Suppose I want to give a gift to person P. I'd like to be able to call up the history of my interactions with P, in as many channels as possible. I'd also like to be simultaneously call up my current finances, including an assessment of whether I have any store-specific credits which would suit their interests. (For instance, I've got $50 of credit for Lululemon fitness wear, which I'm never going to use on myself, but which I'd want the computer to show me when planning a gift for a girlfriend or female friend.)
(Update: I've decided that "planning gifts around store credit" is such an infrequent occurrence that there's no reason to build a program for it. I am, however, beginning to build my own contacts database. Expect that to appear in Q2-3 2021.
Type in words. For each line you type, this program will do its best to categorize the line by its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. It does this by retrieving the stress pattern or patterns for each word from an ordinary dictionary (maybe several dictionaries), and comparing all possible paths through the line to determine, for words with multiple possible stress patterns, which is most likely to be right. Or, which would lead to what patterns. [Aside: run spell checker before doing analysis.]
Oh, typing is getting me nowhere. Examles of desired behavior will do better.
It is relatively easy to define "parody" when the object of parody is a book, poem, movie, or piece of music. What would it mean to parody a piece of software?
Functional Objects Can Be Parodied
It will not do to claim that software is immune to parody because it is a functional construct. A building is functional, yet its structure could be parodied, perhaps by a distorted replica having stretched hallways with non-rectangular cross sections, and doorways which are too small for humans or which lead nowhere. (Architecture in general can also be parodied: consider the ridiculous effect of a diminutive Arc de Triomphe in the middle of a normal-sized roundabout.)
Is it correct to say that a type system needs to implement dependent types if it is to allow the expression of an integer that can only decrease? The goal would be to define a type R Integer such that a function R Integer -> R Integer would only compile if the Integer inside the output value was equal or less to the one inside the input.
Deng Guida then used a wad of ¥4000 cash to hit her face while yelling, "Didn't you want money? I bet you have not seen any money before. How much money do you want? Just say it. Believe me or not, I shall smack you to death with money."
Deng Yujiao retorted, "Yes, I have never seen any money before. If you have the guts, today you smack me to death."
Deng Guida then replied, "I am going to smack you to death with money. I'm going to get a truckload of money to squash you to death."
I'd watch a food review show where the host apes Bedivere as portrayed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, making up ludicrous explanations for everything and having to open and close the little door on his helmet for each bite.
It would be called "Sir Fedivere" -- or perhaps, if the other knights got involved, "The Bites of the Round Table."
Ubasute (姥捨て, "abandoning an old woman", also called obasute and sometimes oyasute 親捨て "abandoning a parent") is the rare, old[1] practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die.[2] According to the Kodansha Illustrated Encyclopedia of Japan, ubasute "is the subject of legend, but… does not seem ever to have been a common custom".[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute
Ha. I notice that "姥捨て" begins with kanji whch, when read in Mandarin, are homophonous to 老舍. The meaning is not similar in the first character ("lao" in the author's name means "forever, always, eternally") but it could be (as "lao" can, in sufficiently compressed contexts, directly indicate an old person). As for the second character, 捨, it's a variant of 舍; they have the same meaning of "giving up, relinquishing".
Software, tools, and services that I use. Search keyword: "uses this."
writing and editing: GNU Emacs Neovim
operating system: macOS (laptop); Debian (server - but I'm not picky about my GNU/Linux)
memory training: Anki (with several extensions, including AnkiConnect for programmatic interaction, and Low Key Anki to present just two choices on each review and adjust easing factors, and True Retention by Card Maturity to ensure my reviews are having an effect.)
But, if you take 1/3rd from 12 (= 4) and add it to 12, you get 16, which can't evenly divide into 3rds (but can into 4ths.) If you take 1/4th of 12 (= 3) and add it to 12, you get 15, which can't evenly divide into 4ths (but can into 3rds.)
Does this point at anything interesting, or am I just a dingus?
Code for converting between Gregorian and Chinese year numbers already exists. Wikipedia highlights the current year on the sexegenary cycle list, and somebody programmed that. But, all the same, I can amuse myself by thinking about it.
Things to be defined would include:
the Ten Stems and the Twelve Branches
the 60-element cycle formed from pairing Stems and Branches by the traditional method
the 60-element "false cycle", formed by all the pairs not in the traditional cycle
given a number indicating 1 thru 60 as the starting year, and a number +/-N, return the Stem and Branch for the year N years after/before the starting year
When I come across an unfamiliar phrase, especially one that's metaphorical, it's useful to be able to search text documents, on the web or elsewhere, for regular expressions matching that phrase.
