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 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.

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!

Tänkte det vore kul att lista alla netcasts jag prenumererar på.

Leo Laportes TWIT-nätverk (ett måste):

FLOSS Weekly
this WEEK in TECH
Windows Weekly
Security Now
net@nite
Daily GizWiz
Futures in Biotech

Övrigt:

Another Visitor
P1 Vetenskapsradion Tekno
P1 På minuten
The Math Factor

Här finns en trevlig algoritmlåt. Bra att lyssna på när man sitter och pluggar till datalogitentor!

Just brilliant!

Stanford har ett arkiv med videomaterial med Donald Knuth !
Titta in här!

Rekursion: se Rekursion…

Googlism.com är en webbsida där du kan få höra Googles åsikter om saker och ting. Så vad tycker då Googe om mig?
daniel is great — ja det tackar man för.
daniel is good at not dying — det får man hoppas.
daniel is traveling tonight on a plane — detta känner man igen.
daniel is the democratic spokesman of the senate agriculture and conservation committee — I don’t think so.
daniel is the dalai lama — hmm nej.
daniel is now 8 years old — stämmer på ett ungefär.

Av Toots Thielemans själv!

It has often occured to me how illogical some children’s songs and stories are (other things too for that matter).
The heroine in the book The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett has noticed just that. She says something like: “The stories don’t want you to think, just believe.”
But who said anything about logic then…?

Today I’d like to share a Swedish children’s song with you where such an illogical statement appears. The title would literally translate to the squirrel sat in the spruce (Sw: ekorr’n satt i granen).
The lyrics would look somewhat like this:
1 The squirrel sat in the spruce
2 about to peal cones.
3 then he heard the children
4 and got in a big hurry
5 jumped he from the pine's branch
6 he hit his little leg
7 and the long, hairy tail

Now this song can be clearly broken down into phases as follows.
Phase 1 (setting): lines 1 and 2, explains the setting.
Phase 2 (surprise): lines 3 and 4.
Phase 3 (action): line 5.
Phase 4 (consequence): lines 6 and 7, where the consequence of line 5 is explained.
Now, from phase 1 we know that the squirrel is sitting in a spruce, and from phase 2 we know that it is a male squirrel. In phase 3 something very interesting happens: our squirrel jumps from a pine, while sitting in a spruce!
Some sing the song as “jumped he to the pine’s branch”, but from what I know the version I presented is the original, written by Alice Tegnér.
Is this a supernatural squirrel who teleported to a pine after pealing the cones? Or is phase 3 taking place at a future time (very unlikely)? No.
I would rather say that when this song was written, a spruce and a pine tree were the same thing!
[Sarcasm off]

Hahaha
(Påpälsad tjej ~20 kommer in i väntrummet på vårdcentralen.)
Pojke ~5 (högljutt): Mamma nu kom det en tant till.
(Tjejen tar av sig och hänger upp sina kläder.)
Pojken (förvånat): Nämen titta mamma det var en flicka under tantkläderna!
(Övriga patienter i väntrummet börjar skratta.)

Det här blir visst inlägg nr. 102, vilket betyder att jag passerat 100 inlägg! Hur ska det firas? För det är väl så att jag passerat 100, för att 102 är större än 100, och om jag är på 102 nu måste jag alltså passerat 100. Är det rimligt att dra den enkla slutsaten? Är det säkert…? Jag tänker inte bevisa det, jag har fått nog av bevis för idag!
“Walk like a biirDIE!” går fortfarande runt i huvudet mest hela tiden.
Vad roligt det är att läsa gamla blogginlägg förresten. Jag har aldrig skrivit någon vidare dagbok precis, men ändå.

En gåta:
Vad är det som får ett rum att lysa upp dubbelt så bra som med en elektrisk lampa?
Svaret kommer… men inte nu!

Då var det dags för att presentera några roliga videoklipp från YouTube. Vi börjar med den fantastiska Tongo!

Oj vad han visslar högt här! “Tongoooo!”,
men han bryr sig inte och säger lägg av; “knock it off! Your bad!”

Här komponerar han en sång baserat på “Like a virgin”, men det brukar väl vara birdie, för Tongo.

La Tongoracha, la Tongoracha…

Tongo kallar på hunden

“Walk like a biirDIE!”, och fint kromatiskt visslande

Och så något heeeelt annat: