Blog
Will Faught
October 2007
Expressiveness In Human Languages
Programming languages vary across a spectrum of expressiveness. By expressiveness, I mean the ability and ease by which you can express something in a particular language. For example, programming languages having closures are widely considered to be more expressive, and hence more powerful, than languages that lack this feature. I wonder if natural (human) languages also vary in expressive power and if so how this affects your thinking and personality. If you grew up learning the most expressive natural language of all, would that make you smarter than those who didn’t?
expressiveness human ideas languages life predispositions programming
1 minute
September 2007
bind -> bound find -> found wind -> wound Shouldn’t it be mind -> mound?
english life mind mound reflections
1 minute
I was watching a Law and Order episode in which someone who framed an innocent person was sent to prison because the framed person was killed in prison. The prisons were so dangerous that the district attorneys considered it a heinous crime to send someone there. It’s ironic that many states do not use the death penalty but use prisons that can accomplish the same thing as well as reinforce aggressive and violent behavior.
hypocrisy irony law and order life prison reflections
1 minute
Being a computer science major, my job after graduation will most likely entail working in an office. I’ll have to attend meetings. If I’m promoted, I’ll have to attend even more meetings. If I progress higher into the ranks, I’ll lose more and more of my day to the time suck of meetings to the point where I can’t get anything useful done during normal hours. I’ll have to develop a second personality to come into the office to get something done at night while I rest up, hopefully while not starting a club at the same time.
ideas inflatable job life meetings office
1 minute
August 2007
The problems with electronic voting machines are threefold: Your votes can be changed and there’s no record if they’re changed. Pen is permanent and cannot be hidden. Your votes cannot be authenticated. It’s difficult to forge a signature and impossible to do on a large scale. The process by which votes are tabulated is not transparent. Counting by hand is understandable and easily verifiable. We should use paper ballots with ink circles to indicate our votes and ink signatures to authenticate them.
electronic ideas life problems reflections tabulation voting
1 minute
Most computer users probably assume that their computers are secure. They don’t see the complexity and brittleness of the hardware, the operating system, the network, and the applications because it’s hidden under a pretty user interface with abstracted toy operations. They never considered evaluating security when purchasing software; they assumed it would just work. It’s understandable if they get upset when something goes wrong. It annoys me, however, when lawmakers see this and decide to fix the problem from their end.
computers innovation laws life reflections security
2 minutes
Is my identity constant or variable? On the one hand, my identity could be some thing or things about me that always have and always will be unique. On the other hand, my identity could be the variable but unique combination of my characteristics at any given moment, like my location, appearance, personality, relationships, and memory. I think it is a mix of the two. I think my choices identify who I am.
babylon 5 ideas identity life philosophy quotations
2 minutes
It strikes me as ironic that some have argued that the growing prevalence of Spanish in America, or at least the west and southern states, threaten American culture while there is little effort to teach immigrants English. NPR was reporting a little while ago that in New York City, it’s almost impossible to enroll in an English class because they’re so impacted. I believe they said conditions were similar in many other places.
america classes english immigrants life new york city npr reflections spanish
1 minute
If invalid, informal, and injustice are the opposites of valid, formal, and justice, then why does inflammable mean the same as flammable? Since English is my first language, I obviously prefer it to any other language, but damn, English sucks. One thing I’ve always appreciated about Spanish is that you can look at any word and know immediately how to pronounce it correctly.
definitions english flammable inflammable life reflections
1 minute
If you haven’t done so already, check out Street View on Google Maps. Google rocks!
cool google life reflections street view
1 minute
July 2007
My roommates and I tried to cancel our TV service last week. Dish Network told us they would charge us a cancellation fee because we were apparently signed up for an 18-month service plan. That didn’t make sense because we started the TV service when we had only six or seven months left on our lease. So apparently they felt they should sign us up on our behalf. How thoughtful.
crooks dish network fee life plan shady stories tv
1 minute
Patience, Monty…Climb The Ladder
I love the character Auntie Muriel in the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She uses her age like some kind of free pass that entitles her to boss those younger than her (everyone) around. To paraphrase, “Give me your chair, I’m one hundred and seven years old.” Awesome! It’s like everyone is obligated to be her bitch. There should be more age-based benefits. I would want cuts in line.
