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5/10/2000 6:45:32 PM
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Fun with Blocks
It was my wife Lizard's birthday on Monday. I got her some blocks to play with. Here's what they are like: Each block is a cube, with two opposite sides painted one of four colors (red, green, yellow, blue) and printed with a letter [a-z], numeral [0-9], arithmetic operator [+-=], or a question mark [?]. (There is no other punctuation.) Each character occurs on exactly two blocks, with the exception of [a-d,n-q], which occur four times. Yes, there are four Qs and two Es. The company that made these in China was evidently not thinking hard about the distribution of the English alphabet. The choice of a question mark as the only punctuation is curious. Starting with A, the colors cycle through red, green, yellow, and blue, then back to red, and so on. The last letter is green. For every red face, the opposite face is green. Every yellow face is opposed to blue. red/green blocks are slightly in the majority over yellow/blue (26 vs 22).
There is only so much you can do with blocks like this.
You can't spell many words, because although you have a total of 96 printed characters, they are distributed over 48 blocks. Displaying one character face-up causes the opposite character on the block to be placed face-down, so for each character you can see, you actually lose two. Nonetheless, we came up with a number of (increasingly complicated) uses for the blocks, which I will enumerate here.
- Build stuff! First, you can of course build things with them. 48 cubical blocks can make structures tall enough that they are fun to knock down.
- Spell things. You can spell a limited number of words. I already covered that.
- Encode secret messages. A variant of number 2. It happens that the blocks are hardware-optimized to encode your text using the rot-13 cypher algorithm. This algorithm, well known for its use in obscene usenet posts, takes each character in your text and rotates it 13 positions along in the alphabet. Thus A (position 1) becomes N (position 1+13). All the alphabetic blocks are printed in such a way that the two opposite characters are 13 positions apart. A-N, B-O, C-P, and so on. (This does not work for the numerals, which are four positions apart, with 9 paired with =, and 0 with ?. + and - are paired as well.)
NGGNPX
NG
QNJA!
- Play a substitution game. This wears thin quickly, so you might want to try the first game we invented. This is akin to the game in which you spell a four-letter word, and you and your opponent take turns altering a single letter to create a new and previously unused word. You probably played this in grade school. The classic variation might go like this.
And so on. With the blocks, the rules have to be changed slightly. Single-letter substitutions would end the game after two turns, since only two letters would have been changed, and the other two would (probably) have been used up.
By our rules, you and your opponent take turns substituting two letters at a time. When three consecutive words have been made, the oldest is removed and returned to the pool of available blocks. For example, the first three turns might look like this.
Remember that each word also uses up the letters on the opposite side of the blocks. This works for a while with a maximum of three words spelled out. If you try to keep four words at a time in the stack, the game ends really quickly. (Possible variants might require continuity or differences in color as well.)
- Play a game of natural selection. We got tired of that and took an interlude playing a game of random selection. Select 16 blocks at random, and place them in a four-by-four grid such that they all display one of their colored faces. Take two six-sided dice (or four-sided, if you have them from your D&D days) and roll them. Use the number shown on one die to select a column on the horizontal axis and the other to select a row. Roll again if you cast any 5s or 6s. Remove the indicated block. Roll both dice again. This time, replace the block you removed with one of the color at the coordinates indicated by your last throw. Eventually, all the blocks on the grid will be the same color. (This demonstrates the process of random selection; not all selection is tied to fitness.) For example:
- Assume your grid is initialized like this.
You roll a 3 and a 2.
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So you remove the block in the third column over and the second column down, like this.
Now you roll, say, a 1 and a 4.
- So you replace the square you removed with the one in the first column over and fourth row down (which is red), like this.
And so on.
For a variation, try this: Select a coordinate with two dice as before; remove the block. On your replacement throw, if you cast any 6s, replace the removed block with the color least represented in the grid. (Be warned that if you play this mutation variation, the game may not end in your lifetime.)
