My second 1st grade math teacher docked me for writing fours with a triangular top (4) as opposed the accepted fours that look like an upside down 'h'. I was also docked for writing 9's that look like upside down 6's, instead of the accepted nines that look like mirrored P's.
I've heard similar stories, but it's always in the early grades of elementary school, where the teachers aren't expected to understand specific subjects -- the school is more about fitting in than knowing or learning. After the first few years, you should have proper subject teachers. In contrast, the GP's points about kiss-assery in certain subjects is a lifelong issue.
IMHO, the tool approach is important but it has its issues. Promoting the tool aspect seems to attract the "engineer" types of people, while the artist/humanist types may feel left out. It's part of a larger divide among students, but the math issue isn't helping. For example, when I was at school, the usual question to a bright student was "are you a language person or a math person?" Similarly, there are these divides between artists and scientists. It's silly because, for instance, you need a lot of creativity to do science. But there's a problem when young students are exposed to these narrow stereotypes. The creative types of students tend to avoid math because of the way it's presented, and they will miss out on a lot.
Disclaimer: I'm an algorithmic artist. While I mostly hang out with the traditional art crowd, I plan on doing things like school visits to help promote math as art/culture (I'm also a former math/science teacher). I really should elaborate more on this, but I need to spare some of the writing energy for grant applications:-j
It's 2017 and we're supposed to be living in an oil-stripped wasteland with flying cars and hoverboards.
Look around, there are hoverboards everywhere. That's what they are called. They might not actually hover, but that's just a science-nerdy detail you should not worry about. What the current hoverboards do is just an alternative-truth version of hovering, which is equally valid as the old notion.
Some years back, I wrote a couple of screen-scraping bots to play simple Flash games. I always added some random movements and timings just to be sure. I can't imagine being the first one to think of this (around 2008-2010 or so).
Even though the system has a character-driven interface, similar to an old green screen system, the users "like the reliability of it, and the screens are actually pretty simple," said Hogan.
[Extroverts] tend to be energized when around other people, and they are more prone to boredom when they are by themselves
I can socialize much better than a lot of extroverts. I will admit, it does make me tired though.:)
IMHO, this is the key bit -- introverts can often thrive in social activities, but they need their alone time to recharge eventually. For example, after a few hours of theatre rehearsals etc., I usually want to go home, while the others want to go to a bar or something. It's tricky because at that point I wouldn't mind a pint myself, but I've already used up my social energy for that day.
mpv allows the user to supply GLSL scripts using the --opengl-shaders=filename option, and it can save single screenshots to files after those shaders have been applied (Ctrl-S), and mpv is scriptable (in Lua or C), so all you need to do is write a script that single-steps through the video, then writes such a post-processed screenshot to a pipe which you can use as input to "ffmpeg".
Doesn't mpv support direct output to a series of PNGs? MPlayer does it simply with -vo png.
Incidendally, I'm working on something related to the original question. I use shaders for math art demos, and I already have the option of using image files as the input (shameless example). It would be trivial to accept a new file for each frame, so it could process video from a series of images. The speed would only be a couple of FPS due to I/O bottleneck, but it won't be realtime anyway. The reason I haven't done this so far is that my focus is on the math of iterated shaders, not processing some existing video. Still, it would be fun to do some day, and of course I'm looking at ways to do it in realtime (the GPU is fast enough, but I/O is harder).
Lastly, you could use a screen recording software instead of the clunky series-of-screenshots idea. I did this for putting my first few demos on Youtube, but the quality is awful, so I much prefer taking the PNGs and encoding separately.
Yeah, I tried putting a giant rubber sheath over my monitor too, but apparently that doesn't stop you from getting an infection when you cyber. I feel his pain.
I thought sexual education in the US was all about abstinence, never mind the resulting teen pregnancy rates. That rubber thingie sounds like some European socialist hippie plot.
To me, music means sound waves in the air, something meant to be listened with your ears. Whenever I see these hipsters talking about vinyl or cassettes etc., I wonder if they care more about the storage format than the music itself. If they cared about the music, they might choose a format that doesn't degrade the music so much.
Current systems can generally output S/PDIF digital audio through the line-out port; it's a standard feature, though somewhat hidden. You just need to connect an RCA adapter (use the right/red channel) and enable the S/PDIF output switch in the sound card settings. Audio quality is the same as Toslink (optical S/PDIF), though the signal may attenuate over very long coax links. There are devices like this one available which convert from coax to Toslink.
Ah, good point. I'm pretty sure I've encountered this once before, with a sound card that was specifically advertised to output S/PDIF, while having only 3.5 mm jacks. Alas, it's not quite general, as my Thinkpad is lacking the feature (the digital outputs are all labeled with "HDMI" in alsa).
