learning Teams. The purpose of these teams is to give us a small group (a total of five people) with whom to discuss what happens during our school placements.

My team consists of:

• T (me) -- secondary IT and Technology and Design;
• P -- English and SOSE;
• K₁ -- Primary education;
• C -- Design and Technology (I didn't get C's other specialisation down); and
• K₂ -- SOSE and LOTE.

07 Mar 2006

Development in an Educational Context

This afternoon (though I'm posting this the day after) we had Dr. Marion Myhill give a lecture on development in an educational context, the first lecture in the developmental strand of professional studies.

Dr. Myhill described the reasons that we, as educators, are interested in development (it allows us to understand students as members of a cohort, gives us a way to understand them according to the ranges of capabilities typical of specific age groups, etc.). Developmentalists look beyond individuals to the generalities, to systematic changes and continuities seen across the cohort. This is particularly interesting to teachers as they deal with students as a group more often than with a specific individual.

We can view the development of children as a series of orderly changes. Individual children will have individual capabilities and characteristics (physiological, psychological, emotional and cognitive), but there will be a range within which most of the cohort are situated. We can also examine the rate at which development progresses. The development of an infant is very much faster than that of a late adolescent.

Where once there was a perception that development took us from undeveloped infants to developed adults, we now recognise that it is a life-long process -- deficiencies in early development can be remediated (as opposed to the view that short-comings in early development become insurmountable obstacles). While we now recognise that development is life-long, our potential for change does reduce over time (e.g: it is easier to learn a second language as a child than as an adult).

M talked about the four aspects of development (physical, social, emotional and cognitive) and that these aspects are interrelated. Developments which affect one aspect will often affect the others in some way.

As said above, while development does occur in stages and their are commonalities across cohorts, the each child's development and capabilities are still individual and it is our goal in education to narrow the gap between the best and brightest and the less able in each area. "While not everyone has the potential to be a Cathy Freeman, almost everyone can run a marathon with training."

07 Mar 2006

Books

On this page I shall provide a partial list of the books required and recommended for my units. Where appropriate I will provide links to the author's, publisher's and book's web site as well as to Amazon.

ESA160 -- Professional Studies 1A

• How to Make a Classroom Management Plan by Robert Cope. ^(buy)
• Educational Psychology for Learning and Teaching by Kerri-Lee Krause, Sandra Bochner and Sue Duchesne. ^(buy)
• Case Studies in Teaching and Learning: Australian Perspectives by Nola Purdie and David Smith. ^(buy)

• Teaching for Understanding by Tina Blythe. ^(buy)
• Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from research and practice by R. Killen. ^(buy)
• Disability in Australia: Exposing a social apartheid by Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell. ^(buy)

ESA166 -- Information Technology 1A

• Guidebook for Developing an Effective Instructional Technology Plan by L. Anderson. PDF 232Kb
• Tasmanian Certificate of Education Information Technology Documents. Online
• Introduction to Information and Communication Technology in Education by D. G. Moursund. PDF 952Kb

• Technology for Teaching by Priscilla Norton and Debra Sprague. ^(buy)
• Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (2nd) by M.D. Roblyer and Jack Edwards. ^(buy)
• Learning to Teach ICT in the Secondary School: a companion to school experience by S. Kennewell, J. Parkinson and H. Tanner (eds). ^(buy)
• Managing School ICT by S. Hackett and B. Kennedy.

• The Java Tutorial. Online
• Australian Educational Computing

ESA184 -- Design and Technology

• People skills: how to assert yourself, listen to others, and resolve Conflict by Robert Bolton.
• Technology Education for Teachers edited by John Williams and Anthony Williams.
• Technology -- a curriculum profile for Australian schools by Curriculum Corporation.
• The Idea of Design edited by Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin.
• The Journal of Technology Education.

06 Mar 2006

Maria-sama ga Miteru Novel English Translation Project

Some of my favourite anime and manga are based on Japanese novels which can be quite frustrating: anime and manga are accessible by dint of fan translation efforts, but translations of novels is pretty rare. That is why Geoff Zichterman's Maria-sama ga Miteru Novel English Translation Project is so awesome: he has managed (with assistance) to translate the entirety of the first volume of KONNO Oyuki's Maria-sama ga Miteru.

This has inspired me to make a somewhat belated new-years resolution: by the end of 2006 I hope to be able to read this book in Japanese.

Del.icio.us

03 Mar 2006

Week One Roundup

With the first week of classes over, it looks as though I'm going to enjoy this degree: Professional Studies looks like it'll be interesting (especially the school experience aspect); Multi-Literacies won't be too bad; Technology will be an opportunity to do things I haven't really though about before (design in wood, etc.); and it's going to be interesting looking at ways to apply information technology to other curriculum areas in IT as well as the details of teaching IT in its own right.

03 Mar 2006

Podcasts

Playing with Del.icio.us in the sidebar made me realise that I really ought to list the podcasts that I subscribe to. Here then is a list of my listening habits:

• All in the Mind from ABC Radio National
  Delving into all things mental: the latest research and expert commentary on our brains and behaviour.
• Books and Writing from ABC Radio National
  Books and Writing is the foremost national literary program broadcast throughout Australia. It features in-depth discussions focusing on books, ideas and writing.
• By Design from ABC Radio National
  Alan Saunders looks at how we shape our world, from the ground up.
• Craphound.com: The Literary Works of Cory Doctorow by Cory Doctorow
  Short-stories in progress by an award-winning science fiction writer, read aloud in small regular chunks.
• The Nature Podcast
  The Nature Podcast provides insight and context to groundbreaking research, and allows the scientists to explain the significance of their work in their own words.
• Ockham's Razor from ABC Radio National
  Thoughtful people have their say, without interruption, on important science-related topics.
• The Science Show from ABC Radio National
  RN's science flagship: your essential source of what's making news in the complex world of scientific research, scandal and discovery.
• Sunday Night Safran from Triple J
  John Safran and his guests (including regular Father Bob) talk an amusing mix of religion and politics. We've taken the program, and edited the music out to a 60-70min program.
• Raw Comedy from Triple J
  We bring you selected highlights from the Raw Comedy Festival heats and finals from around the country. These range in length (and quality) but are usually no longer than ten minutes.

01 Mar 2006

Designing Effective Step-By-Step Assembly Instructions

Designing Effective Step-By-Step Assembly Instructions by Agrawala M, Phan D, Heiser J, Haymaker J, Klingner J, Hanrahan P, Tversky B. In ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2003.

My first CAD class today reminded me of this paper; I can't remember how I came across it, but it was quite interesting. It's in my stack to re-read and I'll post more about it when it pops off the top.

DOI | ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike

28 Feb 2006

Technology Education

ESA184 - Technology Education (Single)

In the next few days (i.e: before Thursday), I need to decide on a technology module to do this semester. The co-ordinator told us this morning that there are six choices:

• principals of design;
• design in wood; and
• food technology

• textiles;
• hard materials design; and
• computer aided design;

28 Feb 2006

Professional Studies Lecture 1

ESA160 - Professional Studies 1A.

The course has undergone a lot of change since last year, most of which regards the proportion of lectures and tutorials: this year’s course features more tutorial time and the tutorials have a more central role; they are practising what they preach in that they are going to be teaching us in the same way that want us to teach.

During the first 45 minutes, there was a little bit of touchy, feely stuff (the degree is not just a journey into teaching, it’s also a journey into knowing ourselves, etc., etc.), but on the whole it was a very interesting first hour.

In a few weeks, we will be starting our professional experience with the School University Partnership Programme (or SUPP), during which we each spend every Monday in a classroom observing specific facets of education in a real learning environment. The goal of SUPP is to give us some experience in the practice of education to help ground our understanding of the theory that we’ll be learning during lectures. While we don’t have any choice which school we wind up visiting, I am quite looking forward to it.

The lectures during the rest of the semester will focus on four themes:

• Professional Perspectives: Teacher Identity;
• Development in an Educational Context;
• Schools and Schooling; and
• Curriculum and Pedagogy.

1. for review or revision;
2. to make connections;
3. for teacher feedback;
4. to encourage students to ask questions (modelling); and
5. to cause students to use a variety of thinking processes.

28 Feb 2006

Multi-Literacies 1

ESA196 - Multiliteracies 1A

After professional studies we had our first multi-literacies ICT class, in which the lecturer introduced all the ICT skills they'll be making sure we have. Word processing, spread sheets, presentations, multi-media, the Internet (and, more importantly, finding anything useful on it), etc. We'll also be covering the various bits of ICT stuff we'll need to know to be able to do the course (like using Vista).

He also made sure to cover the various rules we need to follow (don't look at porn at school; don't copy CDs at school; computer use is monitored; etc.) and be aware of. The thing that really, REALLY pisses me off is that the contagion that is plagiarism detection software, namely Turn It In, seems to have infected Education. The sole objection I have to using the software is that Turnitin keep a copy of all the work submitted in their database to check future submissions against: they are using my work as part of the service for which they charge lots of money.

We ended with a lot of confusion as to when and where our classes for the next few weeks are (the Bachelor of Teaching timetable is both complex and fluid as it has to work around the student's practicals and other staff commitments).

28 Feb 2006

A Change in Focus

Today I took the first step on a new path, that of teaching, with orientation day for the Bachelor of Teaching. This semester I will be taking:

• Professional Studies;
• Information Technology 1A;
• Technology Education (Single); and
• Multi-literacies 1A

26 Feb 2006

Putting Curry-Howard to Work

Putting Curry-Howard to Work by Tim Sheard.

This paper describes some type system feature suggested by the Curry-Howard isomorphism (which states that types are propositions and that programs are their proofs). The language Ωmega is a descendant of Haskell in which the author has implemented all of the features described in the paper.

I still haven't finished reading it, but it's at the top of my pile.

DOI | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU

26 Feb 2006

Posting Splurge

This is the last in a posting splurge I've had this afternoon: six paper posts have been added and one has been updated. I intend this to be the first in a series of weekly or biweekly session in which I post the papers I've been reading. Perhaps now that I'm studying education rather than computer science, I'll be able to get some more reading done.

Suggestions of papers to read are most welcome and can be sent by email.

26 Feb 2006

Matching Power by Cirstea H, Kirchner C and Liquori L.

Matching Power by Cirstea H, Kirchner C and Liquori L.

This is the first paper I've read about rewriting calculi and, if nothing else, it's made me want to read more. In it, the authors provide an introduction to pattern matching, introduce the syntax and semantics of the ρ-calculus, and present a number of compelling examples of its power. Section four is the most interesting part of the paper (the rest being primarily and introduction to the calculus): in it the authors present encodings of the Lambda Calculus of Objects (Fisher, Honsell, and Mitchell) and the Object Calculus (Abadi and Cardelli) into the ρ-calculus.

ACM | Google | CiteULike | Del.icio.us | LtU

26 Feb 2006

Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall (Draft)

Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall (Draft)

While MapReduce and GFS allow Google to use their massive computer clusters effectively, the use of C++ can make programming for such a systems more difficult than it needs to be. Cue Sawzall, a new language that Google use to write distributed, parallel data-processing programs for use on their clusters. While the language isn't particularly attractive (I've never liked C-style syntax's), the approach is very interesting and the implementation issues they describe are enlightening.

LtU | CiteULike | Del.icio.us

26 Feb 2006

Finger Trees: A Simple General-purpose Data Structure

Finger Trees: A Simple General-purpose Data Structure by Ralf Hinze and Ross Paterson.

