Moving

This blog is defunct. It's content, along with that of my other blogs, is now hosted at thomas-sutton.id.au.

Little Women

Just watched Little Women. Beth recovered (after a fashion, and for a while), but I wonder what happened to the baby (which introduced the scarlet fever)?

Given that, in Little Men, Alcott describes Jo as being not at all handsome, but [having] a merry sort of face..., I can't quite understand what possessed them to cast Winona Ryder to play her ("not at all handsome" being probably the least apt description of Ryder as is both conceivable and not "exceedingly ugly" or some such). In any case, she played the role very well indeed in-spite of being rather more "handsome" than the character.

"Do you REALLY want to be a NPC?"

In a recent rant, Fred Gallagher (a.k.a. Piro) wrote:

Don't just blow voting off like its a game you just aren't interested in playing. You are in the game, whether you like it or not. Not voting makes you an Non Player Character. Do you REALLY want to be a NPC, letting others decide what happens in the game?

Adding to the Wikipedia

I've just added my first real contribution to the Wikipedia: Image:Airfield_traffic_pattern.svg, a vectorisation of Image:Airport_traffic_pattern.jpg.

Lucas

Chickenfeed have been flogging some cheep DVDs lately and every time I'm in one of their shops, I have a look at what they have in stock. The last time I did so, I got a copy of Lucas — Winona Ryders' first feature film. I just got around to watching it tonight and, while it's really cliched in places, it does have a few redeeming features.

The fairly drawn-out love-triangle (or, square, or even pentagon, depending on how you count) could have been resolved a lot quicker. It would have been nice to see a resolution to the Rina-Lucas sub-plot, though doing so would have interfered with that time honoured '80s feel-good film tradition: the closing freeze frame of the hero triumphant. My view can quite easily be summed up as: O.K., but more Winona Ryder would have been nice (as though it needs to be said).

Undead and Unwed

I've just finished reading Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson (who has a blog) and published by Piatkus Books, the first in her Undead series. It was a good read and it is certainly an interesting departure from the other books in this genre I've read (though Betsy did remind me of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse).

I'm not sure if the next book will continue the theme (judging by the excerpt, I think not), but Betsy brought to mind David Eddings' description of his hero, Garion, as a "Sir Perceval":

Sir Perceval [...] is dumb — at least right at first... A dumb hero is the perfect hero, because he hasn't the faintest idea of what's going on, and in explaining things to him, the writer explains them to his reader.

In any case, I'll definitely have a look at the rest of Davidson's books.

Tags: Vampire, Supernatural, Romance, Novels, Books, Recommended, Reading

Megatokyo volume four

My copy of Megatokyo volume 4 (buy) finally came in and I bought it yesterday. It's good to see another Megatokyo book out and it's fantastic that it took so long to come in (having sold out, etc.).

The presentation is essentially the same as the first three volumes by Dark Horse. The only shortcoming I can see in the book is the binding — for some reason CMX couldn't manage to glue the pages level. It's no worse than the last book from Dark Horse and it is a fairly minor flaw, but it would have been nice if they'd put that little bit extra into the book's construction.

Tags: Books Manga

Long time no blog

It's been quite a while since last I posted (here, or anywhere else), so I think it's about time for an update. Things are going adequately on the school front — it was a little touch and go, but I managed not to fail anything last semester — and I'm about to start a support job with a research project which will bring a welcome injection of funds (which have been rather tight lately).

On the "reading" front, I purchased my copy of Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages (companion and somewhat successor to TAPL) this morning. I've had a bit of a flick through it and it looks really, really interesting. Hopefully having spent almost $200 on the two books will provide an added incentive to not only start, but finish, reading them and hopefully even work through the problems.

I've been thinking about typography and book design lately which has suggested, amongst other things, that I see if it'd be possible to get my copy of ATTAPL rebound with some extra pages. It would be nice, for example, to insert the extended version of chapter 10 - the essence of ML type inference and to "fix" any errata with updated pages. I imagine, though I haven't bothered to investigate at all, that this'd be quite a difficult and expensive thing to do for a single copy, so it'll probably be a long while before I do it, if ever.

Before that though, I've been focussed on getting through Logic by Greg Restall. I'm almost half way through and while I'd have preferred a slightly difference syntax (I prefer ∧ as conjunction, rather than &), it's easy to read and is much more accessible than most other books I've seen with titles like "Logic."

Tags: Books TAPL ATTAPL Logic

Maria-sama ga Miteru

I just got caught up on my reading of the Maria-sama ga Miteru translated by Lililicious. Revisiting marimite brings back my wish that the books (other than the first) were available in English.

Tags: Watching Anime Marimite

Resources for Teaching Pythagoras' Theorem

As I mentioned on my other blog: I've posted the plans I used to teach a unit on Pythagoras' Theorem last semester. You can get them at my Google Pages site.

Tags: Education Plans Mathematics