Incidentally (and you probably know this already), the Toslink output in some earlier laptops was hidden within the line-out jack. A clever solution IMHO, as it doesn't mix up different kinds of signaling in the same electrical pin, and the light makes it clear there's something going on besides plain old analog. OTOH, it requires a small adapter for the Toslink fiber.
It's obvious if you look at the way people treat their cables. You can't expect them to obey something as esoteric as bend radius limits when their plain old copper wires hardly survive in one piece.
Incidentally, S/PDIF isn't doing too great these days, which is a shame. One of my old laptops from 2005 had optical audio output, and it was awesome especially given the poor quality of its analog output. Since then, this feature has been missing from most laptops, and even with desktop mobos you have to be careful. It seems since HDMI came out, you shouldn't need any other way of getting raw digital audio, which seems especially silly with something like 5.1 or better -- you'll probably want something more than the toy speakers in the TV or monitor.
Also, it sucks to have a professional laptop with DP output, only to realize that the projector at the venue only has consumer-style HDMI or even VGA.
Today we have a lot more learning resources out there, and the hardware is much more powerful but in my mind it just isn't as fun. There is certainly no way to whip up something that would "wow" anyone. It's more a tool now than a fun hobby.
You can always "wow" people when you do something remotely skilled and original (see my other post). People are used to throwing a ton of computing power at every single problem, but that doesn't make things inherently more interesting. I write software to make art, and I'm pretty sure I've seen the "wow" in action.
It's an interesting point, though, that computers now are more a tool rather than a novelty in themselves. With my algorithmic art, I like to remind people that it's simply math, it's just done on computers to make it fast enough. Nevertheless, the practical work is all about writing software, and it's certainly a fun hobby -- scratching my own artistic itches.
writing software yourself is almost pointless, you can download just about anything you want, too.
Not if you're doing anything remotely original. There was no software for doing my algorithmic art, and I guess if there had been, it wouldn't count as art. Similarly, I've done software for math and physics research. It's mostly math and algorithms, though, so technically the ideas could be implemented in something like Matlab (static images yes, live GPU-powered demos not so much). There's also the whole idea of knowing and controlling every aspect of your work that counts in art as well as science. (Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of proprietary "science" out there, for example in molecular modelling.)
As for electronics, FPGAs made it fun for me again, not the least because they bridge a conceptual gap between software and hardware. I don't even need to get into Linux and Free software in general:)
What kind of 'new' stuff do you want? I don't really want anything new from Intel's architecture, I just want a faster chip. New instructions seem dumb to me (but I'm sure some people want them).
IMHO, curly braces are braindead (unless used in a math context to denote sets, which is the one true way). Now can I also get a +5 Insightful for my equally valid personal opinion?
Yeah. Seems to me an awful lot of affected people ought to bill Microsoft for having a tech guy come set things right for them.
I'd like to paraphrase that as "people ought to bill Gates" but I guess I'm too late.
Seriously, though, what is it with computers/software that makes them exempt from basic consumer protection laws? You pay Microsoft for a product and they sell you a broken one, is it too much to ask for them to come and fix at their expense?
The article mentions scrolling up/down small abounts with the keyboard, presumably by using arrow keys. They are also handy for browsing pages wider than the browser window. Alas, many sites break the sideways logic -- when pressing left or right, they send you to the prev/next section of the site. For example, next topic on a discussion forum.
I wonder who actually uses such a "feature" -- surely the kids today don't even use a keyboard, that relic from the 1960s terminal world.
I wouldn't call it a "tip" or "trick" if the meaning of the key is obvious. Of course, kids these days might not see an actual PgDn key any more, and there are probably other reasons for the (unix)? tradition of using space for the same action, like HJKL for arrow keys.
Speaking of tradition, if browsers can respect the traditional space key, how about basic text manipulations like Ctrl-K, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E?
Oh please. Bitcoin is like any other technology in the broad sense: early investors can make a huge profit, and casual users only need to pay a minimal fee in order to use the tech. Is it unfair that you didn't buy Apple or Microsoft shares in their early days?
It's also a constant source of amazement how people on Slashdot, a "tech" site, forget about the actual tech aspect of Bitcoin. Perhaps you should look up what it actually does in the real world, before bringing up the tulip analogy.
Slashdot Mirror
My second 1st grade math teacher docked me for writing fours with a triangular top (4) as opposed the accepted fours that look like an upside down 'h'. I was also docked for writing 9's that look like upside down 6's, instead of the accepted nines that look like mirrored P's.
I've heard similar stories, but it's always in the early grades of elementary school, where the teachers aren't expected to understand specific subjects -- the school is more about fitting in than knowing or learning. After the first few years, you should have proper subject teachers. In contrast, the GP's points about kiss-assery in certain subjects is a lifelong issue.
