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When Nubi first became a student of Master Fu, he would ask the master many things.

"Which is the finest Web framework?" "Why is an Object Database better than a Relational Database?" "What is the best sorting algorithm?"

To these, the master would make no reply, nor even acknowledge that Nubi had spoken. However, Nubi would ask other masters and their students these same questions, and received many replies.

One day, Nubi asked Fu, "Master, there are many questions I ask of you which you do not answer. Yet I ask these same questions of others, and they have many answers. I begin to doubt, and fear that I will not find Wisdom by following you. Why do you remain silent?"

Master Fu replied, "I do not answer because you have no question."

At this reply, Nubi was greatly distressed, and said, "if I have no question, then how can others answer me?"

Without speaking, Fu hit Nubi over the head with his walking-stick.

Nubi turned himself in a circle in great confusion, and asked, "why did you hit me with your stick just now?"

Fu forced the stick into Nubi's hand. Upon grasping the stick, Nubi was enlightened.

I've been wanting to put some pictures of my niece and nephew up here for awhile, but haven't found the time. Well I made the time gosh-darnit!









Pictures taken by Pam Gwillim

Well, my stats page did anyway. Guess I need to norobot that. Surely they deserve a better ranking than I on the subject.

I just spent a week working in the field in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. As you can see from the photos, we had wind and dust for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Steve Horrex took some nicer pics which Ali posted—all I can say is that he must have spent more time in a camera-friendly environment (with windows and a steering wheel ) than I did.

Daily D'oh! Don't cut your rafters to 11 feet if the house plans say 11-foot-9. You'll have to nail a little outrigger onto each one, as in this photo (outriggers highlighted in red).

This past saturday I had the opportunity of working with a group from a church called Coast Hills. It was just a day group, so all I did was lead them in in the morning, then hang out and make sure they had all they needed to do their stucco job on a school near El niño. I didn't have to help them with the actual stucco, they were more than equiped, so I took a bunch of pictures of them, and the school grounds. These are some of the pictures I liked:

A rare self-portrait. (reflection off of a window on my truck)

The Jaws of Education.






Macro shot of the top of a playground slide after rain.

Inside of the almost finished edeficio de escuela.

This is the Otay Mesa border crossing. From where I was when I took this picture, it took me 90 minutes to get into the states...and I had to pee !

I love this shot, from inside the school grounds looking out to the road.

Vista de one of the pre-existing school buildings, con el nombre de la escuela.

Just having fun with my camera

I apologize to my co-workers for sending their blog entries so far down due to my pics.

If you can't make out the text on the packet, it reads:

INGREDIENT STATEMENT: WATER, TOMATO, RED
PEPPER*, DISTILLED VINEGAR, CONTAINS LESS
THAN 2% OF GARLIC, SALT, SPICE, CANOLA OIL,
SODIUM BENZOATE AND POTASSIUM SORBATE (AS
PRESERVATIVES), ASCORBIC ACID. *DEYHDRATED

Two rather odd choices, here.

First, why "Ingredient Statement" instead of the more typical (and readable) "Ingredients"? My first thought was that the language lawyers had paid a visit to the copywriter, and left him or her in a fog of legalese. "The Ingredient Statement MUST list the official chemical names or common names..."

Second, why does "Red Pepper" have a freakin' footnote when a) the entire content is a single block of text, and b) the footnote is itself laid out as part of the single text block? Why not just write "Dehydrated Red Pepper" inline? Both Ryan and I had the same thought: maybe it lines up better in the fully-justified block. With ~43 columns max, it would bump to six lines instead of five. But if you change "Ingredient Statement" back to "Ingredients", there's no problem at all staying on 5 lines.

The question is, is this by by design?

From DNJ. "Steve" is Steve Cook, an architect for Visual Studio Team System.

Matt: So the automation tools depend on the job you’re doing.

Steve: Yes. If you were implementing an e-commerce application then you’d clearly need a web site, so you’d have all the stuff you need to create web sites. If your software factory was for producing an embedded system for a robot then you wouldn’t have a web site.

So if you have a great idea for a web server to be built into your robot, you're out of luck. Or rather, in luck, because you've got a competitive advantage over those who can't see beyond the tools Microsoft gives them.

Do bigger tools hamper innovation more than smaller ones? The innovations to come out of the Unix philosophy might indicate that.

What is the world coming to?

Hm. Seems like "currying" may be a misnomer, after all. Not just because it tends to get used for partial function application, but because Curry popularized it but didn't "invent" it—that honor belongs to Moses Schönfinkel. But the c2wiki seems to think "invent" is too strong a word.

Meh. The Schönfinkel reference is a good intro to programming calculi, and that's what I really want to bookmark and read in more depth after Spring.