harry potter life old reflections seniority
1 minute
March 2007
The Onion’s Article Titles Are The Best Part
Honestly, I think I enjoy the titles of The Onion articles more than the actual articles. For example: Actress’ Abortion Written Into TV Show High School Student Council Passes Nonbinding Resolution Kindergartner Being Groomed For Line-Leader Position Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved From Secret Vault To Save Rock And Roll Anchor Ad-Libs News With 97 Percent Accuracy
funny life quotations reflections the onion titles
1 minute
January 2007
If you ever have to give a 40+ minute presentation about a paper you don’t adequately understand, the following tips may help: Copy every major idea verbatim into your notes and read that to your audience. Ask your professor to explain the things you didn’t understand whenever possible. Waste time by copying every example from the paper onto the board and explaining them in detail. Have a partner and alternate talking about topics.
life paper pater landin presentation reflections stories tips
1 minute
There’s A Lobbyist For Everything These Days
The average height of Dutch men and women has increased so dramatically in the past century that being too tall for a standard-height ceiling or a standard-length bed has become a common problem. So problematic, in fact, that there is a tall person organization that lobbies on behalf of tall people for more head room: The Netherlands, as any European can tell you, has become a land of giants. In a century’s time, the Dutch have gone from being among the smallest people in Europe to the largest in the world.
bed dutch height length life lobbiers quotations tall
1 minute
When I was young, I wished I could write all my Christmas thank you cards using mail merge and get away with it. Good manners, bah! I think if I did do it, the electronic or printed format would give me away. Maybe if I printed using a cursive font?
christmas life manners reflections templates thank you cards
1 minute
December 2006
Happy New Year, everyone! I had a great night. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera and snap a few shots of my friends and I. I guess one of these days I’ll remember. Maybe if I get a slimmer camera. My watch was off by about half a minute from the cell phone network time again, just like last year. The people around me were counting down to my watch while everyone else was staring intently at their cell phone screens, waiting for the minutes to hit zero.
dancing life new year's eve reflections resolutions stories watch
1 minute
November 2006
I bet it’s pretty hard to express your anger as a musician if you play the harp. I just don’t see it happening. Whatever you did, it seems like it would come out cheery and sweet. Bummer.
anger expression harp life musician reflections
1 minute
October 2006
I’ve been reading an essay by Marc Laidlaw, entitled “The Hypermodern Muse“, in which he presents his experiences and reflections on writing for games. In case you don’t know, he’s the writer for Valve’s critically-acclaimed Half-Life games. When describing the essence of fusing writing with gameplay to make truly great games, he uses the game Majora’s Mask as an example. MM is one of my favorite games ever, but I’ve never been able to satisfactorily express why.
games half-life hypermodern muse life majora's mask marc laidlaw nintendo quotations writing zelda
6 minutes
I just got my first care package in the mail in years from my grandma. Mmm…cookies! I forgot how nice it is to get this stuff. Incidently, I was drinking a beer at the time, so I decided to combine the two. Not bad.
beer care package cookies grandma life reflections
1 minute
Have you ever taken a test and been stumped by the easiest thing on it? No? Er — me neither. But if that ever did happen, I would think that would suck. On a related note, it’s very satisfying to ask a prof, just before his exam, to show you how to solve some problems that turn out to be on the exam.
class life midterm nfa reflections theory of computation
1 minute
I feel like an unacceptable portion of my class experience has been learning the material on my own. Granted, being able to learn something on my own is a good skill, but that’s not what I’m paying these people for. I’m sick and tired of walking out of lectures wanting my 50 minutes back. It’s such a relief to get a prof that I can understand. When will they learn that even though you have a PhD in something, you aren’t necessarily qualified to convey that knowledge to others.
bad cal poly learn by doing life reflections teaching
1 minute
Lost is back, baby! Season three kicked off a few weeks ago, and so far it’s off to a good start. I watched seasons one and two again with my mom this summer, so I’ve got everything fresh in my mind and ready to piece it all together. I’ve been listening to a really good podcast for Lost at deltaparkproject.com/lost. Sadly, the season premiere wasn’t as good as season two’s, but oh well.
delta park project desmond dharma initiative life locke lost mom reflections season
1 minute
I’ve just found the funniest comic I’ve seen in a long time. My apologies if you don’t get this, it’s kinda nerdy. So sue me. Found here.
funny life quotations sandwich sudo xkcd
1 minute
September 2006
I was walking out of class on Tuesday and it just died. The strap of my right flip flop broke off. So I had to walk all over campus with one shoe to do my other errands. I asked in the Health Center if they had any plastic booty-thingies for feet and the X-ray technician jumped on it and fixed it for me. Such service! Thank you, Dorothy the Technician, from the bottom of my heart!
broken flip flop health center life shoe stories
1 minute