IMHO, the tool approach is important but it has its issues. Promoting the tool aspect seems to attract the "engineer" types of people, while the artist/humanist types may feel left out. It's part of a larger divide among students, but the math issue isn't helping. For example, when I was at school, the usual question to a bright student was "are you a language person or a math person?" Similarly, there are these divides between artists and scientists. It's silly because, for instance, you need a lot of creativity to do science. But there's a problem when young students are exposed to these narrow stereotypes. The creative types of students tend to avoid math because of the way it's presented, and they will miss out on a lot.
Disclaimer: I'm an algorithmic artist. While I mostly hang out with the traditional art crowd, I plan on doing things like school visits to help promote math as art/culture (I'm also a former math/science teacher). I really should elaborate more on this, but I need to spare some of the writing energy for grant applications :-j
It's 2017 and we're supposed to be living in an oil-stripped wasteland with flying cars and hoverboards.
Look around, there are hoverboards everywhere. That's what they are called. They might not actually hover, but that's just a science-nerdy detail you should not worry about. What the current hoverboards do is just an alternative-truth version of hovering, which is equally valid as the old notion.
Some years back, I wrote a couple of screen-scraping bots to play simple Flash games. I always added some random movements and timings just to be sure. I can't imagine being the first one to think of this (around 2008-2010 or so).
Even though the system has a character-driven interface, similar to an old green screen system, the users "like the reliability of it, and the screens are actually pretty simple," said Hogan.
Is there any other way to run a serious server?
[Extroverts] tend to be energized when around other people, and they are more prone to boredom when they are by themselves
I can socialize much better than a lot of extroverts. I will admit, it does make me tired though. :)
IMHO, this is the key bit -- introverts can often thrive in social activities, but they need their alone time to recharge eventually. For example, after a few hours of theatre rehearsals etc., I usually want to go home, while the others want to go to a bar or something. It's tricky because at that point I wouldn't mind a pint myself, but I've already used up my social energy for that day.
I guess whatever makes America great again.
whatever, n. The je ne sais quoi that makes America great again.
mpv allows the user to supply GLSL scripts using the --opengl-shaders=filename option, and it can save single screenshots to files after those shaders have been applied (Ctrl-S), and mpv is scriptable (in Lua or C), so all you need to do is write a script that single-steps through the video, then writes such a post-processed screenshot to a pipe which you can use as input to "ffmpeg".
Doesn't mpv support direct output to a series of PNGs? MPlayer does it simply with -vo png.
Incidendally, I'm working on something related to the original question. I use shaders for math art demos, and I already have the option of using image files as the input (shameless example). It would be trivial to accept a new file for each frame, so it could process video from a series of images. The speed would only be a couple of FPS due to I/O bottleneck, but it won't be realtime anyway. The reason I haven't done this so far is that my focus is on the math of iterated shaders, not processing some existing video. Still, it would be fun to do some day, and of course I'm looking at ways to do it in realtime (the GPU is fast enough, but I/O is harder).
Lastly, you could use a screen recording software instead of the clunky series-of-screenshots idea. I did this for putting my first few demos on Youtube, but the quality is awful, so I much prefer taking the PNGs and encoding separately.
Well, I don't believe in evolution, so I should be safe. God bless me!
Yeah, I tried putting a giant rubber sheath over my monitor too, but apparently that doesn't stop you from getting an infection when you cyber. I feel his pain.
I thought sexual education in the US was all about abstinence, never mind the resulting teen pregnancy rates. That rubber thingie sounds like some European socialist hippie plot.
To me, music means sound waves in the air, something meant to be listened with your ears. Whenever I see these hipsters talking about vinyl or cassettes etc., I wonder if they care more about the storage format than the music itself. If they cared about the music, they might choose a format that doesn't degrade the music so much.
Gold and bitcoins don't actually produce anything.
Try sending gold pseudonymously across the globe in 10 minutes. Now try the same with Bitcoin. Observe which one provides a useful service.
Current systems can generally output S/PDIF digital audio through the line-out port; it's a standard feature, though somewhat hidden. You just need to connect an RCA adapter (use the right/red channel) and enable the S/PDIF output switch in the sound card settings. Audio quality is the same as Toslink (optical S/PDIF), though the signal may attenuate over very long coax links. There are devices like this one available which convert from coax to Toslink.
Ah, good point. I'm pretty sure I've encountered this once before, with a sound card that was specifically advertised to output S/PDIF, while having only 3.5 mm jacks. Alas, it's not quite general, as my Thinkpad is lacking the feature (the digital outputs are all labeled with "HDMI" in alsa).