- Play commando mahjongg. I didn't say what was on the other four faces of the cubes. Here's where they come in (for us). The remaining four faces are not painted; they are raw wood, printed with two pictograms (on opposite sides) and two alphabetic or numeric characters (also on opposite sides). The available shapes, which always come in the same pairs, are duck/rabbit(?), gondola/cherries, otter/boat, sunglasses/stars, tv-set/cricket, chicken/bird, horsie/flower, candelabrum/house (with massive chimney from woodburning stove), sailboat/jar (of mayo or maybe morphene), choo-choo-train/apple, bug/tangerine(?), helicopter/Thurber dog, Airstream trailor(?)/sunflower. The available letters/numbers, which always come in the same pairs, and always accompany the same pair of shapes, are A/0, B/4, E/2, I/5, J/1, K/2, L/3, M/4, O/8, W/6, X/7, Y/8, Z/9. Furthermore,
all identical pairs of colored letters always have the same four shapes/letters/numbers on the remaining four sides of their cubes. Other than that, though, the distribution is very strange. One suspects that groups of blocks were arbitrarily stamped, four sides at a time, as they came off the assembly line. (There may be great cryptographic potential in these other numbers and letters, but I can't see what it is.)
Anyway, you can use all the cute pictures to play mahjongg, or in our case, a combination between mahjongg and jenga. Arrange the blocks in a mahjonggesque structure, like so:
Taking turns, remove matching pairs of blocks. You can remove a block by sliding it out horizontally in any direction, or lifting it vertically, without shifting any other blocks or causing them to fall. The player who cannot find two blocks to remove, or who causes part of the pile to fall, loses. This is different from the familiar computer mahjongg version. By these rules, you can create gaps under blocks, making it difficult for your opponent to safely remove his or her two blocks.
- Make intellectual puzzles. You can also use these additional symbols in conjunction with the colored characters to create puzzles, like this one by Lizard. Can you solve it?
Here are two more
Variations to these games and activities come to mind. If you think of any cool ones, or come up with any games of your own to play with a 48-piece set of colored alphabetic blocks, please pass them along to us. Gotta go play now... :-)
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Entries for
Tuesday, March 28, 2000
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3/28/2000 11:52:21 AM
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How James Fenimore Cooper cursed my life
A couple of years ago, I posted some of my favorite Mark Twain material on my old web site. One thing I posted was Twain's essay on Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses. Since that time, I have been receiving scores of emails from high school students trolling the web for anything to get them out of writing a paper on Last of the Mohicans. They find me, think I know (or care) about Fenimore Cooper, and ask me "Just a few short questions," which usually translate to "Would you write my paper and email it back to me - fast?" I don't blame them, though. I'd do anything to get out of writing that paper, too.
Yes, it's astonishing, but there are people who don't think Fenimore Cooper is total crap. Many of these people have become high school teachers and regularly torment their students (and, indirectly, me)
with papers on
this inept and unimaginative author. (Oh yeah, I'm really afraid of getting flamed by Cooper fans. Bring it on!) Now some bucket heads (what you become if you let a Cooper at your brain?) have arranged a site dedicated to on-line resources for Fenimore Cooper. I had the strange and ironic fortune to be included in their collection. (NB my web site was all in Latin at the time, because that was when grad school was still fun.) I quote:
Twain's writing stands on its own,
but this site is difficult to accredit. Evidently, the page is posted by Jed Parsons at the
University of California, Berkeley, but since Parson's [sic] Home Page is written in Latin, his
credentials and the source for his Twain text are difficult to discern.
Now, I have grown to share the young reviewer's suspicion of anyone who puts up a web page in Latin (they are not to be trusted), but what credentials do you need to stick a Mark Twain essay on your web page?
I hope this critic, Gail Lindenberg of Nogales High School, was not one whose paper I declined to write. If she was, it may partly explain why she stamped my page with the dismal rating of 2.
Now I can only dream about that highest rating - divine 4 - that I let slip away because I didn't
have the vision of the fellow on whose site ...
... [a] nifty chart based on Natty Bumppo of The
Leatherstocking Tales shows a quick synopsis of each of the five books, and Bumppo's
age at the time of each novel.
What is the attraction of this
commandingly mediocre author? Habent sua fata libelli, I guess.
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Entries for
Monday, March 27, 2000
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3/27/2000 4:18:01 PM
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Update: More culinary fun
Apparently, you can do more in the kitchen than cause
grapes to
flare in the microwave. Sallie Goetsch reports that her fella Stefan has successfully cooked salmon in the dishwasher (without soap).
