Janet wrote about her confusion re how computers work.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey, so far as I know the transistor acts as a tiny switch, either on or off, either 0 or 1. This allows binary arithmetic and Boolean algebra. Each such binary switch is called a bit, and it is convenient to group eight bits into a byte. With eight bits, then, or one byte, one can represent all the numbers from 0 to 255. For instance, in 24-bit (3-byte) color, typically, red and green and blue each are allowed one byte of data--eight bits. Each of these three colors can assume any value between 0 and 255. This gives over sixteen million combinations, from {0,0,0} to {255,255,255}.In order for all this to work with decent speed and low power consumption, we need transistors, which are very very fast switches. The number of transistors in a computer's CPU is, what, up into the billions? Millions for sure.

Didn't Crystal advise you to actually tackle the pretty boys? I'm sure that's how it's done. Meeting people.
OK Dude 'bye for now.
Te amo.
October 1, 2007 8:58 AM

Janet wrote about misguided efforts to make new friends at college.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Dude! You have been at Davis for not two days and you are worrying about making new friends! Relax, don't worry, be happy! Like your brother says, you are AWESOME!

Did you get that 8X10 photo OK?
What's the problem with the Inreach account?

Love, Dad
Sept. 25, 2007

Janet wrote about her social life.

Miss Adventurous,
This reminds me of the form that word takes in Portuguese, "desventura," a disadventure, as in the great song by Vinícius, Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amar, quote, "eu sei que vou sofrer, a eterna desventura de viver." Translation: "I know that I am going to suffer the eternal misadventure of living.

"The Latin "ego" became Portuguese "eu," Spanish "yo."

Your Latin classmate sounds nice. By the way, it is interesting to consider the etymology of the word "obscene," a compound of the Latin preposition "ob" and the noun "scaenus," which seems to mean, off-the-stage, implicitly, what should not be shown.

Adeus (Portuguese), Adiós (Spanish), Adieu (French).
Love,
Dad
October 5, 2007 4:35 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey, Dude, you discovered The Office! It's hilarious! In fact, it really stands out from the crowd!

I saw one a week or two ago where the head guy decides they have to all do a 5K Run to Defeat Rabies: Find a Cure! No one can convince him that there already *is* a cure!

So far as Heroes, I think Hiro is going to bring that pretty princess of the cherry blossoms forward into our present time!

Hmmm, I think the iTunes thing, Strategy #140, may be good!

Good thing you're coming up this weekend, we've got major firewood chores! Heh heh! Heh!

Love,
Dad
October 9, 2007 6:02 PM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey,OK OK I was just kidding, Gus can do the firewood chores! Heh heh.

Prospectus: literally, forward-looking.Initiation: preposition "in" plus noun "iter" (?), hence, en-journeying (?).I checked, we have both Szechuan sauce and popcorn.

See ya,
Dad
October 10, 2007 7:01 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey, Bear-Charger,

Speaking of the number of transistors in modern CPUs, I find that a new Intel quad-core processor demonstrated recently has 847 million transistors.

Also, you seem to have thoroughly scared the bear. It has not returned.

Also, I saw on TV last night that the dread Grizzly Bears, up by Yellowstone, go up into the high country in the summer, above timberline, and tear into big talus slides, ripping the boulders up to get at the Pine Tussock Moth, which shelters beneath the boulders during the day, feeding on flower nectar at night. And the bears lap up these moths pretty much one by one. And these moths help the bears fatten for the coming winter.

That is pretty amazing. Well, not out of keeping with standard bear behavior: tearing up logs to get at grubs, tearing up yellowjacket nests to eat the grubs. But the video of these bears just ripping up two-hundred-pound boulders on vast steep slopes of talus ... amazing ... and then they would go glissade down some snowfield.

