Mental Models and Tetris
Knowing lots of facts without anything to unite them is like having a crappy Tetris board.
Solving a Problem, According to John Baez
The ladder of abstraction is more a jungle gym.
Honoring Carluccio with Carbonara
I never thought I'd like carbonara.
Notes for Sun, Nov 12 2017
It bugs me how I've read stories where a character comes to a major realization, often about life in general, says they're changed, and then goes on to live their life in essentially the same way, with only minor tweaks.
Notes for Sat, Nov 11 2017
I got sick of writing organized blog posts, so I'm going to compromise on clean blog posts and just dump thoughts.
Appreciating the Randomness in the World, According to Bradley Efron
Better known as the inventor of the bootstrap.
Teaching vs. Coaching
A teacher makes implicit knowledge explicit. Specifically, they make knowledge implicit in the teacher explicit.
Disambiguating the Equals Sign
Depending on context, $$x = y$$ can mean any of:
Stupidity Without The Value Judgment
Stupidity
Vim `:Options`
Check out :options
, especially if you're new to configuring Vim (and
want to).
Vimscript Comparisons Suck
Vim has a built-in scripting language. It's what you write your vimrc
in, and it's really convenient for short one-off tasks.
Stupid Simple Algorithms: DAgger
My hatred of the fetish for acronyms in academia reminds me of Amberley Vail's rants against Imperial Guard jargon in the Ciaphas Cain novels.
Learn Some Shell Script: For-loops
A lot of people I know seem to glory in their ignorance of the terminal.
Which would be fine if they didn't use it every day. Yes, bash
is
ugly. On the other hand, like many ugly things, it can be used as a
brute tool to do a lot of mundane tasks.
Why Live?
There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.