Incidentally (and you probably know this already), the Toslink output in some earlier laptops was hidden within the line-out jack. A clever solution IMHO, as it doesn't mix up different kinds of signaling in the same electrical pin, and the light makes it clear there's something going on besides plain old analog. OTOH, it requires a small adapter for the Toslink fiber.
It's obvious if you look at the way people treat their cables. You can't expect them to obey something as esoteric as bend radius limits when their plain old copper wires hardly survive in one piece.
Incidentally, S/PDIF isn't doing too great these days, which is a shame. One of my old laptops from 2005 had optical audio output, and it was awesome especially given the poor quality of its analog output. Since then, this feature has been missing from most laptops, and even with desktop mobos you have to be careful. It seems since HDMI came out, you shouldn't need any other way of getting raw digital audio, which seems especially silly with something like 5.1 or better -- you'll probably want something more than the toy speakers in the TV or monitor.
Also, it sucks to have a professional laptop with DP output, only to realize that the projector at the venue only has consumer-style HDMI or even VGA.
I see what they did there.
Today we have a lot more learning resources out there, and the hardware is much more powerful but in my mind it just isn't as fun. There is certainly no way to whip up something that would "wow" anyone. It's more a tool now than a fun hobby.
You can always "wow" people when you do something remotely skilled and original (see my other post). People are used to throwing a ton of computing power at every single problem, but that doesn't make things inherently more interesting. I write software to make art, and I'm pretty sure I've seen the "wow" in action.
It's an interesting point, though, that computers now are more a tool rather than a novelty in themselves. With my algorithmic art, I like to remind people that it's simply math, it's just done on computers to make it fast enough. Nevertheless, the practical work is all about writing software, and it's certainly a fun hobby -- scratching my own artistic itches.
writing software yourself is almost pointless, you can download just about anything you want, too.
Not if you're doing anything remotely original. There was no software for doing my algorithmic art, and I guess if there had been, it wouldn't count as art. Similarly, I've done software for math and physics research. It's mostly math and algorithms, though, so technically the ideas could be implemented in something like Matlab (static images yes, live GPU-powered demos not so much). There's also the whole idea of knowing and controlling every aspect of your work that counts in art as well as science. (Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of proprietary "science" out there, for example in molecular modelling.)
As for electronics, FPGAs made it fun for me again, not the least because they bridge a conceptual gap between software and hardware. I don't even need to get into Linux and Free software in general :)
What kind of 'new' stuff do you want? I don't really want anything new from Intel's architecture, I just want a faster chip. New instructions seem dumb to me (but I'm sure some people want them).
I just want a faster horse.
Sincerely Yours,
Henry Ford
IMHO, curly braces are braindead (unless used in a math context to denote sets, which is the one true way). Now can I also get a +5 Insightful for my equally valid personal opinion?
Beanie-babies would work just as well for currency. (maybe better).
Please tell me how you can send payments pseudonymously across the globe in 10 minutes using Beanie babies.
Yeah. Seems to me an awful lot of affected people ought to bill Microsoft for having a tech guy come set things right for them.
I'd like to paraphrase that as "people ought to bill Gates" but I guess I'm too late.
Seriously, though, what is it with computers/software that makes them exempt from basic consumer protection laws? You pay Microsoft for a product and they sell you a broken one, is it too much to ask for them to come and fix at their expense?
The article mentions scrolling up/down small abounts with the keyboard, presumably by using arrow keys. They are also handy for browsing pages wider than the browser window. Alas, many sites break the sideways logic -- when pressing left or right, they send you to the prev/next section of the site. For example, next topic on a discussion forum.
I wonder who actually uses such a "feature" -- surely the kids today don't even use a keyboard, that relic from the 1960s terminal world.
I wouldn't call it a "tip" or "trick" if the meaning of the key is obvious. Of course, kids these days might not see an actual PgDn key any more, and there are probably other reasons for the (unix)? tradition of using space for the same action, like HJKL for arrow keys.
Speaking of tradition, if browsers can respect the traditional space key, how about basic text manipulations like Ctrl-K, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E?
Oh please. Bitcoin is like any other technology in the broad sense: early investors can make a huge profit, and casual users only need to pay a minimal fee in order to use the tech. Is it unfair that you didn't buy Apple or Microsoft shares in their early days?
It's also a constant source of amazement how people on Slashdot, a "tech" site, forget about the actual tech aspect of Bitcoin. Perhaps you should look up what it actually does in the real world, before bringing up the tulip analogy.
WHAT, DID THE PHONE INDUSTRY GET CURSED BY A SHITTY STEPHEN KING NOVEL? I haven't wished my phone was thinner for a decade now.
Obviously, because King's novels truly are the pinnacle of thinness.