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3/27/2000 3:12:08 PM
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Pyrotechnic grapes
When I first read about this, I hesitated to believe it. Now, in my own kitchen (and with about half of the grapes my wife bought yesterday), I have verified for myself that under the right conditions, a grape in a microwave can produce spectacular effects.
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I first read about this experiment at Patrick Michaud's page. All you need are 1) a dry substrate (such as a plate), 2) a green grape, 3) something to slice the grape with (such as a knife), and 4) a microwave oven.
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Slice the grape lengthwise almost all the way through. Cut through all of the pulp in the grape, but leave a tab of the skin, about 3 millimeters across, connecting the two halves. Lay the grape down on the plate, flat part down.
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Now the fun begins. Put the plate in the microwave, turn the microwave on high, and watch. In a few seconds, bright flashes and sparks will jump from the edges of the grape, especially from the point where the two halves are connected. The (feeble) pictures to the right, though somewhat obscured by bad light and the metal mesh in the window on my microwave, demonstrates this. Michaud has done a much better job of coordinating his trigger finger on his camera with the cosmic events in his oven. Be sure to take a look at his grape-2.gif for a glimpse of what you'll really see when you try this.
I have been unable to duplicate these results successfully when the saucer was slightly damp (from washing off the pitiful remains of the previous grape), or when there was more than one grape on the saucer. (Mysterious...)
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The effects of this experiment on the grape are devastating. Grapes emerge from the oven with crisped edges, smelling of smoke, and sitting in a foamy soup of broiled grape entrails. The grape so treated has the ability to raise the temperature of the substrate, well, to put it scientifically, a lot more than you'd expect.
This is soooooo cool...
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3/27/2000 10:17:43 AM
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Turning over the Bear's Lair
This is mostly just for U.C. Berkeley people.
You have probably heard that the ASUC is going to vote to sign a contract this week (Thursday?) with a new comapny to manage the Bear's Lair. True, the Bear's Lair is a totally nasty place, but there is no reason to expell all the family-owned restaurants there just because the present manager doesn't know how to wash the floor. If you are at all connected with the University of California, please consider sending a message like this to the addresses that follow.
Dear X,
I am writing you to express my disapproval with the negotiations
underway to establish new management for the Bear's Lair, which may
expell many of the small, family-owned businesses there. I agree
absolutely that the Bear's Lair is in very shabby condition, but I am
sure there is a way to clean the place up without driving out the
variety of small restaurants that give the Bear's Lair its diverse
flavor. Please reconsider, and put Berkeley diversity and student
will above crass corporatism.
Here are the email addresses of the people on the ASUC committee:
- Thomas D. Cordi, Director ASUC-Aux, tdc@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Barbard Davis, Asst Vice Chancellor, bgd@uclink.berkeley.edu
- Ron T. Coley, Asst Vice Chancellor, rcoley@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Victoria L. Harrison, Chief of Police / Exec Director, vlh@uclink.berkeley.edu
- Leo B. Helzel, Adjunct Professor, Haas School of Business, Helzel@aol.com (Look at that! An AOL address! This man might not even be able to read - should he be voting? :-)
- Dave Friedman, student, davef@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Patrick M. Campbell, student, patcamp@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Conor Moore, student, cpmoore@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Justin Radell, student, jradell@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Todd Dipaola, student, tdipaola@uclink4.berkeley.edu
- Ben Dahl, student, bendahl@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Thanks to anyone who participates at the last minute.
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Entries for
Sunday, March 26, 2000
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Entries for
Thursday, March 23, 2000
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3/23/2000 4:29:19 PM
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$100 cup of coffee (part 3)
This is the end of my story. Please read parts 1 and 2 below.
Finally my official citation arrived in the mail. At last, I could contest this. I had fantasies of explaining the whole story to a judge, like a child telling on a bully to his parents. This couldn't be legal, I thought. They can't just make people pay $162 for a cup of coffee.
I arrived at the courthouse early. They start scheduling appointments for walk-in court at 8:30, and only take the first 50 cases or so, so you have to get there early. The more experienced visitors knew exactly which articles of their clothing would set off the metal detector, so they were taking off belts and shoes in advance. I got in line. When it was my turn, I passed my slip of paper under the glass. The woman put my name on a list on a yellow piece of paper, and handed me some tenth-generation photocopy with instructions about getting to the courtroom and what would happen if I took off. I had an hour and a half.