This paper presents 2-3 finger trees, a purely functional representation of persistent sequences. The ends of each sequence can be accessed in amortised constant time and they can be concatenated and split in logarithmic time. Best of all, the paper develops them in Haskell.

I've started working through the code myself, but have not yet managed to get it finished.

DOI | LtU | CiteULike | Del.icio.us

26 Feb 2006

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

An interesting look at the claim frequently made by theists that religion promotes, or is even the source of, morality.

Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike

24 Jan 2006

What To Do?

So I'm back in Tasmania (at Mum's place) and I'm looking for something to do. At the moment, the plan is to do a teaching degree (at UTas), but we'll see how that goes.

03 Dec 2005

Lock-Free Data Structures using STMs in Haskell

Lock-Free Data Structures using STMs in Haskell. Anthony Discolo, Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, and Satnam Singh. Submitted to FLOPS'06.

An interesting paper demonstrating the use of STM (and it's superiority over explicit locking) in Haskell. The authors present two Haskell implementations of the ArrayBlockingQueue class from Java: one using STM and the other explicit locking. Not only did the version using STM outperformed the explicit locking version consistently in the multi-CPU benchmarks, but the STM code is much simpler.

Previously: 1 2
LtU | Del.icio.us

29 Nov 2005

Stupid, Noisy Pricks

Why are Internet/games places always full of noisy pricks? I'm sitting here waiting for my email to download, DarwinPorts to update, some torrents to download and I don't think it's too much to ask that I not have to listen to two intellectually challenged individuals not scream at each other (in spite of the fact that they are sitting right next to each other).

I hate gamers.

04 Nov 2005

Writing and Ownership

My thesis was due last Friday (delayed to last Monady) and I have an extension (or, rather, an I-don't-have-it-done) until today. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll have it done by my deadline today either. For some reason, I just haven't wanted, or been able to, write.

I think that this is due, in part, to the fact that this is my own project (rather than the one I originally started on) which I'd been thinking about for a while before I started my Honours year. As such, I don't feel any sort of obligation to work on it for any purposes other than my own gratification. While this is a good thing by some measures (it's a project that I am interested in, etc., etc.) it is very, very, bad by others (like that fact that I don't feel any particular drive to write about it).

All I know is that I'm well and truly sick of University and computer science. If Honours is a taste of research and a hint of what a Ph.D. is like, then I want nothing to do with either. This used to be fun...

03 Nov 2005

Wanted: A feed module for iPhoto

While iTunes does a decent job of managing MP3 enclosures in news feeds (pod-casts), iPhoto could really do with similar functionality. I have my iBook randomly choose images from an album in my iPhoto library and it would be fantastic if I could get iPhoto to automatically download pictures from some of the fantastic sources on the 'net. Sites like Botany Photo of the Day provide some amazing images.

I'll see if I can figure out how to do this over the summer as my first piece of mac software.

03 Nov 2005

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

I want this book!!!

02 Nov 2005

Books To Read

I've decided that I'm going to try to read everything nominated for the Booker Prize. The short list shouldn't be too much trouble (most of the books on it look interesting enough) but I imagine that there'll be a few boring books in the long list. We'll see how I go.

26 Oct 2005

New Books

Numbers, Groups and Codes (2nd ed.) by J. F. Humphreys (University of Liverpool) and M. Y. Prest (University of Manchester)
A Gentle Introduction to Category Theory - the calculational approach by Maarten M Fokkinga
Latin: First Year by Robert J. Henle
Latin Grammar by Robert J. Henle

I seem to be racking up more and more mathematical reading material. I just bought a copy of Numbers, Groups and Codes from the Co-op Bookshop and have found the first few sections surprisingly readable. I hope that the rest of the book is as good as what I've read so far.

Another mathematical work near the top of my "to read" pile is A Gentle Introduction to Category Theory (and, at some point, his Ph.D. thesis - Law and Order in Algorithmics).

I also picked up (also from the Co-op) Latin: First Year and Latin Grammar. Along with Types and Programming Languages, Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming, Practicle Common Lisp and the assorted other and papers (especially the various Haskell papers I want to read), I've got more than enough to keep me studying for most of next year).

26 Oct 2005

Music

I recently found a CD full of MP3's that a friend gave me whilst I was in England a few years ago. On it I found a bunch of songs by groups I hadn't thought about in a while. With the new songs stuck in my head, I ran out and bought the Lost Prophets' The Fake Sound of Progress and Start Something, both of which kick ass.

Next on the "to be acquired" list is Alien Ant Farm's Anthology album.

26 Oct 2005

Manga

I've recently (i.e. since my last post on manga) purchased a whole bunch of new manga books. Today I got The One I Love by CLAMP (Tokyopop's translation of わたし の すきなひと), which is a great little book.

I've also got a whole bunch of Viz Media books including Koko wa Greenwood (or Here is Greenwood in English), Maison Ikkoku books 1-5 (with 6-10 on order) and Hanazakari no Kimitachi e (Viz, and everyone else, call it Hana-Kimi).

I've bought so many books whilst here in Canberra that I'm going to have to get them shipped when I leave (as opposed to taking them as checked luggage on my flight home).

It seems that Western comics in the manga style are becoming popular. So much so that Tokyopop are publishing an Australian artist's book! I can't wait to see if The Dreaming is as good as it looks.

PS: The Japanese input mode on Emacs (which I used to type the hiragana above) is shit-hot. Much easier than trying to use the Japanese Kana Palette or any other input method I've tried.

19 Sep 2005

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom - Wikiquote

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom - Wikiquote

17 Sep 2005

Why do Chokito bars taste like crap?

I've just had (or started) a Nestle Chokito. I'd forgotten just how revolting they are. What a waste of $1.90.

16 Sep 2005

Bodoni Tag

I'm not sure how I found this, but I did: Bodoni Tag

12 Sep 2005

The Evangelical Atheist - God is a Dick

The Evangelical Atheist - God is a Dick

02 Sep 2005

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.

I've just been looking for material on The Shadow. I've managed to find a fan novelisation of the 1994 film staring Alec Baldwin which looks promising and I already have a copy Dark Horse's book featuring The Ghost and The Shadow. I'm going to try and find the film on DVD as it was absolutely fantastic and I much prefer it to the original mythos (what I know of it).

02 Sep 2005

Aggravation

I've just finished the second assignment for the data mining course I'm doing this semester. The one thing I got out of it is a strong desire to avoid R.

There is something about that language and system that just rubs me the wrong way. I have no idea how the type system (such as it is) works and any such understanding would be of little value (as it is dynamic anyway). I cannot understand how someone managed to write a libxml wrapper that is harder to use than the C library.

To make matters a little better, the ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) package makes editing R code and interacting with the R interpreter easy, though emacs started acting peculiarly after I installed it.

All in all, R is (in my opinion, by my standards and for my purposes) something to be avoided.

31 Aug 2005

Relational Algebra in Haskell

I've just spoken to Jon about the problems and ideas I have posted about previously. One of the things I came away with is the suggestion that I might be thinking about relational algebras (perhaps an algebra over a set) rather than hypergraphs. I'm not entirely sure that this is the case (the "hypergraph" Wikipedia article above seems to describe what I'm thinking of), but the "algebra over a set" article is certainly applicable as well).

As a result, I've been able to dig up a couple of things that look like they might help me implement support for generic frames (i.e. those with an arbitrary number of n-relations for arbitrary values of n greater than 0).

While I've seen A Relational Algebra Simulator in Haskell before, it didn't occur to me that it might be applicable to my problem. RATH - Relation Algebra Tools in Haskell, however is new to me and looks like it provides a complete library (rather than the example program of the first link).

Whether I have enough time to catch up on my course-work, finish my system (as it stands), write a thesis and learn enough about this topic to extend the system using such a generalisation remains to be seen.

Another possibly useful generalisation might be to extend the concept of "relation" from sets of tuples to mutisets (or bags) of tuples, thereby allowing relations in a frame to be mutigraphs (i.e. graphs allowing multiple edges between a given pair of vertices). The Data.Graph.Inductive library supports labelled edges which suggests that it might also support multigraphs to some degree (if edges with non-identical labels are non-identical, then you can simulate an unlabelled multigraph by labelled each edge with an index).

I'd like to write a generic graph library with support for multigraphs and [uniform] hypergraphs, possibly by extending Data.Graph.Inductive, but this will probably wind up being pushed back until the Christmas break.

31 Aug 2005

Modal Logic Wikipedia Articles

I've been poking at Wikipedia again (I dislike free time) and decided that a list of articles relevant to modal logic might be useful. To that end, I present a partial list of Wikipedia articles:

• Kripke Semantics
• Modal Logic
• Temporal Logic
• Proof Theory
• Model Theory
• Analytic Tableaux

• Hypergraph
• Multigraph
• Power set
• Algebra over a set

30 Aug 2005

A Distraction

People view you as a Loner Artist. Loner Aritist are exactly as their title says, loners and artist. Now you are not alone by choice but many people find you odd. This only bothers you when you're in a public place like a dance club or a crowded lunchroom so you tend to steer clear of those places. You might have a friend or two but they're either Loner Artists like you or Truly Dark. Fear not! So many artists are not appreciated in their own times!

What Do People Truly See You As? (lots of outcomes and stunning pictures) (brought to you by Quizilla)

26 Aug 2005

A List of Things to be Read

There are a few topics that I'm interested in reading about, but haven't got any books on yet. This post will serve as a repository of these topics (so that I don't forget about any of them).

• Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories is on category theory (Jon Cohen recommended it to me)
• Sets for Mathematics does sets (of which I have only an informal understanding)

25 Aug 2005

Yet Another Book Purchase or This Time, It's Maths

Recent Data Mining lectures have been looking at the Apriori Principle. The discussion of a set-theoretic framework within which to consider data mining (more specifically, market basket analysis) prompted me to have a look in the maths section of the Coop Bookshop for a book on the topic.

I came out with a copy of Introduction to Lattices and Order. What [little] I've read of it so far is very well written.

The bad news is that I need to get back into reading so that I can write the literature review and background sections of my thesis without screwing anything up or misrepresenting anything too badly. I have a feeling that it's going to be a long time before I finish up the 17 books I've got bookmarks in.

25 Aug 2005

Annoyances of the Feature Kind

Yesterday, I finally sat down and wrote a priority queue (a heap to those in the know) to store the formulae on a branch that still need to be processed. Chris Okasaki (in his book Purely Functional Data Structures) defines the interface of a heap as follows:

class Heap h where empty :: (Ord a) => h a
isEmpty :: (Ord a) => h a -> Bool

insert :: (Ord a) => a -> h a -> h a
merge :: (Ord a) => h a -> h a -> h a

findMin :: (Ord a) => h a -> a
deleteMin :: (Ord a) => h a -> h a


This is a problem (in my opinion) in that it requires that heaps (all heaps) be over ordered data-types. The entire reason that I am attempting to extend the heap is to remove the ordering from the contained type, and use a priority type instead. Thus we are no longer saying that, for example, ? < ? but that (priority ?) < (priority ?)

I'll be the first to admit that this isn't much of a distinction to make (especially from a pragmatic "programmer" point of view), but it is a nicer approach.

I got around this problem, such as it is, by modifying my Prioritised class to have a function to inject values into my Priority type and one to extract them. The heap then is a type synonym:type PriorityHeap t = LeftistHeap (Priority t) with the restriction that you need to explicitly wrap values you insert into a heap:let h' = insert (priority v) h in ... and unwrap those you get out: let v = value $ findMin h' in ...

Not terribly inconvenient, but not ideal. I'm fairly sure that this could be solved with some functional dependancies magic, but the current state of affairs is good enough to be getting on with.

22 Aug 2005

Pharyngula::Is this elitism?

Pharyngula::Is this elitism?

20 Aug 2005

What sort of person?

What sort of person drinks coffee with cream? Milk - yes, cream - no.

16 Aug 2005

The Existance of Time

A while ago, I watched the annual Burton and Garran Hall public speaking competition. One of the speakers presented an argument that "the structure and perception of time are invalid." This post will describe the argument made (in more or less broad strokes as suit my purposes) and some objections to it.

The analysis of temporality and related phenomena has always been a mainstay of modal logic. The study of objects and their properties, on the other hand, is usually studied in first order logic or some other logic with quantification. The study of objects and their properties over time has yielded a number of logics and philosophies each of which has a different goal. Here we consider a fairly naive quantified temporal logic that is capable of considering non-existent objects (such as Sherlock Holmes and a flying pig).

If we consider such a logic, it becomes clear that the argument the speaker presented conflated two concepts:

• the existence of an objects; and
• the existence of a state (or set of states).

16 Aug 2005

Alleged "Intelligent", Alleged "Design"

What jeezuz me off is the way that people are serious in considering "Intelligent Design". As many, many, many articles (by qualified commentators) have pointed out, "Intelligent Design" is not a scientific theory.

It is founded on arguments from ignorance, appeals to emotion, argument from consequences and a complete misunderstanding of the goals and methodology of science and reason. The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence to suggest any sort of "design" in the world. That creationists (sorry: "IDers") do not understand the theory of evolution; that they feel that there is "more" to life; that they don't like the alleged consequences of rationalism (which rationalists dispute) and that they don't understand the difference between a scientific theory and a speaking out of one's arse tells nothing of the validity of the scientific method or any of the theories it suggests.

Equal time only applies to equally valid alternatives. Science is not fair: the theories that adequately explain observed phenomena are valid and those that do not are invalid. It makes no more sense to teach ID in science classes than to teach poetry in those same classes.

15 Aug 2005

Jane Austen

I've just started reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I got an etext from the eBooks@Adelaide collection of free web books at the University of Adelaide Library.

It's a great resource for anyone interested in the classics (I've put their editions of Austen's and the Bronte? sisters' books on my to-read queue).

14 Aug 2005

Stupid Military Aircraft

There is some stupid air show going on (part of the Salute to Veterans I think) here in Canberra. There have been helicopters flying around fairly persistently for the last couple of days, but they aren't too hard to ignore. Today, however, there have been fighter jets flying over the lake and making enough noise to disturb that part of the city situated around Lake Burley Griffin.

If they want to salute veterans, why can't they do so quietly and without burning huge amounts of fossil fuels?

14 Aug 2005

More Tai Chi

For my second week of Tai Chi lessons (there are two a week), I've managed to remember the first few steps of the short version of Tai Chi (I'm not sure which style we're learning, but it might be the Combined 48 Forms).

In addition to learning another step in the movement, we also learnt the fifth of the Eight Brocades which are exercises to strengthen the body and promote the development and circulation of Chi. The first fours aren't too bad, but the fifth (called "Shake the Head and Weave the Tail") wore me out. I'm still feeling it six hours later.

13 Aug 2005

Open Letter

Open Letter

12 Aug 2005

Purely Functional Data Structures

The Haskell code from Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki can be found as his web-site at the United States Military Academy.

08 Aug 2005

A Humanities Kick...

I seem to be on a bit of a humanities kick... I've recently read a book on economics and a book on the working poor, am currently reading a book on linguistics and most of the feeds I read on anthropology and related disciplines. To make matters worse, I've just bought a handful of new books on media (Barons to Bloggers, series editor Jonathan Mills), "social issues" (Affluenza, Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss), immigration/politics (Following them Home, David Corlett) and more media (Do Not Disturb: Media and Aust Politics, editor Robert Manne).

I've been meaning to buy Affluenza and Following them Home since I heard about them (probably on Sunday Night Safran or Hack, both shows on Australia's national youth radio station: JJJ) and only, by chance, there they were along with two other interesting looking books.

I need to stop going into bookshops...

07 Aug 2005

Wrongness and Evilitude

There are three items that have shown up on my feeds that I thought I'd post here.

I've just read that Robin Cook is dead. Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber linked to his resignation speech, in which he gave reasons why Britain should not have gone to war with Iraq, and announced that he was resigning as Leader of the House of Commons because of the war. I hadn't read this speech before and it makes a simple and powerful case. If only they had listened.

Another item is the leaked e-mails about the rigged Guantanamo Bay tribunals (via Leiter Reports). If anyone, anywhere still believes that these people (held, if not in breach of any law, then in breach of common decency) will receive a fair trial before an impartial court, they are either stupid, naive or wilfully deceiving themselves.

Finally, this piece about the motivations of the young men who carried out the attacks in London makes a point that everyone seems to be trying their hardest to ignore. Terrorism is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims." Whether it is perpetrated by states (the U.S., Britain, Spain, Australia and friends in their Afghani and Iraqi adventures) or private individuals (the young men in London), violence and intimidation turned to political ends is terrorism. Just as they are terrorists, so too are we.

07 Aug 2005

Tai Chi

I've just had my first Tai Chi lesson. Hopefully I'll manage to remember some of it next week.

06 Aug 2005

Bond (the string quartet, not the spy)

I've just watched the DVD of Bond live at the Royal Albert Hall (which I bought on special at JB Hi-Fi in Canberra). I normally don't like recordings of concerts and this DVD demonstrates most of the reasons.

First, and most importantly: the music. A lot has been said about Bond's music. It's been called "classical", "New Age", "crossover" and "pop" by various reviewers. They were banned from the British classical music charts because their music isn't in the "classical idiom" and isn't by a recognised classical composer (I don't call myself an aficionado of classical music, but even I can recognise the sources of many of their songs). In spite of their use, sometimes a touch too heavy, of elements more reminiscent of dance and rock music, Bond's music is fantastic and the DVD of this concert isn't an exception. Far from the usual complaints of poor quality live recordings, the audio on the DVD is crystal clear and well mixed.

Second: the concert itself. While the music is great, the video is not. Some parts are awfully cut, with awkward, even amateurish, transitions between shots. The camera work is uninspired and uses a number of truly peculiar shots. One camera that is used way too much is positioned on the ceiling above the stage focussed directly down. Another is the roof and balcony cameras. The video editors have done a great disservice to the music and the band.

Third: the menus and extras. The menus are well designed and easy to navigate. A few tricks might have been welcome (the photo-gallery might have benefited from the usual trick whereby one need only press a direction, rather than a direction and enter), but on the whole, pretty good. There are a number of extras included: an interview with Bond, two music videos, a small gallery of publicity shots and a quiz on the DVD and some a poster and ring-tones on the DVD-ROM.

In short, the music is great, the extras are interesting and the menus are well presented. The only down note is the video which, while not bad, is not brilliant. If you're a Bond fan, I'd encourage you to get it. If you've been under a rock for the last couple of years and haven't heard them, you might like to think about it: at the place I bought it, this DVD is cheaper than the albums on CD.

05 Aug 2005

Vendetta (by Throwdown)

As I'm on a roll of posts about anime, books, blog-posts and the like, I've decided to branch out into music as well. My first post on music (this one) is a bit of a review of the album Vendetta by Throwdown (released in Australia by Road Runner Records).

It's a solid metal album, heavy on the guitars and drums, with powerful vocals. While it is good and will be going on my playlist, there isn't too much, in my opinion, to differentiate it from the offerings of acts like Killswitch Engage, American Head Charge (thought tend to be slightly more melodic) and Fear Factory.

In short: kick-ass metal, but not too inspired.

05 Aug 2005

The B&G Public Speaking Competition

I've just watched the annual Burton and Garran Hall public speaking competition. There were eight speakers who each had seven minutes to make their point, whatsoever it was, in-front of an audience of their peers and a panel of three judges. What follows is my recollection of the speakers most important (from my perspective) points.

The first speech (by the president of the residents association) advocated that hall residents be held accountable not to the laws of the land, but to a special code of our own. This lead him to propose that we would then need a group to police these laws, a group of Student Storm-troopers ("an SS", if you will). His last point was a suggestion that this "SS" would need a strong, reliable, dedicated person to set the laws and to lead their enforcement. He finished with a "Thank-you" (after a hastily stifled "Danke").

The second was a rather humorous speech about terrorism. It began with a brief discussion of some of the more inept members of the intelligence, security and governmental communities and moved on to a brief discussion of terrorism and security. While the speaker got in a few good points (and a laugh or two) the later part of the speech focussed on humorously portraying some prominent residents as "terrorists".

The third speaker took on the problem of global poverty. With a number of appalling statistics (that 70 children died of malnutrition during the speech, for example) and some good rhetoric, he made well the point that it is revolting that one in two people exist in abject poverty (surviving on less than $2 per day) when so much is spent on weapons. This speaker won second place and a prize of $100.

The fourth talk discussed Barbie and her recent break-up with Ken. Perhaps, the speaker posed, this is a sign that Mattel is attempting to make the world Barbie and her friends more resemble the one in which we live, to make their live more resemble the way we live ours. Or perhaps, she countered, it is an attempt in marketing driven by the fact that the boyfriend is no-longer popular with the target audience.

The fifth speaker told us about that cornerstone of modern technology (and comedic practice): the screw. This lively, entertaining talk took us back to the screw's invention in ancient Greece, through its use in war and peace to the development of the more modern varieties that surround us today. He ended with an exhortation that we all "keep screwing" and was awarded first place and the prize of $150.

The sixth contender returned to the discussion of global poverty. While his talk was amusing and he raised some valid points (contending that Bob Geldof is going the wrong way about ending poverty) I didn't pay much attention and so this brief mention will have to do.

The seventh brave soul to face us attempted to show that "the structure and the perception of time are invalid." A noble and learned topic but one which I am not sure can be covered in seven minutes. In her talk, the speaker appeared to conflate a number of concepts (time and our perception of it being the chief example) drawing on the weakness of one subjective definition of the present, proposing another point out that they are mutually exclusive (which is not, in my opinion, the case) and moving on from that "contradiction" to assert that time does not exist.

The eighth and final speaker (and the winner of $50 and third place) spoke to us of the game of murder (hunting your assigned target with a water-pistol whilst avoiding your own assassin) and the fear it caused, of spending hours lurking in wait only to find you she was waiting in the wrong building, of deciding that food and bathing were really that important -- "it's only five days." A very funny speech about fear and its role as both a motivator and an inhibitor of our actions.

05 Aug 2005

RSChem is Burning Down, Burning Down, Burning Down...

There was a fire at the Research School of Chemistry.

05 Aug 2005

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design is dangerous. The thought that anyone, anywhere, could think of teaching this as fact (which, in the scientific sense, implies some form of verifiability) is truly mind blowing. Have we not yet moved on from being frightened by thunder and lightning?

If science teachers were to stop teaching science and start teaching poetry would that be a good thing? Why ought we ask (or allow) them to teach religion in science class?

