Month: December 2006

math of the future: fewer computers please

/ fbz / Leave a comment

memory, all alone in the moonlight

i’m not sure if i disagree with this prediction out of frustration because i’m much more of a fan of pure math or if i truly believe the contrary. for me, applied math brings back memories of bunny population problems in calc 4 aka ordinary differential equations. if the future really brings a blurring of pure math, i would hope it would do so more because mathematicians collaborate and reason across disciplines.

it seems sort of a safe prediction to me to say that the advent of powerful grid computing will help mathematicians solve problems in fancier ways. that’s a cop out because software will still be buggy, hardware will still deteriorate, and ultimately it’s down to the programmer/mathematician to code something up that would help her. grid computing has some incredibly cool applications, putting together huge high def photos being one of the coolest, but it’s not a band-aid for boring old problem solving and proof writing.

i think the whole thing smells of the math vs. comp-sci department debates that happened halfway through the last century. perhaps i’m just a jaded girl with a math degree, but please if you are making predictions for the future, spice it up a bit!

technorati killers, all of us

/ fbz / Leave a comment

as i mentioned two blog posts before, we are going to kill technorati with this link fest. perhaps we are going to trick google’s sensitive linking algos — we will all be labelled as spammers by the end of the week.
chris tagged me, (the chris whose last name i tragically mispronounced at netscape-a-palooza), so now i have to sprint across the virtual field away from others in hopes that i don’t lose this game of tag. without any further ado, five things you unfortunately might not know about me:

1. i don’t remember learning how to read music and i played classical recorder before clarinet.

2. i had each year, on average, zero to one friends before the age of eighteen.

3. i hate having wet socks more than anything in this world.

4. i have credits on a movie that is listed on imdb, but i never worked on the film directly.

5. the next language i want to learn is mandarin. (that makes language number five if you count latin, four if you don’t, and no i didn’t count programming languages in there)

because i’m not a huge hater of technorati and because i think this silly meme has lasted long enough, i’m not passing it on. yep, that’s right, i lost this proverbial game of tag.

wreath building and soup making

/ fbz / Leave a comment

open in the dark comparison

apparently all it took was a few days away from my normal environment to turn me into a veritable craft and bake-a-thon. i built a wreath out of the leftover boughs from the tannenbaum (and even added a red fabric bow with stitches on the back to keep it from flopping apart). last night i even made a leek/potato/celery root soup from scratch. apparently it was a hit. lesson 1: step away from the computer while you can. lesson 2: have your family document your every move so you can blog about it later.

memes-r-us

/ fbz / Leave a comment

so when internet chain letters attack, i think spammers are behind them. now with this list 5 things blog meme, i’m pretty sure someone wants to take down technorati. think about it: if everyone links to everyone, technorati ingrown links will multiply like the pennies in that infamous doubling puzzle. i bet someone is already writing a whitepaper about this meme.