Fruitbox

A few days back, this crossed my thought: We interact with our computers through a keyboard that has quite a number of keys. We can do the same things, albeit not as comfortably, on our mobile phones, which traditionally only has about 1/10th the number of keys as a full computer keyboard. If we take this to the extreme; How many keys are needed to control a computer, the way they work today?
This is a nice case to apply the principle of reduction and emulation to. If we have a device which can emulate a computer keyboard, it can control the computer, since the regular computer keyboard can.
Step 1: Consider a device with only arrow keys and an enter key. To control a computer with this device we would only need to have an on-screen keyboard program, where we navigate to the key we want to press and hit enter.
Step 2: Now we don’t really need that many arrow keys. One is really enough: the “forward” key. Think of a keyboard represented linearly, and when we move to the end we get back to the beginning. Although neither convenient nor practical, we can now control the computer with two keys.
Step 3: Why have two keys when we only need one? After all, two keys to remember is even TWICE as many as having only one key. Let the software program switch selected key every second, and you press the enter key when the key you want is highlighted. Or alternatively, make a double-click equivalent function, but then this could be treated as having two keys.
Conclusion: We only need one key, which I think should referred to as “the any key”.

Did you know: There is a well kept secret in the history of computing: The first keyboards only had one key (bet you didn’t know that, eh?) After all, keep it simple is nice, isn’t it? Why design a complicated piece of hardware when you can have a big, easy-to-hit, RSI monster like the one-key keyboard. If you wanted to, you could even make it really small. You didn’t even have to learn touch typing or anything like that! But no, it wasn’t until someone invented the cracks between keys that things got more complicated.
Remark: This blog post is copyright(c) 1956-2009, written on a one-key keyboard.

The Large Hedron Collider, LHC, the giant particle accelerator in Switzerland, will apparently be operational some time in October this year. If I recall correctly we were waiting last year too, but the accelerator broke down, and the costs associated with bringing it up in the winter was decided to be too high.

Better luck this time!

As can be seen on my main homepage (a.k.a. my links page), at danielshome.webs.com, I have now set up a FriendFeed (here) aggregating my twitter, blogs and YouTube profile. Nice!

As the title says, I am going to write about customising LaTeX to work with Swedish typographical rules and conventions. The articles will be in Swedish and will be on my Swedish blog, Fruitbox 2.

So the pirate bay trial, #spectrial, is now over. One year in prison and a fine of 30 million Swedish crowns, that’s the sentence. This outcome clearly shows the inadequacy of the justice system when laws are unable to keep pace with technological development. Sadly, I am not surprised. Now who will be the first to sue Google for aiding in copyright infringement?

The Earth Hour 2009 event has just started here in Sweden. I am sitting here watching tweets go by in #earthhour and trying to keep track of the event.

Just a little post noting that the visitor counter turned 4000 today!

I just wanted to post that I’ve now gotten a page at The Mod Archive, modarchive.com. Check it out: here!

The Keybuoy!
If you drop your keys in the water, they’ll float right back at you, this is the Keybuoy! (did I spell that right).

I laughed so much while listening to this:
Daily Giz Wiz 149: Keybuoy

So you want more visitors to your website, homepage, weblog, blog, blogsite, webpage, bloghomesitepage, whatever?
I got an answer to the question: Write about how to increase website traffic!

What a wonderful recursion.

The fruitbox is becoming somewhat confusing with the Swedish/English mix everywhere, so I’m trying to change this by organising the content a bit differently.
Most posts on this page will be in English and I’ve set up a dedicated page for my Twitter feed, which will be in Swedish, so I’ll try to keep the smaller, more personal things there.
Sometimes one wishes there would only be one language.

“It’s your language, I’m only trying to use it” — Victor Borge

Jag är inte mycket för denna typ av musik, men Whammer Jammer är ett undantag!

Gå längst ner på sidan och prova! Nu kan vem som helst chatta med mig från denna sida!

Those lists are everywhere.
So here is my take on the computer programmer/scientist one:

1. No one understands what you are saying (see point 4 for ONE possible explanation).
2. You realise it’s pointless to try changing the world, because you don’t have the source code.
3. When facing the concrete problems of daily life, you think to yourself: “If only this had been software…”
4. You sometimes speak in 256-bit Rijndael, just in case!
5. The following strikes you as funny in an odd way: See point 5.
6. Who would use Java and coffee in the same sentence?
7. You think of your life in terms of if-conditions…
8. …Wait! Switch statements might be more efficient in this case, really!
9. You make stupid lists like “You know when you’re been a computer programmer/scientist for too long when”.
10. When something is broke you turn to your trusty old debugger.
11. You immediately realise this is a binary number.
12. You know how to pronounce Knuth the ‘right’ way.
13. C# is your favourite key of music.
14. You think of how to hack your own IDisposable pattern.
15. You think this list ends at 15.
16. Or maybe not, cause there are 16 digits!
17. You occasionally use phrases like: modular decomposition and finite state machine.
18. When you do something wrong you realise you need to overlook your exception handling.
19. When you participate in any sport involving catching balls, you try to avoid the ball, because you don’t like exceptions.
20. You wonder if your body employs mark-and-sweep garbage collection.
21. You know it’s difficult to do two things simultaneously, but you do know that if you switch between them really fast no one will notice.
22. You agree on at least five points of the above.

Expand the list by commenting on the post!