05 Aug 2005

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design is dangerous. The thought that anyone, anywhere, could think of teaching this as fact (which, in the scientific sense, implies some form of verifiability) is truly mind blowing. Have we not yet moved on from being frightened by thunder and lightning?

05 Aug 2005

And Watchings and Listenings...

I've just added another "W" and an "L" to the name of this blog to stand for "Watching" and "Listening". "Watching" has been added due to the fact that I've reviewed some anime before and am likely to do so again. "Listening" has been added in anticipation of my next post, a review of an album.

02 Aug 2005

Postcasts and Recharging

A while ago, Hack programme on JJJ did a story on iPods. According to one of the Apple service people they interviewed, the short battery life that lots and lots and lots of people experience with an iPod is due to excessive recharging.

Like most battery technologies, those used in the iPod will only last a certain number of recharge cycles. Once that number has passed, the battery life begins to decline. The obvious solution is the charge only when necessary. The obvious problem with this solution is that my iPod charges automatically when it's attached to my iBook.

My question then is, if we aren't supposed to charge unless necessary, and if the iPod charges when connected to a computer, then why does iTunes have support for podcasts?

01 Aug 2005

A question for Jonny...

A thought just occurred to me. Has John Howard ever actually identified an election promise as "non-core"? Or is it something that we need to divine for ourselves?

31 Jul 2005

More Freakonomics...

I've just finished reading Freakonomics and my overall impression is that it could have done with an appendix on statistical analysis, regression analysis in particular. The later chapters appeal to regression analysis a number of times and the one serious lack is an explanation of what that means.

Readers familiar with statistical analysis will not find this a problem, but this is not a book aimed at statisticians and economists. It is (as I see it) a book aimed at the reader of popular science, the reading public. Such an appendix might not have been bigger than the section of notes (some 21 pages), but would be provide a lot more support, in the mind of the casual reader, for the author's arguments and interpretations than the lists of citations, references and sources.

29 Jul 2005

Hmmm.

The presentation is over and done with. It didn't go too badly, though I did run under-time: I finished my presentation and asked (begged) for questions half way through my time slot. I'm not sure how much of it the audience caught, or what sort of comments the assessing academics will give me, but I'm reasonable happy with my performance.

Having seen all of the presentations, I find myself wondering at how many of the projects involve writing compilers and optimisers. One is attempting to learn tests to avoid computing expensive functions unless they're required (with collision detection as the experimental framework). Another is doing something with symbolic optimisation of robot dynamics (which looks a lot like single static assignment). I'm compiling a DSL to Haskell. Someone else is experimenting with interval arithmetic (which I want to implement in Haskell) for scientific computations.

28 Jul 2005

Presentations...

I have to give my mid-term seminar tomorrow afternoon and I'm getting rather nervous about it.

My supervisor has told me that my slides aren't accessible enough (i.e. I require too much prior knowledge), but I can't see any way to simplify things or remove content without missing important things. I'm not happy, but I don't the time fine-tune it any more.

If you're at the ANU (I'm not sure if the public is allowed) and free tomorrow at 1:00 (my presentation is at 1:26), come along to the Department of Computer Science seminar room (N101) and watch me embarrass myself.

27 Jul 2005

Live UI Editing

Some language communities (CommonLisp is probably the largest, most obvious example) are used to incremental development, live updates, online bug-fixing and the many other benefits of a language with a REPL.

27 Jul 2005

D-squared Digest -- A slightly overweight thirtysomething without a good word for anyone

D-squared Digest -- A slightly overweight thirtysomething without a good word for anyone via Crooked Timber

26 Jul 2005

No Thru Road!

I've been playing with hs-plugins, trying to get a version of my generated propositional calculus code working as a dynamically loaded plug-in. I've run into some difficulties with the type signatures of the plug-in API, a concrete plug-in, and the plug-in user.

I've tried using existentially quantified constructors as well as the more usual with class-constrained type variables, but I haven't been able to make any progress. If I can't manage to resolve the problem, it looks like I'll have to find another approach, perhaps by building an executable for each calculus (though that would suck as it'd have to compile everything, from scratch, for each and every calculus to get it to type-check).

Worrying.

If I can get it to work, I'll have an alpha release with support for K out as soon as possible.

26 Jul 2005

Freakonomics

I'm about half-way through reading Freakonomics and, while it hasn't changed my opinion of economics, it has impressed upon me the flexibility of modern statistics. If you're dubious about the status of economics as a science in its own right, I don't think that this book will convince you one way or the other (it hasn't changed my opinion), but it is a fascinating, well written book.

25 Jul 2005

Stupidity or How Dumb Can I Get

I've just been trying to install hs-plugins on my iBook with GHC 6.4. Sorting out the dependancies, getting stuff to build and getting the libraries installed has been ridiculously complex.

Now that I've got it built and installed (part of which required using hugs because runghc refused to run the setup programme), it doesn't appear to have registered the package, which means I need to manually provide the details to GHC every time I compile some code using System.Plugins (rather than just tell the compiler to use the package: -package plugins).

I need to figure out what it going wrong with my environment and fix it. Perhaps by tearing some capabilities out...

Update: I've got that problem fixed (make install doesn't appear to update the package database). Now all I need to do is work out a way to be able to specify the data-types in the plug-ins.

25 Jul 2005

Generality for its own sake

System.Console.GetOpt is a Haskell port of the GNU getopt library (which is almost impossible to find, unless they mean getopt(3) in glibc). In spite of being written in Haskell, the awfulness of getopt shines through.

25 Jul 2005

Dependancies...

I'm currently experimenting with hs-plugins, a library which supports dynamically loading plugins in Haskell. Or, rather, I would be if I could manage to sort out the various hassles I'm encountering in installing it.

The only problem is that hs-plugins depends on Language.Haskell.Hsx. This would be fine, if it came in the GHC distribution. Alas it doesn't, so I've had to find and install it myself. This isn't too much trouble - I have, after all, been using UNIX-like systems for at least 7 years now. The only bump in this stretch of the road is that Language.Haskell.Hsx depends on Happy.

Haskell is getting to the point where it could really do with a CPAN-style package archive, if only because introducing it now will be so much easier than later when it is actually necessary. Cabal already provides these sorts of features (dependancy chasing, etc).

23 Jul 2005

Shoes and Shoelaces

Why don't shoes have real eyes for the laces? Is there some aversion suffered by the makers and designers of modern footware, to holes that don't tear? Stupid bastards!

21 Jul 2005

More on Literate Haskell

I've been having fun extending my environment for literate Haskell programming in LaTeX. While I still haven't looked at the suggestion my previous post provoked (though I'll get round to it eventually), I have been taking the opportunity to learn some of the more programme-y things one can do in LaTeX.

The macro I use for the title of each module (called \module funnily enough) now checks to see if it is a sub-module (i.e. contains a '.' in its name) and makes it a \subsection if it does. For now, this will be enough, but later on there will be some configurability to this to make sure that we don't typeset modules as sub-sections of random other modules.

I'm also planning on making the pretty-printing code build a list of imported modules as it typesets the Haskell and then include the appropriate files (I've got an \import macro all ready and waiting) afterward.

I like playing with LaTeX.

20 Jul 2005

That [W] is now for "Watching" too

I've just finished watching a wonderful anime series: Someday's Dreamers. The characters are engaging, especially Yume and Angela, and the way that the apparently unrelated incidents come together to drive the last few episodes is very well done. The production values were obviously very high, with good voice acting (the Japanese, I didn't bother listening to the American), good art and animation and a gorgeous soundtrack.

The only thing that disappointed me was Inoue being the object of Angela's desire when I was expecting it to be Yume. Oh well, you can't have everything.

A very nice show. Everyone should give it a try.

20 Jul 2005

Buying Software

I just bought a copy of Photoshop Elements 3.0. As I've got a digital camera now, I thought that I'd better get something in which to edit the photographs I sure to take. It's been a very long time since I last used (perhaps "fumbled with" might be more accurate) Photoshop and I'm looking forward to learning it.

On the other hand, if the application itself is as dodgy as the installer, then this could be a painful experience.

19 Jul 2005

Thoughts on Hypergraphs

I'll start this post with a disclaimer that I am a mathematically naive person and don't really know what I'm talking about.

After my post last night (or this morning), I though a bit more about hypergraphs and started playing with a few ideas for a data structure based on incidence lists (lists of every edge incident on a particular vertex). While I've got something that works (after a fashion and in a naive and trivial sort of way), I've come to a realisation that I don't really know what a lot of the things I might want to do to such graphs actually mean.

What,if anything, do reflexivity, transitivity and symmetry mean in the context of a hypergraph? I've been trying to figure this out using the composition relation from arrow logic as an example but I'm still not sure I'm getting anywhere.

Be that as it may, I've started working on a prototype of a hypergraph package for Haskell and if I can figure out how various things ought to work and how to generalise it to relations of arbitrary arity, I'll release it separately.

19 Jul 2005

Literate Haskell

Last night I spent a while wrestling with latex, vim, make and ghc as part of my source-code reorganisation. One of the things I've been wanting for quite a while, is a vim syntax highlighting mode that understands the LaTeX literate Haskell syntax and displays both the Haskell code and the LaTeX code properly. Last night, I finally got it to work, though it has taken a bit of hackery in my Haskell files: I need to have a comment in every file so that the highlighter can detect the LaTeX.

This is a problem as the LaTeX detection heuristic appears to be:

1. Look for a \documentclass macro (the begining of a LaTeX document); or
2. Look for a LaTeX command; or
3. Assume that the "literate" part is not LaTeX

19 Jul 2005

Licencing

A fourth post for today, also on a non-logic related topic. I'll be releasing an initial, non-modal, version of my code soon (in the next couple of weeks) and need to think about a licence for it. I've narrowed it down to four alternatives:

• the Creative Commons attribution share alike licence;
• the Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share alike licence;
• the Australian Public Licence B; or
• a BSD-like licence.

18 Jul 2005

The Natural Numbers

One of the statements in my calculus language is the operator declaration:

Neg operator "~" has arity 1, fixity 0, priority 1.

1. Eq (they can be compared for equality)
2. Ord (values can be ordered with respect to each other)
3. Show (values can be converted to strings)
4. Read (values can be parsed out of strings)
5. Bounded (the range of values is bounded), though Natural shouldn't have an upper bound
6. Enum (values can be enumerated)
7. Num (values are numbers)
8. Real (values are real numbers)
9. Integral (values are integral numbers)

• Random (values can be randomly generated); and
• Ix (values can used as array indices)

18 Jul 2005

Renovation in Progress

I'm about one third of the way through the rewrite of the system so far, this time using doing the job properly (checking that there aren't too many or too few of anything in particular, that the numbers all agree, etc). Even if they had no other worth, the clarity that the monadic approach lends to code (parsing and error handling at the moment) more than justifies the presence of monads in Haskell.

I expect to have the system into a fairly robust state in the next day or two after which I'll knock together a small test suite (De Morgan's Laws, a bunch of tautologies and the like) and then move on. I hope to have the features required to implement K finished well within two weeks.

If anyone knows of a way to define a hypergraph inductively, please drop a note in the comments. If I can't find such a representation then I'm going to have a hard time supporting ternary and higher relations.