There's not much to do in a courthouse. There aren't many benches, either. You just have to stand around in hallways, leaning on the stainless steel shelves that used to house pay telephones before they removed them. The most bored person there was a little kid, who was making a lot of noise, throwing things around, and occasionally being threatened or slapped by his mother. I put on my headphones and started reading my book.
"Hey you!" said the kid. I realised he meant me. I took off the headphones and raised an eyebrow. "Whatcha listnen to?" "Check it out," I said, and put the headphones on him, clipping my Rio to his waist. He was mesmerized. He was quiet. His mother leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and smiled. (Such, apparently, is the power of Visit Venus and UNKLE on a young child.) "What yo name?" he asked. "Jed." "What?" "Jed. With a 'd'." "Oh." "What's yours?" "Cubby." "What?" "Cubby." "Ah. How old are you, Cubby?" "Free," he said, thrusting three splayed fingers in my face. "Wow. You're big for a three-year-old." His mom, eyes still closed, nodded behind him. He was playing with the buttons on the Rio. He found the volume, and immediately ran it all the way up. He would not be persuaded that it was also interesting to turn it back down. (From this point on in our conversation, Cubby was yelling over the noise in his ears.) I chatted with him and his mother for a while. Then he asked me, "Wahng go?" "What?" "Do you wanna go?" "You and me?" I asked. "Yeah. Let's get outa here." "Where do you wanna go?" "Franklin Park." I felt honored. "I'd like to, man, but I have to stay here. It's no fun, I know." He turned to his mom. "Can we go to Franklin Park with my new friend?"
Most of my morning was spent waiting, so I'll say a little more about Cubby. He was still fiddling with the Rio, scarifying his tiny eardrums. He was particularly interested in the three buttons on the top of the device that do practically nothing. He convinced himself that I had added these buttons myself, a feat he regarded with admiration. His mother seemed concerned that he was going to damage the thing, but I assured her (and myself) that he (probably) couldn't hurt it. (Even if he busted the LCD, it would still work, right?) Really, though, he did not seem interested in throwing it like he did those other things, but was actually quite deliberate in handling it. "Did you buy this?" he asked. "Um, yes," I confessed, partly feeling like the question could have come from anyone in the hall. "Why didn't you buy me one too?"
Eventually, the courtroom doors opened, and I had to ask Cubby for my Rio back. We all filed in quietly. I did not think Cubby would understand the signs that restrict you from doing pretty much anything while in the courtroom. No eating, no talking, no reading, no sleeping. He was probably also not ready for the next inevitability: waiting meditatively in constrained silence for almost half an hour for the commissioner to show up. (Apparently they don't use judges for arraignments and pleas. They use commissioners. TV is misleading.) As soon as Cubby spotted me across the motionless room full of people he jumped up and waved, "Da-a-amn! I know that guy!" And people gazed shamingly at me...
I was preparing what I was going to say. Keep it brief. Keep it to the point. I tried to keep my fingers warm. Everybody had that glazed look of boredom people have when they are trying to calm their nerves in public. The commissioner entered and sat at his bench above and behind the clerk and his assistant. We were notified at length of our rights by the commissioner, whose beautiful, deep voice was amplified by a microphone.
There was a friendly Spanish translator. The commissioner himself was black, the clerk Asian, his assistant a Latina. I found all this quite moving, and was further reassured that justice would be done.
We were called up in little groups to come sit in a row of chairs closer to the bench, enclosed by a low wooden partition. One-by-one, the commissioner called people forward to plead innocent or guilty, and then offer any explanations they had. The fines were huge. He cut most of them in half. They were still huge. You knew that a few of the people in there were real assholes and probably deserved what they were getting. But most people I suspected felt just like me. Accidentally transgressing some non-intuitive law and stuck with a huge penalty. But, you know, Ignorantia legis non est excusatio. A Latino, speaking through the translator, was clearly astonished that he was being fined hundreds of dollars for driving a friend's car that was uninsured, and was terrified to offend the law in any way. He was given a week to get non-owner's insurance and come back for another hearing. A Chinese woman with broken English, who kept calling the commissioner "your Highness," seemed ecstatic to get off with a $130 fine for something involving a cop who had nailed her for driving in some special highway lane and who wouldn't then give her directions to get home.
