qotd

Posted on Wednesday, 2011 August 24 by Anton

Charles Johnson:

For the individualist, half of human decency in political thinking is just learning to keep your personal pronouns straight.

Found by some indirect chain of links from Roderick Long’s blog.

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qotd

Posted on Friday, 2011 August 19 by Anton

Penn Jillette: I don’t know, so I’m an atheist libertarian

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It’s just ganging up against the weird kid, and I’m always the weird kid.

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Combien de temps est-ce que je la poitrine devrais-je nourrir mon enfant ?

Posted on Monday, 2011 August 01 by Anton

On the first of the month, I look at my HTTP referral log to see if I have any new incoming links. Among this month’s spam is a breastfeeding blog in French, which appears on closer inspection to have been translated by machine, probably from English; the above title is a sample.

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blending curves

Posted on Sunday, 2011 July 10 by Anton

I made some progress on an old project: to make outline fonts based on some favorite old bitmap fonts, by automatic fitting of smooth curves to the sequences of dots.
a letter of PLATO IV's standard charset, with curves superimposed
(The image above is in Scalable Vector Graphic format. If you see nothing, you may – dare I say it – need to update your browser. It works in Firefox 5, Safari 5, Chrome 12, Kindle.) Continue reading →

Posted in curve-fitting | 6 Comments

practical shooting for the apocalypse

Posted on Friday, 2011 June 24 by Anton

I’m watching the pilot episode of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. In this iteration the machines have a sense of humor!

Seems to me the most useful thing Sarah can do with her shotgun is aim for the eyes. Does she ever learn that?

Summer Glau is prettier here than in Firefly. Gained weight?

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the tantalizing tune

Posted on Thursday, 2011 May 26 by Anton

I used to have a ringtone that, pardon the pun, rang a bell: I was sure it was from some modern string quartet, but couldn’t find it in my collection.

Years go by. Today I get in the car, turn on the radio and hear that musical phrase. I wait for the piece to end, but the title is not announced. Well, maybe the station webs its playlist. I get home, refer to the website and find, for the time in question, some song by Daniel Lanois (surrounded by other songs rather than string quartets). Argh.

An hour later I turn on the radio again and hear “Every Day Is a Winding Road”, which was on the list. So I scroll back an hour . . . .

It is in fact the second movement of Ravel’s string quartet in F.

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Friday thirteen come on Friday this month

Posted on Saturday, 2011 May 14 by Anton

Somewhere or other I recently mentioned having heard that, because the Gregorian calendar cycle of 400 years is a multiple of 7 days, the 13th of the month is not evenly distributed and falls more often on Friday than on any other day of the week; but I had not done the math myself and did not have the numbers. Now I’ve done it but can’t remember where to post the followup!

Posted in calendars | 2 Comments