Love,

Dad
October 15, 2007 2:46 PM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude,

That bear was back today, and would not be chased away. It is in bad shape, the poor thing. Someone shot it, and its lower jaw is hanging by a thread. That's what it "had in its mouth" when we saw it the other day. It is somewhat dangerous, being sick and starving. I tried to call Fish and Game but their line was busy every time for a half hour. I guess if I was a real man I would have a gun and I would put it out of its misery.

Anyway, that's the latest news from here. Except, I am making some more short music videos for YouTube, today, comparing two related songs by De Moraes and Jobim.

Adieu, Adios, Adeus,

Dad
October 16, 2007 3:24 PM

North_Fork_Trails said...
OK Dude after using my miraculous Google skills I think that your mystery movie is "Rainbow War," as discussed here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_WarSo now maybe you can find it on YouTube etc.

Love,Dad
October 19, 2007 1:52 PM

Janet had received a long comment - written in Portuguese by unknown person

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude, Brazilian spam! Who would have thought!

At least he tells you that your blog is "bem interessante," well-interesting. "Gostaria de falar" means "I would like to speak." In Spanish this would be "Gustaría de hablar," believe. It is interesting that the "ar" verb "hablar" of Spanish is the "ar" verb "falar" of Portuguese. I am not sure which "are" Latin verb these both derive from. Google would sort that out pretty quickly.

OK, love you, 'bye for now,

Dad
October 23, 2007 7:15 AM


North_Fork_Trails said...
OK I find that (Wikipedia)

"Thus, Spanish hijo and hablar correspond to Portuguese filho and falar (from Latin filium and fabulare, respectively).

"So. Both from "fabulare." This is a verb I much doubt I have encountered in Caesar or Cicero. There is an additional etymology at work here.

Ad deus (L.), adeus (P.), adiós (Sp.),

Dad
October 23, 2007 7:21 AM

Janet wrote about coloring her hair.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Blue? Hmmm, could be nice. A light metallic blue. But then maybe the rest of your hair would have to go to a light blonde.

October 25, 2007 8:17 AM

Janet wrote about an online writers magazine

North_Fork_Trails said...
Cool, I like the sound of that magazine.

Here, Greg and I "Hold Down The Fort." I am making animations of fractals, morphing. There is a high thin overcast this morning, it is dim and peaceful. Leaves fell, for a while, now they hold down their tiny forts, in peace, in peace, and even the blue jays have stilled their tiny tongues, and closed their powerful beaks.

October 27, 2007 8:06 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Ah, the good old Death Star!

I took a look at Nameless Magazine, and I like it. I read parts of some few stories, and one closely mirrored WildMouse's own stories about his violin training, as an infant, in a distant galaxy, where the violin tutors are cruel, and the young mice are, well, as meek as the very nicest of mice. Long, long before WildMouse grew to be six-foot-three in his socks, broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, and steely of glinting eye, he was a virtuoso violinist. Later, he would earn many hundreds of thousands of units of that far-flung currency, per second, as a violin teacher. Ah, those were the days ...

October 28, 2007 8:29 AM

Janet had posted her picture in her Halloween costume.



North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey PumpkinDude, awesome costume!

have been discovering all kinds of new connections between English, Latin, Portuguese, etc.

For instance, in Portuguese, to say "thank you," one says "muito obrigado." Port. "muito" = Sp. "mucho" = Latin "multo"= English "much.

"But "obrigado" is just a slurring of "obligado."

Hence we have the direct equivalent in English: "muito obrigado" = "much obliged."

Cool, huh?

Love,

Dad
November 1, 2007 12:16 PM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Janet,So I hear there is a reason you may be somewhat distracted. Sounds good to me.

Your midterms will go well enough.

By all means write, but not to the exclusion of joy.

Love,
Dad

November 2, 2007

Janet got a test score of 111% ( thus WildMouse strikes again!)

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey, wow, 111%, that reminds of when WildMouse, etc. ect., 1,111%, etc. etc.!

But very good, very good, nonetheless!

It's been 80 degrees each afternoon for three days now ... awesome ...