Finally, my name came up. (And the commissioner pronounced it right!) "Jedediah Parsons!" I approached. "You are accused of drinking on the BART." "Drinking coffee, sir." "Drinking whatEVER," he boomed. I looked down. "Guilty..." I replied. I was just opening my mouth to explain my story when he intoned, "Fine reduced to $100. Next..." I stood there, stunned, at the podium. The commissioner glared at me. The clerk, whose job had also been to translate the meaning of glares for the uninitiated, motioned with his head at a chair. "Sit down!" he hissed.
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3/23/2000 3:39:39 PM
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$162 cup of coffee (part 2)
This is the middle of my story. Please read part 1 below
I was pretty pissed off about this. The BART was somehow allowed to set arbitrary and huge fines for trivial things like drinking a cup of coffee on their platforms - black coffee, mind you, with no sticky milk or sugar - and the Oakland court system would enforce them. I tried calling the number on my citation, and of course it was busy. I tried repeatedly, even checked the number on the ticket against the phone book. It matched. Suspicious of all these busy signals, I called at one in the morning.
Busy signal.
Time was ticking away, and I was supposed to clear this thing up. I hadn't received anything in the mail, and the number was useless. So I made it to the courthouse early in the morning and got in line. When my turn came up, I presented my slip to the woman on the other side of the glass, and explained that I hadn't received any other notices in the mail. "You're probably not in the system," she said. (No kidding, I thought.) She explained, "the officer has up to one year to file the citation. Until then, it can't be processed." "But what about this thirty-day deadline here?" "I'll give you a note saying you were here. You can present that if you get any trouble," she offered. I was not entirely reassured. She continued, "I can look up what your fine will be, if you want." "Please." She typed. "162 dollars." This was an expensive cup of coffee. I thanked her for her help (and she had been quite pleasant.) "By the way," I added, "I've been calling this number but all I get are busy signals - twenty-four hours a day." She looked at the slip. "Oh, that's not our number. Of course that doesn't work. We've changed our number." Welcome to the panopticon.
>> Part Three...
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3/23/2000 3:24:11 PM
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$222 cup of coffee (part 1)
About a month ago, I was waiting for a BART train (public transportation here in the bay area), drinking a cup of coffee. There was a woman not far from me acting psychotic, shouting things at a wall. The woman left, and soon after a BART cop approached me. "Excuse me, sir..." he began. I was anticipating being asked about the woman. "Is that yours?" he asked, pointing to my cup of coffee. "This? Yes," I replied. "Are you aware that there is no eating or drinking permitted on the BART?" he demanded, with that I've-got-your-ass-now cop tone of voice. "I know there's no eating or drinking on the trains," I responded, "but it doesn't say anything about on the platform." "What do you think all these nice new signs are for?" he asked. I looked around. There were no signs anywhere. "What signs?" I asked. It was clear at this point that I was filling someone's quota. All I could do was take whatever he had in store for me. "They're right downstairs. May I see some identification?"
I sat, bewildered, as Officer M. talked to a nasal voice on the radio and filled out my citation. It said "Drinking." "Hey," I said, "this sounds like I'm 'drinking', as in alcohol." "No," he reassured me, "that would be a misdemeanor," and handed me the citation for my infraction. "You have thirty days to pay this."
I looked at the yellow slip. No dollar amount was specified. All it said was 640(B)(4) Drinking. I asked, "Excuse me, but how much am I being cited for?" "You can call this number," he said, circling a number on the back of the ticket. "Or you can go down to the courthouse." He sauntered off. I went downstairs from the platform in search of this alleged No Drinking sign. After some searching, I found it; a little smaller than I had expected, given its importance which was by now obviously not insignificant, and fairly out of the way. It was definitely not in my line of sight either to use the ticket machine or to enter the gate. It said, Maximum fine $222. Shit.
>> Part Two...
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Entries for
Tuesday, March 21, 2000
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3/21/2000 1:21:58 PM
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London cabbies grow bigger brains
According to the New York Times, cab drivers in London grow bigger brains to accomodate the huge amount of navigational data they need to get around that town. Researchers at University College determined that "The posterior hippocampus, thought to store a spatial representation of the environment, was larger in [London taxi] drivers; there was, in fact, a direct relation between its size and years spent on the job" [1]
[1] The New York Times, "Science," March 21, 2000, page D8. (The NYT is also available online with free registration.)