18 Jul 2005

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Based on some of the fan fiction out there (already), it sounds like Harry winds up with Ginny in book six. It's quite lucky that I've been "spoiled" as I was going to buy it tomorrow and I certainly don't want to waste money on it if that is the direction canon is going.

18 Jul 2005

Dr. Seuss on Parser Monads

Dr. Seuss on Parser Monads

17 Jul 2005

New Books

I've just bought two new books: Freakonomics and Purely Functional Data Structures.

I'll read PFDS fairly immediately (as I'm hoping it'll help me with my honours project), but I've got a feeling the Freakonomics is going to have to wait a while.

17 Jul 2005

Female Vampire Associates

I'm not sure how recent a development it is, but there certainly seem to be a fair (and growing) number of books out there with female main characters who "associate" with vampires and the supernatural. Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Tanya Huff's Vicki Nelson, Kelley Armstrong's Paige Winterbourne, Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse, the list goes on (though I can't think of any more off hand).

This type of book focuses on a female main character who is dragged into (or perhaps is already a part of) the seedy underworld of the supernatural. Some of these books (the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series for example) have a gritty, realistic edge to them: the more or less human characters are caught up in a whirlwind of violence and death managing to survive only by chance, by the sufferance of monsters, or (by the skin of their teeth) by their own abilities.

Others of this genre (the Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries for example) sport a softer, less harshly-realistic look at the denizens of the night and their associates. Sporting just as many fatalities, these books offer a lighter, more accessible and more palatable read.

I've only read the first two Sookie Stackhouse books, but I found them more enjoyable, if slightly less intense, than the Anita Blake books. If you like the Hamilton, Huff or Armstrong's books, you'll probably enjoy Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries.

17 Jul 2005

Apple - iTunes - Podcasting

Apple - iTunes - Podcasting

14 Jul 2005

Pieta by Haruno Nanane

I love Lililicious. They have done translations of some great manga and Pieta is, in my opinion, one of the best of those. If you are looking for a nice (if a little angsty) shoujo-ai story, Pieta might be worth a download.

Download a scanlation from Lililicious or go find it on Amazon Japan.

12 Jul 2005

A Delay or Murphy Strikes

I've just had to take my iBook in to The Mac Shop to get its charger (or perhaps the power regulation circuitry) fixed as it no longer wants to charge.

Unfortunately, this means that I'm unable to do any work for the next few days and may not get as much as I'd like done before my return to Canberra.

10 Jul 2005

Parsing and Patterns

The logic compiler generates Haskell code to implement a calculus. This includes a data-type to represent formulae, a function to resolve those formulae into sub-formulae, functions to format them for output, miscellaneous utility functions and a parser to parse formulae in the language the calculus operates with. As the code stands currently, the logic language allows the user to define operators with arbitrary arity and fixity. One might, if one were of a mind, define a 4-fix # operator with an arity of 3. A formula with such an operator might look like:

α1 α2 α3 # α4

As the code stands, the generated parser is built using the buildExpressionParser facility of the Parsec parser library. Unfortunately, buildExpressionParser is only capable of handling expression languages with unary prefix, binary infix and unary postfix operators, meaning that we can't generate parsers for all calculi that can be defined with our language.

To fix this, I'm going to have to write a more general expression parser generator (hopefully using buildExpressionParser as a base) that can handle operators of arbitrary arity and fixity. Either that, restrict the system to only unary and binary operators which would make implementing some [conceivable] logics very difficult, if not impossible.

On the other hand, buildExpressionParser has greatly simplified the pattern handling code in the compiler. In our language (which is so simple as to not need a name), we define rules such as:

Resolve "a->b" to "~a" or "b".

The patterns (the bits in quote marks) are formulae using the operators of the calculus, with arbitrary alphabetic names for variables (which can stand for any sub-formula - we can make no distinction at this point between sub-formulae and propositions as I haven't got round to implementing that yet). Our compiler generates at run time a parser for the formulae of the calculus and uses it to parse the rule patterns and generate appropriate snippets of code which we use for pattern-matching in the Haskell code implementing the calculus. For example, the rule above would be translated to the Haskell code

resolve (Impl a b) = Or [(Neg a), b]

Once we've parsed the pattern and generated a function, we get the pattern matching at run-time for free from Haskell.

10 Jul 2005

Hmmmm

I'm currently sitting in an Internet cafe in Launceston, which hasn't changed in the nearly eight months I've been away. It'll be good to get back to Canberra though.

10 Jul 2005

Cool Things That'll Help

In the cool things that will help implement this project, the Haskell Hierarchical Libraries contain a Graph library which supports querying the existence a path between specified nodes, just what I'll need to implement box rules.

Another cool thing I need to look at more is the definition of "a monad for stateful non-deterministic computations" in the All About Monads tutorial.

I need to learn more about monad transformers.

09 Jul 2005

Done! or It's A Start!

Last night (or, more correctly, this morning) I constructed a model: ~a, b for the formulae: ~a, a∨b using only the tableau framework and an automatically generated implementation of the propositional calculus:

Tableau> prove [Neg (Prop "a"), Disj (Prop "a") (Prop "b")]
Model [b,~a]

Now all I have to do is fix the bugs, extend what's there to labelled tableau and test it all. :-)

03 Jul 2005

I can do it, I can do it...

The system is nearly to the stage where I can write the propositional logic in it. I've been held up by a bit of trouble writing the code to generate a formula parser from the definitions of the logical operators. Once that is written, I need to modify it slightly (to generate a parser, rather than generate code to generate a parser) to parse the rule patterns, and logic compiler will be finished.

Then it'll need a Makefile (or something similar) to link a logic with the tableau engine (the simple, unlabelled version of it is finished), and we'll be finished with this initial stage of development.

27 Jun 2005

Stupid QANTAS

I've been flying with Virgin Blue since they started and if I had any lingering doubts about returning to QANTAS, this past weekend has resolved them. The only problem that flying with Virgin Blue causes is that they only fly into Launceston, a two hour drive from home. To make it easier, I decided to fly QANTAS into Devenport instead. I will not be making the same mistake again.

I caught a taxi to the airport at 12:10 and checked in to find that my flight had been cancelled, but I'd be able to get the next flight after that and still make my connection. This was fine with me, it just meant I'd be spending the hour wait at Canberra instead of Melbourne. We landed in Melbourne at 14:25 (the time my next flight was supposed to start boarding) and I rushed to the departures screen to determine which gate my next flight departed from, only to find that it too had been cancelled.

I eventually found a customer service desk with staff and discovered that, yet again, I'd have to catch a later flight. In an attempt, I suppose, to make up for some of the inconvenience they gave me a voucher to get a meal. Melbourne airport is a particularly boring place, though the numerous and frequent announcements about delayed, rescheduled, redirected, reassigned and cancelled flights did keep me (and the throngs of other affected passengers) somewhat entertained.

At the end of the day, QANTAS got me to Devenport more than three and a half hours later than my itinerary (booked not three days previous) stated, thereby inconveniencing myself and my family and resolving any doubt in my mind as to whether I'd be returning to QANTAS.

At the other end of the spectrum, the QANTAS ground and cabin crew were pleasant and helpful. It's a pity their logistics aren't as good as their service.

27 Jun 2005

Incremental Development

Incremental development is fun. I've just added support for branching as required to implement the disjunction and implication rules of my propositional calculus and it's been quite interesting to see just how easy a functional programming language makes with sort of exploratory approach to design and development.

Once I've got this up and running (all I need to do is add a check for contradiction), I'll refactor it to be a little neater, write a parser and generator that supports all of the features and get an initial, pre-alpha, demonstration version posted.

Hopefully that'll be in the next two or three days.

24 Jun 2005

Reusing Throwaway Code

I've just had my first go at writing a monad, and it's harder than it would seem. As a result of my moderately dismal failure, I've decided to go back and actually read the monads sections of the various Haskell tutorials (the Gentle Introduction, Yet Another Haskell Tutorial, and anything else I find laying around on my hard disc). I've just been looking at Yet Another Haskell Tutorial and the section on computations (Section 8.4.2 in the PDF) defines a small graph library which might be a useful starting point when I need to start dealing with transitive, Euclidean and even more bizarre frames and rules with conditions on them.

In one section, I get some [hopefully] usable code, and a better understanding of monads.

24 Jun 2005

Another Night's Worth of Code

I've just finished the first major part of my first step along the road to [real] implementation: I now have a working type for propositional calculus, a simple representation of a tableau branch, can saturate said branch (modulo the rules which branch) and generate a model (which is simply a list of literals at this point).

Next, I need to extend this tableau implementation to support branching and then complete the logic with correct rules for branching connectives (disjunction and implication). Once that is done, I'll rewrite my language parser and code generator so that I can actually generate this implementation of the propositional calculus from the definition.

Once that is done, I'll move on to the basic propositional modal logic: K. Getting K to work will require that I implement labels, relations and extend my language so that it can import and extend existing logics. Once that is done, I'll move onto a more complex modal logic (perhaps S4) before tackling intuitionistic logic (which uses two-part labels).

23 Jun 2005

The Trees Deserve It

I ordered another book today: Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki.

I downloaded a PDF of his PhD thesis (PDF, 616K) and had a brief flick through. It looks as though some of the structures will be just what I need. One of the main differences (that I am aware of) between the thesis and the book is that the book includes the source code in both ML and Haskell, whereas the thesis only uses ML. The book will, therefore, be of a lot more use to me than the thesis and at less than $AU70, it'll hardly break the bank.

23 Jun 2005

I'm on my Way...

The mid-semester holiday starts, for me, when I submit my second report for Milestone Papers in Computing, that is, tomorrow morning. Rather than spend the next few weeks in cold, wet Canberra, I'm going to wet, cold Tasmania.

While I'm there, my Internet access will be rather limited and I hope, in-spite (or perhaps because of) this, to get a lot of work done on my honours project.

23 Jun 2005

[Haskell-cafe] Re: Using type classes for polymorphism of data constructors

Re: Using type classes for polymorphism of data constructors

A message on the Haskell-cafe mailing list gives an alternative (better, even) approach to the polymorphism of formulae using differential types. It works just as well as my solution, and results in much more complex (and therefore complete) types:

Main> :t (Impl (Prop "p") (Poss (Prop "p")))Impl (Prop "p") (Poss (Prop "p")) :: PC2 PC0 (Modal1 PC0)

I'm not yet sure which route I'll take. My approach results in a single data type (PC, Modal, etc) for each language, which is good, but the types don't mean much and it isn't Haskell-98 (or, at least, Hugs won't load it as such). Ralf's approach also works, the types is assigns formulae contain more information and it is Haskell-98.

I'll probably wind up using a version based on Ralf's example, unless I run into problems.

23 Jun 2005

Goals: the Motivation of Procrastination

So far, I have:

• written a parser for my logic definition language;
• solved the problem I was having with polymorphism;
• designed, in the large, my data structures; and
• thought about name for the project.

• define a state monad (to model the saturation of a branch);
• define a backtracking monad (to model the branching of non-deterministic choices);
• find a way to compose them (perhaps by deriving a monad transformer);
• finalise the structure of the logic modules;
• write a realistic (perhaps even production) parser and code generator for the logics;
• learn to use hs-plugins to write dynamically loadable modules (and find a way to make logic modules dynamically loadable); and
• implement some representative test logics (propositional calculus, K, intuitionistic logic, something with transitive frames, etc).

