First they came for the verbs,

and I said nothing because verbing weirds language.  Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.  - Peter Ellis

John Henry

I would like to visit Hinton WV one of these days.  There is a John Henry festival there every year, and an old train runs through the Big Bend tunnel.

The interesting thing about the legend is that it cuts through to the central question: does life have an objective function?

My Early Mandelbrot Plots (part II)

and here is another plot made with a non-speckle noise, on a color inkjet printer, circa 1991.

My Early Mandelbrot Plots (part I)

This was a plot made with a speckle noise pattern.  I think the colors were assigned using RGB sinusoidal waves (i.e. the frequency of the R, G, and B waves were varied independently).  Then the actual color was assigned based on a random value.

This was done circa 1991.  I remember there was another plot I had made with purplish colors, that I really liked, but I gave it to someone...

My Work TimeGlider

Having just figured out how to embed.  Now if I could figure how to not show the annoying introduction box...

Fatline Events

Have been arranging timelines on TimeGlider, because they let me expand / contract events based on relative importance (which of course seems to change over time anyway) which is I think one of key features of fatline. In TimeGlider I can arrange to have work / school related events on top of the timeline, and personal events on the bottom, like this:

I started contemplating the various categories of things I included on the fatline, and a set of tags that capture them.  I think the main ones are:

Using these as axes, I can define a set of coordinates for each event in this 7-dimensional space, and then perform an SOM for the events.  The SOM could be 2-D, and include time / place for each events, or it could be 1-D and use the timeline itself as one of the dimensions.

Seattle Trip

Visited Seattle for the first time -- I like the city.  It has a lot in common with both Vancouver and San Francisco, including slightly cheesy waterfront tourist district.

Went on the Underground Seattle tour (definitely worth doing) as it gave a good history of the city.  Also went up in the Space Needle.  Toured Boeing factory to look at the Dreamliners being assembled.