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Entries for
Monday, March 20, 2000
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3/20/2000 9:40:38 PM
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7'4", 520 LB
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You know him. You've seen him. He is watching you. Look for signs made in his image at www.obeygiant.com.
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![[andre]](pictures/giant-middle.png)
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3/20/2000 12:07:39 PM
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A tide of perambulators surges north along the crowded Broad Walk...
Remember the glorious Zork? First in a series of interactive fiction adventure games from Infocom, Zork was originally written for the PDP-10, and was later ported to numerous platforms. (Maybe you remember paying on your college's mainframe? Maybe you had it on your Apple ][, or your IBM PC?) Infocom made it easy to port its games to different platforms with the invention of the Z-machine.
Infocom's solution was ingenious: they invented a design for something called the Z-machine, a virtual computer. The idea was that the functions of this machine could be emulated on different computers with a program called a ZIP, or Z-machine Interpreter Program. ... The Z-machine concept was astonishingly ahead of its time - consider that of Java, whose "write once, run anywhere" virtual machine ... wasn't developed until more than a decade later [1:52].
The Z-machine continues to be ported to new platforms, making those same ZIP programs (games) playable. I've got Zork running on my PalmPilot, thanks to Pilot Frotz. I can also play
Infocom games with the rezrov game interpreter by Mike Edmonson.
This is a Perl-based interpreter, which will run on any machine that has Perl installed (like my Linux box).
There's a ton of history, information, and downloads (of all the ZIP programs) at Pete's Infocom page. I too love the feeling of having three Zorks in my pocket. Infocom games can also be downloaded (for free) from Activision (which bought Infocom).
[1] Michael Edmonson, "The rezrov Infocom Game Interpreter." The Perl Journal 13 (spring 1999), 52-60.
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Entries for
Sunday, March 19, 2000
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3/19/2000 7:22:54 PM
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Typography, Archaeology, and LaTeX
Note: If this post contains English and gibberish instead of English and Greek, then you don't have a properly configured Unicode browser.
I recently got my copy of the
latest issue of Εύτυπον (pronounced 'Eftipo') in the mail [1]. If you are interested in the use of the (free and amazing) typesetting software TeX (pronounced 'tech') and the humanities, please take a look. I have an article in this issue describing how I typeset the most recent volume of the Univeristy of California's Classical Studies [2].
[1]
Εύτυπον is a publication of the
Συλλόγος
Ελλήνων
του TeX (the Greek TeX Friends). Copies of the journal are available in PDF format for free from the eft website.
[2]
Panos Valavanis (translated and with an introduction by Stephen Miller), Hysplex: A Contribution to Ancient Greek Technology, Classical Studies 36 (1999). ISBN 0-520-09828-3. (No, I wish, but I don't get any royalties :-)
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3/19/2000 5:06:06 PM
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Ode to Berkeley
Taking a nice walk around Berkeley today, and especially down the bizarre bazaar that is Telegraph Avenue, I remembered a poem I wrote when I moved to Berkeley.
Prenomine quo loco me vocant homines
et versus scribunt conplures tritos et turpes;
barbati cuius in viis dormiunt senes;
bibuntur caffeinate res calide plures;
Vagantur nudi viri eu! nude femine
in quibus non est modicum pudicitie,
herbe illorum fumate sunt illicite:
nunc hac in urbe habito egomet - o ve!
Translation: "In the place where people call me by my first name, and so many people write tedious and crummy poetry; in whose streets men with beards are sleeping, and many hot, caffeinated things are drunk; naked men are strolling - eew! - naked women too, in whom there is not a particle of shame; their smoked herbs are illegal: now in this city I myself do dwell, oh woe!" The meter is some plausibly Medieval-Latinish thing I made up. (Maybe it really exists?)
Of course, it would happen that by the time I started to like Berkeley, they had already outlawed nakedness. Alas. :-)
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Entries for
Friday, March 17, 2000
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3/17/2000 11:23:46 AM
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Walking in the City, Dwelling in Fungespace
Recent anthropological and sociological work has sought to
determine not how members of groups establish identity (through,
e.g., common rituals and language) but difference within
themselves. The work of Michel de Certeau is exemplary in
this [1]. In recent years, a class of multidimensional
computer languages that operate on specifiable topographies has
been introduced [2]. Called Funges, these languages
may offer a way to model the "individual" experience of
inhabitants in a city.
