Category: curiosity

How to care for an URI and feed it?

I am developing an application, which needs to be aware of the concept of URI. A quick Google search yielded the following URLs:

  1. What’s a URI?
  2. MonkeyX’s Hairy Thoughts about semantic Webs

What I really would like to:

  1. Find how to specify a section inside a file, in terms of offset relative to beginning and length.
  2. Locate a Python module, which knows to do everything a mortal needs to do with URIs.

Action movie with Israeli setting

Yesterday at night, there was an action movie in Israeli TV Channel 2 – “The Order Secrets”, starred by Jean-Claude van-Damme. What was so special in it was that at last I got to see a classical action movie, with life-disruptive car run-down in Israeli streets, and with involvement of Israeli policemen.

Viewing the movie felt like seeing a James Bond movie in Israeli setting. The protagonist was not womanizer the way James Bond was. Women were not figuratively harmed during the narrative, and he combined exploiting & falling in love with the same woman.

However, most of the run-downs were in central and east Jerusalem, and my childhood was in west Jerusalem. Oh well, it would have been cool to catch a glimpse of one of the houses, in which I lived during my childhood, in one of the car run-downs.

Another remarkable feature of the movie was that it did not shed sympathetic light on the Israeli police. There was a corrupt police officer, who looked like a hired gun; and a woman police officer, who defected to the “other side” (even though the “other side” was the morally right one).

There was also the cliche of dressing like an Hasid in order to escape Police and gaining the collaboration of true Hasidim for this purpose. I am not happy with the grain of truth, upon which this cliche is based.

What does Google have to say about mimsy borogoves?

The Borogoves Are Mimsy Again–Terry Gilliam’s JABBERWOCKY is a review of a movie, which was directed by the director of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.

Mathematical Fiction: Mimsy Were the Borogoves has some comments and references concerning Lewis Padgett’s classical Sci-Fi story.

There is an application called Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll’s original nonsense word, which titled the poem which introduced the mimsy borogoves). So this word already lost its lofty nonsense word status.

I can only wonder what widgets will be christened as borogoves, and in how many ways can they be mimsy.

Will car washes be as branded as fast food chains?

There is a car wash in Petah Tikva, where they wash my car once in a while, and sometimes dare to nag me about waxing it. I liked the place because they provided sitting places and newspapers for clients, who are waiting while the interiors of their cars are being cleaned.

Today the car was there again, escorted by me.

This time, they branded themselves as “King Wash”, advertising kingly treatment for her majesty the car. For example, you can have your car prepared and beautified for sale. Their prices are also a bit higher.

This time, the sitting service included also a free hot drink (such as coffee or hot chocolate).

As judged by someone, who cares about cleanliness of cars only due to social pressure, they did good but not perfect cleaning work.

  • What next? A shopping mall (“canion”) organized around car washes, like the Cinema City mall between north Tel Aviv and Herzliya, which is first a place for seeing movies and then a mall?
  • What would a Seinfeld skid about this have looked like?
  • How would the days before Passover look like in such a place? What special perks would be provided to people waiting in the long and slow-moving queue?

The mystery of Queen Maud

One of my childhood’s mysteries was: who was the mysterious Queen Maud, whose name I saw on a large part of Antarctica in maps?

The grownups, whom I asked this question, were too busy in their affairs or about improving my deaf speech to take this question seriously.

No queen in the history books, which I read, had this name. I wondered whether there is a fairy tale, whose heroine has this name. I never saw or read about a real woman having this name.

In fact, the first time I saw Maud used as a woman’s name was in the movie “Harold and Maud”, which I saw several years after having seen Antarctica’s map.

The above happened in the pre-Internet era, when it was very difficult for me to find information which one’s parents and teachers don’t consider to be important or valuable.

For several years I forgot about this mystery. Once I remembered it again, few minutes’ worth of googling yielded the following facts.

The surprising conclusion was that even in pre-Internet stone age, it would have been sufficient to briefly glance through a book about modern history of Norway to find the answer to the Queen Maud mystery. The Queen Maud Land part of Antarctica is the area claimed by Norway. Queen Maud herself was a real person, and she was queen of Norway. The land in question was named by Roald Amundsen in honor of his queen.

Buckminister Fuller, Geometric Algebra and Geometric Calculus

I found his Synergetics book (which appears to be as difficult to read as books about solid state physics or differential geometry) at http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html

The home page of R.W. Gray, another fan of Buckminister Fuller, and maintainer of the above, is at http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/
He is interested also in Geometric Algebra. According to his choice of adjectives, it is not silver bullet to Science’s Problems and Woes only because there is no such a thing as a silver bullet (at least one with the relevant magical properties).

He links to someone else’s Web page about Geometric Calculus.

Another book on software development methodology

Joel on Software recommends Mike Gunderloy’s book Coder to Developer.
There are additional rave reviews.

I am still in middle of Richard Dawkins’ A Devil’s Chaplain (about evolution theory, religion, etc.).

How do other people cope with 20 excellent books waiting to be read, especially if they have family obligations?

Websites for lifetime students

If you have free time to learn something new for the sake of learning rather than for grades, diploma, degree or qualification:

Red Rock Eater News Service – http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/rre.html
This is mostly about social and political aspects of computing and networking.

Troubleshooters.com(R) – http://www.troubleshooters.com/troubleshooters.htm
If you, like everyone, need to troubleshoot something such as a malfunctioning car or a mysterious software bug, read what this Web site has to say about being more productive troubleshooter.

Perfecting the art of building embedded systems – http://www.ganssle.com/
For those fortunate to have a career developing software for embedded systems.
Several articles have relevance also for people, who do not do embedded development.