If your browser is using a lot of RAM, it may be that you have visited a lot of websites which have silently installed service workers (programs which make websites fully or partially usable offline.) You can see whether there are service workers installed in Firefox by visiting about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox
[not sure if this is right] Make website backups more rsync-friendly by zipping up the files beforehand. It will take less time to sync one file than thousands because you have to stat() the file system for each file. And don't forget the "archive file ordering" trick, courtesy of Gwern.
youtube-dl -F $URL shows the choices for video quality when downloading a video from $URL. youtube--dl -f $CHOICE $URL downloads the video at that quality. To automatically get the best quality, use youtube--dl -f best $URL.
Decision: Standardize on gei3-type citations for source material. Can use scripts in the build process to automate find-replace for publishing. I don't care about academic or legal standards right now, and any Chinese linguistics writing I do will probably not be for laymen.
Here is the case for using gei3 instead of standard Pinyin gěi.
Pro:
only need ASCII to search (except for lü, but that can be typed lv), which is helpful for build-process mechanisms and scripts like spell check, as well as fewer edge cases for implementation of projects such as full-text search
if I ever switch to doing it the other way, I can more easily replace text like gei3 into gěi than the other way around (and the procedure for determining which letter takes the tone accent mark is a straightforward algorithm).
Interested customers can write to these Post Offices for postmarks to keep or to share with friends. Enclose a stamped, addressed card or letter in another envelope or box labeled “Valentine re-mailing” and address it to the postmaster of one of the towns listed below. Please allow enough time for postmarking, re-mailing, and delivery.
Not in the dresser,
Nor on the couch.
Not in this jacket,
Nor in that pouch.
Not in the bucket,
And not on the chair.
Not in the cabinet.
Not over there.
I'm going stir-crazy:
Is it anywhere?
Besides its verbal use, 给, with the reading gei3, is also (roughly speaking) "near-obligatory case marker for indirect object". But 给 has at least one other use, as the example 把什么东西给烧了 demonstrates. The function of 给 here seems similar to the usage of 弄 and 搞 with complements like 对 and 好, e.g. 弄好/搞好 "improve; put right".
I think there may be other nuances related to animate nouns, too -- so what's up? I'll keep an eye out. (While translating "Iron Bull and Sick Duck", I found some examples of this phenomenon to copy into here.)
2020-05-14: Aha! The AllSet Chinese Grammar wiki contends that this is a passive construction. It all makes sense now. (Be warned that AllSet occasionally offers quite poor English translations, like these.)
Fop:
Your skills --
Your accumulated advancements --
Have insufficient increasement!
Dandy:
Upwardified are my upgrades,
My many masteries --
That is, my skills!
Fop:
Predictably, you are plusless,
Listless, and lazy!
You have! No! Skills!
Taking notes on characters suitable for creating a new Chinese name. The one I have doesn't sound very Chinese, having been bestowed somewhat haphazardly by otherwise-excellent teachers of introductory Chinese.
2020-12-23T22:18:52-0800 follow gwern's example Book reviews are sorted by star, and sorted by length of review within each star level, under the assumption that longer reviews are of more interest to readers.
2020-09-21T15:18:51-0700 document submission/creation times for Sith Lord Challenge entries
2020-09-21T13:03:00-0700 Turn "full" (vs "truncated") designation on Favorite Poems into structured data, for use in template that positions small-font full/truncated over the top-right of a blockquote :^O oh yeah oh yeah
I propose a videogame with two modes. Mode 1 is played in a 3rd-person or 1st-person perspective (I think 1st-person would be more satisfying.) On your turn, you swing your sword toward the enemy's body. The motion of the sword can be precisely controlled, as can the hit location; part of the game skill is hitting a "juicy" place on your enemy.
Novice weightlifters are typically encouraged to use one weight until they can perform a certain number of reps, then go to the next-biggest weight and repeat. This straightforward approach, called linear progression, is the standard recommendation for those new to weight training.
On the page of writing where I discovered Prengubi Cjiiiifgh, I found some strange stuff.
The Weedler's Promise
The Friendler, The Seedler, the Feedler, the Deedler
Pheasant Peasant
Living Gold
Sumweyer Ells: home of the sexy fox people (definitely not related to the home of the Khajiit.) Do humans skin the sexy fox people to create the highest-quality fursuits? Yes.
Two windows next to each other, one of which shows usage instances for the word under, or around, the cursor.
Part of the challenge of creating an interface to help with Chinese translation lies in defining the extent of a word. For example, when a verb and an object (e.g. 吃东西 ), is combined with a two-character complement (e.g. 起来), the result, 吃起东西来, does not contain "起来" as a substring, because two-character complements get split up to follow both verb and object. Any digital dictionary or reference system concerned with usage examples will have to account for this fact of Chinese grammar, and contain the knowledge that, despite the results of affixation, this can be considered an occurrence of the "起来" complement.
MacOS Chinese input allows you to cycle through the tones with TAB. I just discovered this after years of (begrudgingly) using this input method. Harrumph! They could have put the tones on the number keys to kill two birds with one stone:
Number -> tone is a straightforward, well-known mapping, so I wouldn't have had to discover this feature at random.
It would have forced them to find a smarter, more ergonomic way of letting me pick candidates, rather than having to lift my fingers from the letter keys to identify every single character I want to use.
There are Chinese characters which are structurally simple, but not in common use today.
A perfect example is 屾 shen1, a literary term which means "并列的两座山" ("two mountains side by side".) This is one of relatively few characters that is actually ideographic, i.e. has a shape depicting the real-world concept it represents. This is because 屾 shen1 is made up of two side-by-side copies of the character for mountain, 山 shan1. Two mountains side-by-side in the character; "two mountains side-by-side" for the meaning.
Below are other characters which have piqued my interest.
The reason Lisp is special is because you can TURN OFF semantics.
(+ 1 1) is pure form. (+ 1 1) is syntax. (+ 1 1) is a syntactic expression: it has structure. But, until we evaluate it, it doesn't have meaning. [It might appear to be "add one and one," but in a programming language focused on bits and bytes, (+ 1 1) might well be the command to put together two bits, resulting in 11.]
In all the Lisp-family languages I know of, because they are programming languages, and by default the programmer expects to evaluate syntactic expressions, the default notation for an expression which will be evaluated is simpler than that for one which will not be evaluated.
To improve the mood of (character - an animal):
if the mood of character is less than friendly, now the mood of the character is the mood after the mood of the character.
I am not sure whether or not the statement "the mood after the mood of the character" wraps around. That is to say, I am not sure whether the above code would "improve" the character's mood from the best one possible to the worst. I would hope it doesn't do that, but I'll have to investigate.
The if statement above can be translated into pseudo-Clojure as follows:
If you were transformed into a wooden cylinder,
transported to the highest point of your current location,
and dropped so that you rolled,
would you like where you ended up?
You've overlooked all the colors of flavor: all 16 million of them!
D
To be precise, (16^2)^3 = 256^3 = 16,777,216 colors, if we're talking about RGB colors with two hex digits to specify each channel, e.g. FFAABB.
There's a connection here with wagon wheels. The following code is semi-pseudocode for Inform 7.
Consider writing functions which generate an inventory characteristic of a given NPC which can be run to produce their inventory when they are first created. Such functions could then be re-used to describe the possible kit for allied NPC types, such as when a player is searching for hirelings.
Some inventory contents, as well as slots on the body, could be integrated into dynamic descriptions of a character.
Dynamic Description
We could use this toy function to provide a basic textual description of a character.
Take the ratio of "post length:total comments length" forms a rough measure of "how many words of discussion does Joe Blogger provoke per post? per word of writing? per week?" Would also be worth measuring length of comment chains.
The publication date of this snippet is an approximation; I only recall that it was some time in fall or winter 2018, on an evening with these friends.
"It's dark outside, and I'm Spider-Man," said Spider-Man. "I am here for those of you who have suffered from CRIME."
The citizens of New York were distraught. "The person who crimed us is Stan Lee!"
"It can't be," said Spider-Man. His web-shooters flexed. His butt clenched. "It can't be."
But it was.
You've gotta take yourself into battle.
You've gotta do your sick moves -- every last one, even if it kills you. But you can't let it kill you, because you've gotta win. You've gotta
Kill.
That.
Elf.
You're gonna put on your elf-fighting suit and ride into battle, and if you retreat, so help me Space God, I will shoot you myself. I don't care how afraid you are, or how pissed your pants are, or how good you are at fighting in the gaseous-metal atmosphere of this planet: you've gotta do it anyway, you've g-o-t-t-a