Adeus,

Dad
November 6, 2007 6:51 AM

Janet was going to vote for the first time.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude, Rwanda? Clinton? Is a president all-powerful? Should the U.S. be the World's Policeman? That last question is one which is very tough and to argue one side or another usually will mean that all kinds of implications and poorly-expressed agendas are in attendance.

For instance, one person might say, "yes, be world policeman, save the innocent people in Rwanda, immediately."But that same person might be offended by Bush's invasion of Iraq. Then it would be "hey, what do you think our country is, world policeman?"

Of course there is the so-called Lesson of World War II. That lesson is usually interpreted to mean that our isolationism was a failure and cost us dearly. We should have acted, we should have shouldered the burden of being World Policeman. Also the Lesson is often interpreted to mean that the appeasement of Hitler by Chamberlain not only failed, but if anything it led to war, yes, to war, but at a time not of our own choosing, at a time not to our own advantage, militarily.

No, the question of whether or not, and if so, in what way, the U.S. should be World Policeman, is not only difficult but severely muddied by, well, muddy thinking.Love, Dadp.s. have a great road trip!

Love,

Dad
November 9, 2007 8:31 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey congratulations on your 100th clog post! I really like your clog.Good that Rich and Chris visited and took you shopping. Good that your tree has a skirt.

All is well here.

Love, Dad.
November 29, 2007 6:24 AM

Janet had discovered that her vitamins contained caffeine.

North_Fork_Trails said...
What kind of pill has caffeine? NoDoz?

Maybe you should try coffee. After all, you are a writer.

Interesting clouds this morning. I am working on a new polar zonohedron algorithm for POV-Ray. I have got two versions of POV, one is UNIX and runs under X11, the other is Mac. I've got the UNIX version rendering 1200 640X480 frames for an animation, each frame takes about 15 or 20 minutes. It will take many days. Two and a half days so far, frame 216 is rendering right now.

But that leaves my Mac version of POV free for other work.

I had a funny programming experience. I decided to make a polar zonohedron as a "solid of translation" in POV. I would take the n vectors v[n], and first translate a sphere along 0*v[1], 1*v[1], ..., 9*v[1]. So, a line of ten spheres.

Then I would translate this line of spheres along 0*v[2], 1*v[2], etc.

Then I would translate this rhomb of 100 spheres along 0*v[3], etc. etc.

And so on.

But I neglected one thing: the number of spheres grows large very quickly.

I got the basic procedure up and running and said, OK, time for n=8.POV crashed almost immediately. I re-opened and examined my code. Tried again. Crash. Again. Crash. Again. Crash.

Then it finally occurred to me: I was asking POV to render 10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10 spheres! Or one hundred million. And that was too much.

However it works fine for n=4. I will send you an animation of a rhombic dodecahedron made from 1000 spheres.

Love,

Dad
November 30, 2007 10:26 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Jan, you should know that geometers have senses of humor. My hero Professor Coxeter used the quotation below to introduce one of his chapters, in his book "Geometry Revisited."

"Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre ... . There are 12 passengers aboard. The wind is blowing East-North-East. The clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?"
--Gustave Flaubert.

I had to share it with you.

Adieu,Dad
December 3, 2007 10:46 AM

Janet had a computer problem

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey,

I much doubt that it was changing to "Endure" that allowed Google to find your Parkour page. I tried Googling "davis parkour" and only three pages were returned. Your blog post was from October. Before any change to "Endure."

It is possible that you can set your blog to *not* be indexed by Google but I don't know. Some sites are that way. For instance, Google searches do not link to content within certain history sites. It's some kind of agreement Google makes with various web sites. These sites prefer that people can only access site content by passing through the site portal itself as it were ...Beautiful sunny day here. Just finished a new (to me) Terry Pratchett, "Interesting Times." Ah it should be made into a movie.

Luvya,

Dad
December 10, 2007 1:05 PM