Inside Out

Came home this evening to a couch in the basement hallway on its way out. At first it seemed doubtful whether the couch had originally come down the stairs, but after a bit of team puzzle solving and patient repositioning the couch was in the street. I sat there waiting for the van to pull around from the back. Melted drips fell from an overhanging branch, a neighbor couple was busy at their car while I rested there. The van pulled up with headlights on and from another house stepped a young man who long ago had assisted the couch to the basement. He didn't want it back now, but asked if we needed help loading it. Not so difficult, I thought, but after more puzzle solving and patient lifting the couch made its way to a place of good will.

More room in the basement.

Which somehow reminds me of Richard Feynman's post-Christmas 1959 talk on "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" - see the prize idea for writing small at the end of his talk: http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

The cartoonist is in the cartoon at www.dilbert.com - trapped there, and following a yellow sticky note road to find his way home with a faithful little dog. I think he's trying to emphasize the distinction between himself and his main comic character, who(m?) I guessing will appear in the next few days.

Studying more about the 'R' computer language which appears to have similarities to LISP in that programs can be readily written to modify the language itself. This feature apparently proves useful in attempts to model intelligence (i.e., AI) or more mundane things like scripting statistical analyses. The language is not too difficult to load and it has helpful tutorials, showing how to do basic statistical analyses, draw graphs, and how to clean up afterwards. It is, however, a programming language and as such requires careful thought before it can do something useful.

Thanks Mom and Dad for the M. C. Escher calendar. I love those drawings that have multiple perspectives combined, the endlessly ascending and descending stairways, and the pictures of things climbing out of pictures.

Read a little more about the organizing project, which is heavily paper-based. Ideas seem to have an affinity for paper, at least according to this method.

Lead is to led as read is to...? http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/lead.html (see List of errors for some irregular expressions, which are very different from Regular Expressions. More on those later)

Thank you Des for the salmon, consumed along with cream cheese and crackers on The Day, accompanied by split pea soup. Very yummy.

And I should also thank Ian (and Cindy) for the delicate multi-colored glass bell which is still on display beside a small wooden giraffe near the dining table.