Plastic Electric 'Blog

3:05 PM

Hot, Cold, and Relatives

Supposedly it's a heat wave. All it really is is that summer has made an appearance. It's about 30C round here, which is about 86°F in old money. Dunno what the humidity is outside, but it's certainly humid in here!

Several years ago, some relatives from rural NSW were visiting. It was a hot, sunny, summer's day in my home county of Essex, and they were complaining about the heat.

It gets hot back home, into the 30s, 34 or so, but never like this! my uncle's wife said.

It was only 28C.

I suspect it's the humidity. It does tend to get humid when it's hot round here, I suggested.

Yes, it's the humidity. That's what does it, she agreed. But still, it doesn't get this hot back home!

In contrast, Marybeth has found that hot, sunny, summer days in London feel comfortably cool and very inhumid!

Perhaps what we need is some sort of humidity factor adjusted temperature scale? A bit like wind chill factors? Then we can get a better idea of how hot or cold the weather will actually feel.

2:00 PM

La Chat's Merde

As I was about to sit down for Sunday lunch, I plonked the remote control on the settee beside me, and felt it hit something. I looked to see what it was, and saw a cat turd!

It seems Tigger the cat had been unwell, and had been actively unwell at both ends, but the turd had been overlooked. Fortunately, the turd was a good, solid pair of bonded turdlet, so there was no residue on the remote, or the settee. Nevertheless, we applied some disinfectant to both.

The other thing about Tigger the cat is that in a few days, she'll be twenty! I hope she doesn't die in the meantime.

12:36 PM

Mormons!

This week, I have been mostly developing a design for a virtual machine to be used in a lambda calculus interpreter. Now I've got to develop another virtual machine to say how the first virtual machine will work!

But anyway, earlier this week, I got an unexpected phone call from a Mormon missionary. Apparently, I'm on their call-back list. Anyway, I was invited to meet with them (they always come in pairs), so I agreed.

We met in the high street on Wednesday evening, and found a suitable quiet place to sit and talk. I told them of how the last pair of missionaries, six or so months ago, had got as far as the fifth of six sessions with me, and that I'd then reached the conclusion that their founder, Joseph Smith, had been a false prophet. It was all to do with their Doctrine & Covenants, which seem to contain false prophesies and broken promises, despite the first section claiming that they'll all be fulfilled.

We had an interesting discussion, but there was nothing particularly conclusive. They've taken my observations of apparent disproofs as questions to raise with their president (sort of pastor-type person, I think).

Something that amused me was that the Mormons seem to have me on file. Apparently, their notes for me say that I'm very intelligent! What does that mean? That I actually think about what they say?

During the discussion, I commented on how what's felt seems to be somewhat important to Mormons. Indeed, it's all to do with the idea that the Holy Ghost produces feelings in us. This lead me to the question: how can we distinguish between feelings caused by the Holy Chost, and our own, human feelings? It seems that if the Holy Ghost was to produce feelings in me to confirm that the Book of Mormon is true, then I'd just know it. There must, it seems, be something extra in feelings from the Holy Ghost, and something that I've never felt before. Hmmm, I could be spending all my life waiting for that special feeling!

Anyway, I'll see what answers they come back with for my questions, the apparent disproofs, and proceed from there. I'm still skeptical, but I hope we'll have some interesting, and enlightening, discussions.

8:55 AM

In My Dreams

For the last week or so, I've been having lots of dreams.

I've had a New Year's meal thing with the Queen, family and friends. Well, it was mostly with a few, very minor royals and friends, but the 'main' part of the evening was a sort of banquet thing. Most of the time, though, it was a fairly separate, much less formal party in one of the residential flats in the back of the palace. A very nice evening. And they all seemed to be in their twenties (ignoring all the boring other people who were also at the banquet part).

The following year (in that same dream), I didn't have anything planned. I got casually invited along to the palace again, for another party with those same minor royals and friends. I wasn't able to entirely relax, though, feeling I hadn't had time to make sure I was properly presentable. I kept worrying about my hair.

The minor royals, and aristocratic friends, were very nice, though. They were just like normal people, only with posh accents, expensive clothes, lots of money, and living in palaces and the like. Still, the kitchen area had a nice, informal, studenty feel to it.

