“There never was a time when those that read at all, read so many books by living authors rather than books by dead authors. Therefore there was never a time so completely parochial, so completely shut off from the past.”…
Monthly Archives: November 2011
Better mousetraps
From Ike Pigott: Build a better mousetrap, and cats will beat a path to your door to picket. Related post: It takes more than a better mousetrap
Posted in Creativity
Solution to Renaissance problem
The previous post presented a problem first posed by Johannes Müller in 1471. Where you should stand so that a vertical bar appears longest? To be more precise, suppose a vertical bar is hanging so that the top of the…
A Renaissance math puzzle
In 1471, Johannes Müller asked where you should stand so that a vertical bar appears longest. To be more precise, suppose a vertical bar is hanging so that the top of the bar is a distance a above your eye…
Fundamental theorem of code readability
In The Art of Readable Code, the authors call the following the “Fundamental Theorem of Readability”: Code should be written to minimize the time it would take for someone else to understand it. They go on to explain And when…
Bad logic, but good statistics
Ad hominem arguments are bad logic, but good (Bayesian) statistics. A statement isn’t necessarily false because it comes from an unreliable source, though it is more likely to be false. Some people are much more likely to know what they’re…
Readability
The Readability bookmarklet lets you reformat any web to make it easier to read. It strips out flashing ads and other distractions. It uses black text on a white background, wide margins, a moderate-sized font, etc. I use Readability fairly…
The Tangled Web
The Tangled Web is a security book that you may find interesting even if you’re not interested in security. The first half of the book is an excellent explanation of how Web technologies work in theory and especially in practice.…
Why experts exaggerate
Seth Roberts writes this morning: How can you tell when an expert is exaggerating? His lips move. Some people will misunderstand his point. Roberts is not saying experts exaggerate their conclusions per se. He’s saying experts exaggerate their confidence in…
Why did we do this?
Here are a few thoughts on institutional memory from a talk by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. When important decisions are not documented, one becomes dependent on individual memory, which is quickly lost as people leave or move to other jobs.…
Posted in Business
Where gargoyles come from
Gargoyles are decoration for drainage. Gothic churches channeled water away from their walls to prevent erosion. The spout often emptied through the mouth of a sculpture. These spouts are called gargoyles, from an old French word gargouille meaning “throat” (it…
Posted in Uncategorized
Fermat’s unfinished business
Fermat’s last theorem is so named because it was the last of his asserted theorems to be proved or disproved. But there are variations on another conjectures of Fermat that remain unresolved. Fermat conjectured that numbers are always prime. We…
Norris’ number
My friend Clift Norris has identified a fundamental constant that I call Norris’ number, the average amount of code an untrained programmer can write before he or she hits a wall. Clift estimates this as 1,500 lines. Beyond that the…
Cartoon guide to the uninteresting
If you’re not interested in a subject, do cartoons make it more palatable? My guess is that cartoons may help keep your attention if you’re moderately interested in a subject. If you’re fascinated by something, cartoons get in the way.…
Career advice regarding tools
A few weeks ago, J. D. Long gave some interesting advice in a Google+ discussion. He starts out Lunch today with an analyst 13 years my junior made me think about things I wish I had known about the technical…