23 Jun 2005

Deriving Backtracking Monad Transformers

I started reading Deriving Backtracking Monad Transformers, by Ralf Hinze, this afternoon (or, rather, yesterday afternoon). It's already been valuable, though that was more of a side effect.

I've haven't read too much of it yet, but I've been able to understand what I have read, which means either

• I'm learning; or
• Hinze is a good writer; or
• deriving backtracking monad transformers is simple.

23 Jun 2005

A4 paper format / International standard paper sizes

A4 paper format / International standard paper sizes by Markus Kuhn.

I just checked a PDF to see if I'd be able to print it and needed to find which paper size is 216 mm wide by 279 mm tall. A quick Google returned the page linked above. It includes an explanation of the ISO paper size standard, points out the regularity of the ISO sizes, their relation to other ISO units and the utility of such regularities.

It also explains just how brain-damaged the North American formats really are. I hadn't realised that North Americans can't enlarge documents properly as their paper sizes have several height to width ratios. I also didn't realise just how wide spread the ISO paper sizes are. According to Kuhn, the United States of America, Canada and Mexico are the only industrialised nations which don't use the ISO sizes widely.

I just wish that all the papers, books and theses that they produce came as A4 formatted PDFs.

22 Jun 2005

There is no spoon

Today's NotYASS session is entitled The Matrix as metaphysics. According to the blurb, we'll be discussing the various bits and pieces of work about the matrix as reality, the likelihood of this being the matrix, how one ought to live given that this is probably a simulation, etc.

Some of the papers on this topic (many can be found at www.simulation-argument.com) are quite interesting and many of them specific to The Matrix require surprisingly little prior knowledge.

Sounds like it'll be fun.

22 Jun 2005

The Matrix is in the Eye of the Beholder

The NotYASS session on the Matrix was interesting. A lot of people (or, rather, more than usual) showed up, including a lot of philosophers (from RSSS and the Department of Philosophy I suppose). There wasn't much more than the various points, arguments and objections raised in the various papers at www.simulation-argument.com, but the discussion was interesting.

I'll be missing the next session (I think it's been cancelled anyway due to a conference or some such), but there are a few more philosophical topics scheduled for the next few session after that. They should be interesting if nothing else.

22 Jun 2005

Polymorphism and Generality Redux; or The Beneficial Side Effects of Reading

I've started looking at how to code my backtracking monad (the framework that will provide the branching, failure, etc within which the tableau method for each logic will be implemented). To try to get a handle on the subject, I've started looking at Deriving Backtracking Monad Transformers by Ralf Hinze.

Section 3 of the paper defines an abnormal termination (i.e. exceptions) monad and 3.1 begins to define a transformer to extend an arbitrary monad with exceptions. As part of this, it uses an existentially quantified type variable in the definition of a type constructor (for :>>=). Needless to say, the similarity to my previous attempts to make polymorphic formulae was obvious.

Although I'm still, by any meaningful standard, a Haskell novice and haven't looked at this extension before, I've managed to extend that example (by restricting the type variable to members of my Formula type class) and Hey, Presto! I can now create polymorphic types representing my inter-mixable logical languages.

As an example, I've got a type PC for the propositional calculus, and a type < span style="font-family: monospace;" >Modal for alethic modal logic. The connectives of each language can take formulae of either type (or both) as parameters, and everything Just Works^TM.

Polymorphism, they way it was intended.

21 Jun 2005

Death, Jr.

Death, Jr.

I've just read issue two of Death, Jr. and it is even better than the first. Ted Naihef's art is brilliant; the contrast between Death (Jr.'s dad) and the rest of their suburban existence if wonderful.

Run out and grab a copy now, you [probably] won't be disappointed.

[Edit: Issue #2 got a fairly bad review at Comics Should Be Good. I agree with everything said there, but I still liked it.]

20 Jun 2005

Word of the Day

Today's Word of the Day is: unbosom.

20 Jun 2005

Finding the Muse

Finding the Muse

Recently I've been on a Harry Potter fan fiction trip. Specifically, I've been revisiting my fascination with Pumpkin Pie, or the Harry and Hermione "ship". While it has been wonderful rereading some of my favourite stories, I've also discovered some brilliant new stories.

Finding the Muse is, while not strictly speaking Pumpkin Pie, one such gem. While lots of Harry/Hermione stories have plots reminiscent of Days of our Lives, Eastenders or Home and Away, this is a truly wonderful story that explores an aspect of Harry Potter's world that I, for one, had never even considered but not seems glaringly obvious: the lack of music.

I'm sure that echoes of Finding the Muse will be appearing in my thoughts and writing on Harry Potter for a long while.

18 Jun 2005

MegaTokyo - [724] already broken

MegaTokyo - [724] already broken

17 Jun 2005

Stupid Blinking Lights

I have never liked strobing lights. From flashing on the TV screen, to lights at clubs, flashing lights make me uncomfortable. I doubt that it is photosensitive epilepsy.

Lately, I've been irritated by the banner adds for the US Green Card Lottery (or whatever it is called). For some reason, someone has decided that a large blinking red/yellow block would be the best way to advertise the Green Card Lottery (which, in my opinion, has to be the single stupidest way to manage an immigration system).

I'm not sure if it has effected any photosensitive epileptics, but it sure as hell shits me off something chronic!

16 Jun 2005

Meta-post: Inward Links.

Wow, this blog has been mentioned in both Consequently (Greg Restall's blog) and That Logic Blog (Jon Cohen's blog).

Now I'll just have to get some meaningful posts up.

11 Jun 2005

Polymorphism and Generality

One of the main goals of this project, to my mind at least, is generality. The prover must be easily extendable with support for a wide range (ideally, the entire range) of labelled tableaux calculi. Furthermore, it ought to be possible to define new logics as extensions to existing logics: propositional modal logic, for example, is an extension of the propositional calculus to support two new operators: ◇ and □.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to get determine just how to get this level of flexibility to work under Haskell's type system. I've asked the Haskell-cafe mailing list for pointers and, in the mean time, have moved on to doing this composition in the compiler for my mini-language rather than in the generated Haskell code.

Hopefully, I'll get this to work as it will be quite useful and, unless I'm mistaken, interesting.

11 Jun 2005

Hello, I'll be your host tonight as we play...

Name that Project...

My project is in need of a name. Rather than give it an acronym, I've been trying to think of a name at least somewhat relevant to the topic at hand and my approach. I'm currently thinking about "Vindaloo" with the rather tenuous link being Haskell Curry and that the project will, I hope, be pretty hot (for some definition). "Vindaloo," though, doesn't have all that much to do with modal logic.

Names have never been a strong point of mine (I still don't know the names of many of the people I've seen and talked to every day this year), so I'll take this opportunity to solicit suggestions: If you can think of a name for a labelled tableaux theorem prover written in the Haskell programming language please leave your suggestions in a comment, or email them to me at: thsutton at gmail dot com.

10 Jun 2005

Parsing stuff in Haskell

I've just started looking parsing in Haskell with Parsec. After a few hours of reading and poking at examples, I've got a prototype working

10 Jun 2005

Parsing stuff in Haskell

I've just started looking parsing in Haskell with Parsec. After a few hours of reading the documentation (PDF, 424K)and poking at the examples, I've managed to hack together a parser for my little language.

Only a few hours after I started looking at Parsec, I've got a prototype which generates code in an abstract syntax suitable for passing to a semantics checker and code generator (the system will generate Haskell from specs written in my DSL, which is then linked against some infrastructure). Very cool. Haskell is great for my productivity.

10 Jun 2005

Data Structures

I'm getting to the point where I'll have to start thinking about the data structures used to implement my tableaux. They need to be as small as possible and allow fast membership testing and updating. As my current goal is to accept a formula to prove and produce either a counter-model or a "yes" as output. As such, I will only ever need access to those parts of the tree on the path from the current node, to the root. The tree is, essentially, the progress of the computation backtracking over time.

As such, I'm looking forward to trying to write the run-time (once I've finished figuring out how the logic-specific code the DSL will be transformed into will work). It will require a bit of input handling (in the IO monad), parsing (in the Parser monad) and backtracking (in some backtracking monad) along with some state (perhaps a State monad, perhaps built into the backtracking monad) and a whole bunch of lazy computation (the actual tableau rules).

Unless I am overlooking something (I'm sure I am and I imagine that Raj and Pietro agree), my main data structure will be...
a list. The main rationale behind this decision (rather than trying to build some sort of tree structure, or some bizarre nested set-like structure) is that, as I'm merely trying to build a model, the tree itself is expressed in the computation (or, rather, its backtracking). Furthermore, as I'm working with labelled tableaux (with an explicit modal relation), all I need to construct a model once I've found an open branch is the list of formulæ (and relations) from the end of that branch, to the root of the tree.

In Haskell, lists act like (and probably are) singly linked lists of cons cells with a pointer to the item, and one to the rest of the list. This means that you can add stuff to the front of a list without modifying the original list. This is rather helpful as it means that we can add junk onto one end of a list, which is what we'll be doing with tableaux (adding things to the end of the branch), and you can have multiple lists sharing the same tail (to give an right-way-up tree structure, like an upside-down tableau or a sequent proof). As we're going to be doing backtracking (because we can through away everything we don't need to write a model), and we've got a ready-made tree structure that can be extended at the leaves, there is a very simple way to code it all up: as a monad (for the backtracking) over the list pointers.

Using a monad (probably a MonadPlus) to implement backtracking will allow us to express branching naturally (using mzero "fail" on branch closure and mplus to do the "branching" evaluation) and if we add in a little state to each branch (a pointer to the current head of the list, for instance) we have a backtracking model search procedure. All that remains is to implement it (no doubt discovering that my understanding of monads is completely wrong) and find out which mountains I need to move to get this approach to work for the non-simple case...

10 Jun 2005

Advice, Suggestions and Supervision

I've just had a talk with Pietro about my project and directions in which I might move it. Pietro's PhD project (the Tableaux Work Bench) is written in OCaml (an eager functional programming language) and works with implicit tableaux. My Honours project (which needs a name, suggestions are welcome) is written in Haskell (a lazy, pure functional language) and works with labelled tableaux.

In spite of these differences, the projects are quite similar and Pietro's advice and suggestions are going to be invaluable. In our meeting, we discussed the data structures I am planning on using which has helped solidify my thoughts, which I shall write up and post this evening.

09 Jun 2005

"That's Dr. Rex to you, buddy"

That's Dr. Rex to you, buddy

One person present during the defense described it as if I were “chasing five motherf***ers down the street with a baseball bat in my underwear.”

Sounds... spirited.

08 Jun 2005

Web 2.0

I've been playing with some of the tools that people are talking about when they mention the Web 2.0 or, at least, the current day ancestors of those future systems:

CafeSpot
del.icio.us
Tag Cloud
CiteULike

08 Jun 2005

Neil Gaiman - Stardust

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

After fighting a losing battle against procrastination this morning, I went into town and came back with a few more books to add to my collection (Dymocks are having a sale). Amongst them, was Stardust by Neil Gaiman. After the slight disappointment of The Gene of Isis (which I plan to finish next week), I've been pleased to note that Stardust is a quite pleasant read. The first few dozen pages dragged me in whilst I was eating dinner and, hence I have been unable to give the notes for Software Quality Management (the exam I have tomorrow) one last read over.

The characters, what I've seen of them so far, are nice but the most enjoyable aspect of the book (at this point in time) is the language. The Gaiman's prose simply flows off the page. This really, really needs to be an audio book, read by someone like Stephen Fry.