That's about it for distinctive, memorable dreams. The rest of the dreaming has been like watching daytime telly - you know you've been watching, but you can hardly remember any of it.

9:56 AM

I Can't See Any Comments I Can't See

Comments have been disappearing? Oh!

Well, the phenomenon of their disappearance seems to have now disappeared itself. Or, perhaps, the comment service provider isn't sending the right HTTP headers.

Anyway, erm, I just thought I'd confirm that seemingly disappearing comments did actually reach me :-) Well, at least the ones that I read :-P

Anyway, thanks Monkey and Shauny for mentioning it!

Having now written the title for this entry, I am reminded of the idea that there isn't anything other than that which we perceive. Every single thing we've come across, directly or indirectly, has been (even if only indirectly) perceived by us. In other words, we've never seen or heard of anything that isn't, at some point, seen or heard by us. So, the dubious reasoning goes, there isn't anything that never gets perceived.

And that, in turn, reminds me of the problem of circularly referenced objects in computer science when it comes to reference counting.

The idea is that each object (a number, a string of characters, a piece of code) keeps count of the number of things that refer to it. When that reference count drops to zero, it gets deleted, to free up memory for use for something else.

But what happens if, say, A refers to B, and B refers to C, and C refers to A? Even if nothing else refers to any of them, they'll never get deleted! Memory leaks can happen that way. (There are some solutions, but I've never been much interested in garbage collection.) Such things are a bit like things that aren't being perceived, but exist anyway.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how to avoid circular references 'cause of stuff I'm doing with lambada calculus.

11:39 PM

Thursday?

Oh my word! It's over a week since my last entry, and I've probably been falling behind on reading various blogs, too.

It's already Thursday (in the sense of it being Wednesday night), and I'm still thinking of it being round about the weekend. Where have the days been flying? Or the nights, even?

Well, I've been busily learning lambda calculus (which can be used to compute anything that's computable, and was developed by Alonzo Church back in the 1930s), and developing a functional programming language based on it (which is nothing new, there are plenty of functional programming languages). Oh, and my language is also based on combinatorial logic (which Haskell Curry had something to do with, but was originally developed by someone else, I think).

Anyway, having been terribly absorbed in that, I've been negligent (how is that spelt?) elsewhere. And, um, I've been using up a lot of paper!

Yesterday, I realised I couldn't even remember what day it was. Was it Tuesday? Or Wednesday? I drew the conclusion that it was Tuesday, 'cause I couldn't remember any day but Monday since the weekend. But it was Wednesday.

And as for attempts at creative writing, well, I've just been completely crap at even trying to attempt it for weeks! Perhaps creative writing just isn't for me. I've been thinking that for a long, long time. But I'd like to be at least competent at it, 'cause it might be a useful vehicle in the future. Perhaps.

10:14 PM

Oh.

I've just been in a bit of a bad mood today. A playing-music-very-loud kind of mood. A quickly-getting-cross-with-things kind of mood. Not really a stormer. Just: a bit of a bad mood.

Realised I'd commented on something that wasn't supposed to be commented on.

Didn't have quite enough cash for a pack of twenty (cigarettes).

The first shop I went into didn't have packs of ten.

Two boys were calling out Baldy! from a safe distance as I walked across the car parks on my way home.

Computer kept being annoying in little, repeating ways.

Turned the volume up on TV when beginning to eat (so that I could hear it over the sound of my own mastication), just in time for them to say something about smoking. My mother was also in the room. I really hate it when things like that happen.

Browser still keeps crashing, despite being three releases on from the beta releases.

A small, flying insect kept bothering me.

Don't have enough CDs. Certainly don't have enough music suitable for when enjoying being in a bad mood.

It hasn't actually been a bad day, though. I was just feeling stroppy since I got up. Nothing bad's really happened. Nothing major has gone wrong. Just a day of enjoying being stroppy about little things, really.

Hmmm, yeah, I really do need more strop CDs.

12:31 PM

Relaxed

Wow! I haven't written anything in nearly a week! I just haven't got round to it, haven't felt like it.

I've just felt different this week. More relaxed, more laid back, that kind of thing. Not sure how that'll help me get some kind of paid work, but anyway, it's been nice.

So, um, I still don't know what to do about my lack of paid work situation.

hmmm, I really don't seem to have much to say today!