In Chapter 7 of The Practice of Everyday
Life, "Walking in the City," Michel de Certeau
argues that the "city" is a privileged entity defined
by the possibility of producing its "own" space - of
repressing "all physical, mental and political
pollutions that would compromise it." (Hey! whaddya
think this is? You're in Boston, buddy.) Looking
down on the city from above, one sees the grid-like map
of streets and regions, the topological features
(walls, right angles) that restrict and define the
possibilities of movement for a citydweller. Eliding
the traces of inhabitants, there is "the creation of a
universal and anonymous subject which is
the city itself." This provides "a way of conceiving
and constructing space on the basis of a finite number
of stable, isolatable, and interconnected properties"
[1:94]. The city map only traces the absence of what
was; it inks over "the act of transgression, the idle
wandering, the window-shopping" [1:97].
The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It
exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system
has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in
doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.
It is in
relation and contradistinction to this universal
subject that citydwellers operate. One could think of
the available moves - jay-walking, hopping the fence,
not keeping off the grass - as pedestrian "speech
acts." These serve
a triple enunciative
function: a process of appropriation of the
geographical system, a spatial acting-out of the place,
and the implication of relations among
differentiated positions.
Funges offer a way to model this experience in the
mental landscape of the computer. Funges are
"programming languages whose programs are typically
expressed in a given topological pattern and number of
dimensions" [2]. Funge programs can read their
landscapes and write on them as well, for the
fungespace is a matrix of information and operation
instructions. In addition, each program has its own
private memory, separate from the fungespace on which
it operates. Thus the Funge is, on a basic level, like
the citydweller, speaking to - and with - its landscape,
yet maintaining its own degree of difference.
The universal and anonymous city may itself be
modeled with Lahey-Space topologies. In
Lahey-Space, a vector projecting from the origin will
eventually reach the origin again. (All roads lead
to Rome.) The properties of Lahey-Space geometry
make it possible to map any planar space onto a sphere,
with all trajectories eventually returning to
themselves. This creates, as in the case of the city,
"a nowhen, a synchronic system" [1:93].
[1] Michel de Certeau (tr. Steven Rendall),
The Practice of Everyday Life, University of
California Press (1984).
[2] Chris Pressey, Funge-98 Final Specification,
(1998). (Pressey's old web site (www.cats-eye.com) is gone, and the Befunge
FAQ is out of date. I have posted Pressey's
specification here.)
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Entries for
Thursday, March 16, 2000
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3/16/2000 10:40:40 PM
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Handy Tip for Linux users who just bought
a Diamond Rio MP3 player (like me). The Rio works fine with Linux. A search for "rio" on Freshmeat turns up a number of possibilities for management utilities. I found the interface for the Gnome Grio too buggy to use, but am very happy with the simple command-line rio. You'll probably need to know the base address for your parallel port. If your printer is at /dev/lp0, it's 0x3bc; 0x378 for /dev/lp1, and 0x278 for /dev/lp2. Happy listening!
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3/16/2000 3:42:42 PM
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Handy Tip for *nix users of XMMS (the MP3 etc. player for X). XMMS has some pretty slick skins of its own, but it really looks good with the skins for the K-jöfol player. Get the K-jöfol Skin Support Plugin by Tim Monash. The readme has thorough installation instructions.
| Here's a (reduced) shot of the K-Nine skin.
Is this not totally bad ass? Picture this floating over your amazing WindowMaker desktop... |
![[screenshot]](pictures/kjofol.png)
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3/16/2000 11:24:16 AM
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Today I join the ranks of
bloggers abounding...
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Only posts for the past 14 days displayed.
Older posts
are archived.
To contact Jed, email
jed at socrates dot berkeley dot edu.
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Things I Like
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Humanities / Classics
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See the links
page I maintain for the UC Department of Classics for more.
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Computing
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TeX for Humanists
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jed at socrates dot berkeley dot edu
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![[teaching]](h-t.png)
![[computers]](h-cs.png)
![[publications]](h-pub.png)
![[music]](h-bach.png)
![[poison oak and ivy]](h-pi.png)
![[woodworking]](h-ww.png)