Do yourself a favour and read Stardust.

08 Jun 2005

More on The Gene of Isis

Yesterday, I began reading The Gene of Isis by Traci Harding.

I've just finished reading part one of The Gene of Isis and, I must say, I am slightly disappointed. I began the book hoping that Harding would manage to avoid some of the more cloying "New Age" themes in her earlier works, but soon enough the mischievous elemental spirits emerged (if only in mention) accompanied with the various psychic and auric phenomena of the Indic tradition (if I recall my New Age hype correctly) so popular amongst the New Age community.

Part one is set in 19th century England. The main character Ashlee Granville is a young woman with psychic abilities having to deal with "coming out" into high society and the attendant problems, such as marrying, that confront her. While the characters mannerisms and dialogue have a tinge of the formality characteristic of the era, I still get the impression of a certain modernity, especially with respect to Ashlee. Perhaps a more formal turn of phrase, circumlocutious though it might be, would lend the story an air more appropriate to a story set in such times.

Disappointing though these points are (especially Harding's approach to the mystical, which is difficult to credit as anything other than a kowtow toward the popular New Age movement), the tale is well-told; the premise, intriguing; and the characters, especially Ashlee, engaging.

If you can bring yourself to brave the New Age elements of the story (or perhaps have enjoyed Harding's other stories, especially The Alchemist's Key and The Ancient Future Trilogy) then I would heartily recommend reading The Gene of Isis. If, on the other hand, the more popularist New Age approach to the supernatural makes you cringe, perhaps you'd better pass this one over and save yourself $AU29.95.

07 Jun 2005

Fantasy Books

The Gene of Isis by Traci Harding, published by Voyager

I've just started reading Traci Harding's latest book: The Gene of Isis and it looks like it'll be another great read. While I loved The Ancient Future Trilogy and The Alchemist's Key, her other books The Celestial Triad left me feeling somewhat disenchanted (what with the miasma of "New Age" that permeates those books), so much so that I didn't bother reading Ghostwriting or Book of Dreams.

Happily her latest work, if the rest of the book is at all like the first few pages, seems to have taken a less grating approach to the supernatural. The prologue, an entry from the journal of a character, has about it a charm reminiscent, to my mind at least, of the era in which it is set. The odd turn of phrase seems a little too modern, but the overall effect is most pleasing.

If you like fantasy, and are not averse to a bit of incarnation-hopping, then I'd thoroughly recommend giving Traci Harding a read.

05 Jun 2005

About Labelled Tableaux

On this blog I will chronicle the work on my Honours project in computer science: developing a system to construct counter-models for non-theorems of modal logics. This system will be a small theorem prover based on tableaux, written in Haskell.

I will link to relevant papers and technical reports, technical details which I encounter whilst coding, material that I make available to download, and anything else in the slightest bit relevant to the topic at hand.

31 May 2005

Spam - The Other Pink Gelatinous Substance

I just received a spam (regarding lifestyle medication) with the following as its filter-avoidance random text...

I like the word 'indolence.' it makes my laziness seem classy.
Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind
What's another word for Thesaurus?
Money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life.

28 May 2005

Tomb of Thomas Sutton

Tomb of Thomas Sutton

28 May 2005

Science Fiction...

A while back, I bought a novel on impulse (it was cheap). To my surprise (and delight) it turned out to be the first space opera I've bought that was actually good. If you're looking for an interesting story, with an intriguing cast of characters, then I'd highly recommend Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon.

28 May 2005

Finally...

My copy of CTM as finally arrived. It's only been 45 days since I ordered it.

On a similar note, a number of comic books I've ordered have arrived at Impact Comics which, on top of my recently ordered iMac, means that I'm going to be very broke for the foreseeable future. When it rains it pours...

26 May 2005

Google

I'm currently reading up on Google so that I can prepare my presentation on The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Brin and Page. This paper describes the original implementation of the Google search engine (originally http://google.stanford.edu, but that is now Stanford's search engine, powered by Google though it may be).

I'm going to try to cover the original Google architecture described in the paper, and then move on to some more modern material from the Google File System and MapReduce papers, though I'm not sure how much detail I'll be able to give.

Depending on how useful they wind up being, I might put my report and slides on-line.

24 May 2005

Work for Idle Hands

After a meeting with my supervisor, I've decided that this week is the last straw - if I can't manage to get a handle on my pile of assignments this week, then I obviously don't want to be here right now. I had a bit of a go at some of it last night and seemed to get on all right.

If I can finish my report on neural networks by tonight, read the Google papers (the original paper and that on map-reduce) and get a good way through the first algorithms assignment tomorrow, I think I'll get there.

24 May 2005

Well that was interesting...

I've just been poking at my iPod mini's innards (in the software sense) and had a bit of a scare. It started when my quitting iTunes somehow managed to knacker something or other causing iTunes to crash on start-up, without fail. After a few attempts to fix it (including nuking my playlists, damn it!), I unplugged my iPod, and iTunes started working again.

Mystified, I started poking around in the iPod volume on the shell and, let me tell you, it is a lot more interesting from the command line. In Finder, all you can see are the Calendars, Contacts and Notes folders. From the command line, you get all sorts of junk ('Desktop DB' and 'Desktop DF', the spotlight index, .Trashes, etc) including a folder called iPod_Control. In iPod_Control, there is all sorts of interesting stuff including the music files themselves (in 'iPod_Control/Music/') and some miscellaneous data (in 'iPod_Control/iTunes/').

Nuking 'iPod_Control/iTunes/' had the effect of fixing my problem, with the side effect of making iTunes (and perhaps the iPod, I didn't check) unaware of the music on my iPod. I won't have time for a while, but I'm going to have to poke around in there some more...

22 May 2005

Procrastination...

I can't help but wonder if my current bout of procrastination is self sabotage. Perhaps, deep down, I don't want to be a computer scientist?

20 May 2005

How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest

[physics/0505071] How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and

19 May 2005

I'm Still Waiting...

I'm not sure what the hold-up is, but I am still waiting for my copy of Types and Programming Languages. I do wish they'd hurry it up a little.

In other, some what related (in the sense that is also involves an order), news I gave in to my primitive, lustful urges and ordered a 20-inch iMac.

In even more, ..., news some of the books I've had on order came in today. I have in my hot little hands (read: hot little desk), Ojo and Breakfast After Noon.

14 May 2005

Speaking

It's 2152 on Saturday, and I've just spoken my fourth word for the weekend (In case anyone cares, the were two 'hello's, a 'thanks' and a 'cheers'). One day, I'm going to see just how long I can go without speaking (to another person, as I can't help but speak to myself).

13 May 2005

The Logic of Communicating Processes

I saw a talk by Professor Robin Cockett last night on the topic of The logic of communicating processes. I've just finished making a post to Lambda the Ultimate about the talk and related papers, so hopefully we'll see some interesting discussion.

08 May 2005

Clublife

Clublife

07 May 2005

The Cost of Dead Trees

I've just been reading a bit of CTM. As I often do, I've used the receipt as a book mark (primarily because the bookshop staff put the receipt in the book when I ask them not to put my purchases in a bag).

CTM cost me, after the Co-op members discount, $97. The Revised Haskell 98 Report cost me $108. I'm sure there is some obtuse economic explanation involving economies of scale and the like, but it seems fairly counter intuitive that a book that is over 900 pages long is cheaper than one with less than 300.

The cost of books in general, and academic texts in particular, is (in my opinion) revolting.

05 May 2005

Azumanga Daioh

I got the first volume of ADV Manga's translation of Azumanga Daioh today and, having just read about half of it, I much prefer the scanlations to the licensed product. Why can't the American companies that buy the rights to translate anime and manga into English resist the urge to re-interpret the characters and their lines?

We buy anime and manga precisely because we want to read Japanese comics and watch Japanese animations. The horrible, grating, little changes that ADV Manga made to make the book more palatable to an American audience (i.e. to dumb it down) mean that I'll not likely buy another book from ADV Manga. I'd rather buy books from Japan and download scanlations from the 'net than give my money to butchers...

04 May 2005

Grice and Implication in Conversation

There was a meeting of NotYASS (Not Yet Another Seminar Series) tonight, this time with the topic of: 'Implicature and conversational meaning. Christian Rau began by talking a bit about communication in general before explaining the basics of Grice's account of communication (his maxims).

It led to an interesting discussion covering a range of topics, from the utility of the maxims, the difference between maxims and axioms, a rather large number of examples, various conditional operators (material, strict, Lewis/Stalnacker and intuitionistic) and the implications of/for AI.

A very interesting discussion.

03 May 2005

Problems, problems, problems...

I had a meeting with my supervisor today and thought that I'd better raise some of the issues I've been having. Basically, what it all boils down to is motivation, or rather a lack there of. If one took all of the time I've spent working on my honours project, my coursework and attending lectures, labs and tutorials over the last 2 months or so, it would not amount to a full week.

After a long talk with my supervisor, we've come up with a plan to, hopefully, get me back on track. I've unsubscribed from the mailing lists and turned off my email notifications on the sites that have been distracting me lately, we're considering a new project (one that I started hacking on during the mid-semester break to avoid working on my official project) and I'm going to see the honours convenor about an extension on the big assignment due this Friday that I haven't started yet.

It would be better not to be in this position at all, but I am and I feel a lot better about it now that I've spoken to someone, and have a plan of attack.

Thanks R! (Who doesn't read this, as far as I'm aware.)

03 May 2005

Mac OS X Tiger

Apple - Mac OS X

I've just installed Tiger on my iBook and, I must say, some of the new features are great. The RSS support in Safari is very nice (now I don't need a separate news aggregator), Dashboard is quite nice and Spotlight has already been useful. I'm not sure I like all of the changes to Mail (when you "wrap" to the next most recent message when paging through them with spacebar, it remembers the old position in the next message instead of going to the top), but I think I can get used to them.

All in all, I feel that it was well worth the investment, and I've only been playing with it for an hour or two. I'll get some more fiddling done when Monolingual finishes removing all the useless translation data from the newly installed stuff. With Panther, I saved about 750MB by removing all the languages I don't need (i.e. all of them but the various English variants), with Tiger it was just over 1GB.

(On the down side, it looks like I'm going to have to get some more RAM. Dashboard, spotlight and everything else can't be cheap to keep in memory.)

30 Apr 2005

[Even More] Books, Glorious [Even More] Books

I picked up Practical Common Lisp from the Co-op Bookshop yesterday. Looks promising.

Now all I'm waiting for is Types and Programming Languages (at the Co-op Bookshop) and a bunch of comics (at Impact Comics).

Now I have four books to read...
Plus numerous papers...
I pity my eyes.

25 Apr 2005

Freakonomics

Freakonomics

25 Apr 2005

Coming Back

I got back to Canberra this morning, after 10 days in Tasmania. Now that I'm back, I can't remember having actually done anything during the time. Sure, I read (logic papers mainly), wrote (notes on said papers and Z specification for an assignment), saw (a younger sibling's primary school sports carnival), and did (helped take some stuff to the rubbish dump) some stuff, but not 10 days worth of stuff. On the other hand, it was good to catch up with my family and my friends in Launceston.

Why does Canberra's airport shuttle bus not run on weekends and public holidays? If Launceston airport has enough traffic to make public holiday airport runs worth the operators while, I don't see how Canberra cannot.

In a similar manner, I don't see why so much stuff is closed here in Canberra. I've just got back from town and everything (with the exception of a few cafes) is shut. Even the supermarket. Strange city...

25 Apr 2005

Books (and Comics), Glorious Books (and Comics)

I've just got back from Tasmania (visiting my family and friends). With me, I've bought the rest of my comics collection. The first 18 volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub have certainly helped fill up my book case. When you throw in the rest of my books (novels, texts, references and popular sciences) and my CD and DVD collection, I need more shelf space. The only problem is that there is nowhere to put a book case. I suppose I'll just have to make do.

Returning to comics, I've just added 6 books to my list of things to order, which is both good ("New comics. Yay!") and bad ("Where did that $100 go?!?"). Most of them are books by Andi Watson. Looks like I'll soon have all of Watson's releases, or at least the trade paperbacks of them.

On the books front, CTM (or more completely: Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi) has come in. I'm going to pick it up tomorrow, but it'll be a while before I can start reading it (what with the million and one things I have to do in the next week or so).

14 Apr 2005

Books, Glorious Books

One field of Computer Science I am particularly interested in is programming languages. In a probably futile attempt to speed my learning in this area, I ordered a few books from The Coop Bookshop the other day. I chose the books based on the various recommendation on the Lambda the Ultimate weblog forums (adjusted by price, availability, and recency of publishing).

After a bit of um-ing and ah-ing, I finally settled on Benjamin Pierce's Types and Programming Languages, Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp and Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi.

That's a bit of $300-worth of books, so I hope to get around to reading them at some point between when they arrive (somewhere between a week and a month away, I imagine) and the end of the year.

Suggestions of other books suitable for beginners in the areas of type systems, programming language theory, and related fields are most welcome in the comments.

11 Apr 2005

A Comics Update

Notes on a few new comics including Nightmares & Fairy Tales, Courtney Crumrin, and Gloom Cookie.

10 Apr 2005

Dirt Cheap

Dirt Cheap by Elisabeth Wynhausen

I've just finished reading Dirt Cheap, a book detailing the author's attempt to live on the minimum wage. A well written and engaging book, it has reinforced exactly how revolting Australia (and Australians) are. Some of the statistics included (and referenced in the end notes) are truly disturbing:

• Not only does Australia have the third highest quality of life, but also the third highest percentage of people living below the poverty line.
• One in five families is jobless, including more than 660,000 children

09 Apr 2005

Cultural Pollution

I've been reading quite a bit of fan fiction recently and it has caused me to ponder cultural pollution. A lot of the stories I have read recently have been for fandoms with a non-American background. In spite of stories being set in the UK and with a cast of characters from the UK, many of these stories are littered with Americanisms, some of which indicate an alarming lack of knowledge about the rest of the world.

I have encountered time and again such terms as 'college' for a university, 'freshmen' for students (of some variety), 'sidewalks' for footpaths, 'trash cans' for rubbish bins, 'cable' for pay television, etc. The ways in which American usage has diverged from the rest of the English speaking world (i.e. the Commonwealth) never ceases to amaze me. That I encounter so many stories in which allegedly British (or Australian, New Zealander, etc) characters utilise the language in ways that I'm not sure they would even understand makes me wonder just how one sided the "pollution" is. Just how much the average American (or more correctly, the average American fan fiction writer) knows about the world outside the USA.

In some cases (such as 'cable', 'trash can' and 'sidewalk') the slips can be forgiven as the authors unfamiliarity with what amounts to foreign usage. In other cases though (especially 'freshmen', 'seniors', etc and 'college') such terms are not just "out of character", they can be plain wrong. In one story, a character described a class at Oxford as being "college freshmen" in spite of the facts that the character probably wouldn't know what 'freshmen' meant in any more than the most general sense and that using the word 'college' in reference to a collegiate university is not only contrary to usage, but so ambiguous as to be wrong.

Is such ignorance endemic to the US? Is the flow of culture so one sided that they do not realise that we speak differently? Perhaps they simply do not care? What ever the case, I find myself agreeing with Jacques Chirac and those like him: measures must be taken to protect other cultures from being overwhelmed. We must not allow our differences in usage, the peculiarities that help to give character to our language, be subsumed by the behemoth that is American English. Our idiosyncrasies, our peculiarities, our divergences are part of what make us who we are, as communities. The world, I feel, would be a sadder place without that variety.

On the other hand, you probably don't agree with me.
:-)

08 Apr 2005

Stupid Apple!

As much as I love my iBook, want a iMac and find my iPod handy, I hate Apple. I recently bought a remote control for my iPod. You know, the one that goes in between the ear-phones and the iPod. The one with the clip to conveniently attach it to your clothing so that you can get to it.

As it is designed to be used in a manner that makes it susceptible to the buttons being knocked, the Apple engineers put a hold switch on it, so that you can disable the buttons while not in use. After less than a week of use, the hold switch fell of my iPod remote control. While it was locked. Needless to say, I was a little surprised.

Naively, I took my remote to the Apple store at which I purchased it. After a bit of a wait (they were busy) one of the staff told me that I had to phone Apple and gave me the number. When I phoned Apple, the telephone operator told me (after a while on hold) that I needed to fill in a form on the Apple web site and then take it and the item to be returned to Australia Post (what I do with it then was left as an exercise for the reader). As annoying as this is, I can accept that Apple is a big company and, as such, they need procedures like these to get anything done.

What really shits me off, is that I can't submit the form on the Apple web site because it requires credit card information. I don't have a credit card, I don't want a credit card and if I did have a credit card, I most certainly wouldn't give it to a company in these circumstances.

While I love Apple's computers and find my iPod and Airport Express base station handy, I can't help but be appalled at:

1. the fact that a remote control, a device designed to be carried around, broke after less than a week; and


2. that I need to enter my credit card details to return an item that, as I see it, was not fit for the purpose for which it was sold.

05 Apr 2005

Another interesting post on LtU

programmatic nature of subatomic make up | Lambda the Ultimate

04 Apr 2005

RFC4042: UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode

RFC4042: UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode

I can't tell if this is an April Fools RFC (the probable status) or a genuine proposal that has been misunderstood. It is certainly a far cry from the HTCPCP (Hyper-Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol) RFCs of yore. If nothing else, a nine-bit encoding is an interesting exercise.

04 Apr 2005

Branching Time Temporal Logic

Deciding branching time logic

We've been looking at temporal logics for the last couple of lectures in Software Quality Management which has lead me to think a bit about the semantics of CTL (Computation-time Temporal Logic), primarily because they weren't spelt out in the lectures and the first page of results from Google Scholar didn't look promising.

CTL is a logic used to reason about the characteristics of programmes over time. As such it needs to be able to analyse a particular "run" (i.e. a linear sequence of states). It must also be able to deal with the non-determinism present in many programmes. To do this it must be able to handle branching of the successor relation, i.e. a state having multiple possible successors.

CTL has 4 modal operators: A ("for all paths"), E ("for some path"), F ("sometime") and G ("always"). These four operators are always used in pairs: AF, AG, EF and EG. The AG operator is equivalent to a □ (the box or "necessary" operator) and the EF operator is equivalent to a ◇ (the diamond or "possible" operator).

After a bit of thought, I think I've nearly got the semantics worked out in my head. At interpretation of CTL would be a Kripke frame (some worlds and a relation on them) and a valuation function (giving the truth values for formulæ at worlds). The relation R is irreflexive and non-transitive. The modal operators that handle the branching (A and E) are interpreted with R. The linear-temporal modal operators (F and G) are interpreted with the reflexive and transitive closure of R.

This is the point I have reached. Having written this, I don't think I've fully understood the implications of F and G being linear. I'll need to go through it again. On the plus, this might be useful for my thesis: all I need to do is try to find a natural-looking way to find the correct semantics for CTL, whatever they may be, using counter-models for intended theorems of CTL. It is a fun exercise in any case.

27 Mar 2005

Stanford: Stop Hiring Me (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

Stanford: Stop Hiring Me (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

Holy crap! I wish people would throw jobs like that at me. On the other hand, if they did, I'd probably be even further behind on my course work and research.

15 Mar 2005

God - Isomorphism Lacking

Comments

In the comments on a post (at LtU) about the recent Knuth interview, someone posted a rather amusing reply to a monotheistic comment. It is linked above.

11 Mar 2005

Project Description and Literature Review

We've passed the first milestone in the Honours program: project descriptions and literature reviews were due today. I'm fairly happy with mine. The literature review proper could have been improved, but I'm really happy with the background sections.

Writing it was fun! This is the first piece I've had to write that I've actually enjoyed writing for its own sake (and not for the adrenaline of starting to research an assignment 9 hours before it is due). Trying to describe modal logic and tableau systems concisely was a challenge!

If anyone is interested, I'll post a PDF after I check with my supervisor and the convenor that it is ok to do so.

11 Mar 2005

Past the First Post

Well, I'm past the first post (even if I'm not the first past it): my project description and literature review has been submitted to the Honours convenor. If anyone is interested in reading about counter-model construction in the context of modal tableau systems, leave a comment and I'll post a PDF of it.

The next milestone in the Honours program is the introductory seminar I'll have to give on the 29th (IIRC). I'm going to have to start thinking about that soon.

In the coursework stakes, we've got our first assignment for COMP4100 (Software Quality Management) which is proving some theorems in HOL. It's in pairs, so I'll be doing it with the other Honours student Raj is supervising. I've also got a stack of reading to do to catch up with COMP4710 (AI) and COMP4100 (SQM) and I've got to at least look at the available papers for COMP4200 (Milestone Papers in Computing) before I choose one.

I'm going to be very busy for the rest of this year, I think. If the rest is as fun as this last week has been, I'm going to have a good year.

08 Mar 2005

Megatokyo

Megatokyo: 683 Crazy Talk

I've just caught up with Megatokyo (I'm between bank cards, so I've not been able to put any money on my 'Net account at home) and, for some reason, the last two or three strips have me left me feeling a bit weird. For one, I didn't realise that Largo and Erika were "together" although I suppose playing games together a while back was a bit of a hint. For two, it seems to me (and I'll be way out, due to my social ineptitude) the Largo is being a prick, which makes me sad for Erika.

PS: I've ordered books two and three from the local comic shop, book two is in (and waiting only for me to have access to money) and I hope book three won't be too long.

06 Mar 2005

Animal Farm

George Orwell: Animal Farm

05 Mar 2005

Rush Limbaugh Eats Everything

Rush Limbaugh Eats Everything

05 Mar 2005

Nostalgia (A Sneak Preview)

For some reason, I got the urge to look up some of the people I went to high school with. So far, I haven't been able find a trace of any of them. It's a bit strange when you think about it: some of them have extremely distinctive names and Google doesn't know them. I went back to Bunbury for a few weeks a couple of years ago and caught up with some old friends there, but I only managed to meet a couple of people from my grade at school (and those by chance).

I was surprised by the number of my friends that didn't go to university after high school and I can't help but wonder what my class mates (especially the interesting ones I didn't know very well) are up to now...

05 Mar 2005

A Meta-blog Update

On a meta-blog note: I've just updated the title in recognition of the fact that most of my posts lately have been my holding forth on topics somewhat inspired by something I've read. Hence the [and Writing] in the title now. I'm not sure if it makes any difference whatsoever as I'm fairly sure that no-one reads this thing anyway.