Science Fiction...

A while back, I bought a novel on impulse (it was cheap). To my surprise (and delight) it turned out to be the first space opera I've bought that was actually good. If you're looking for an interesting story, with an intriguing cast of characters, then I'd highly recommend Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon.

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Another recent find (this time of the on-line variety) is a science fiction story called "The Outers" by "The Angst Guy". Though it is a piece of fan fiction (based on the only good thing MTV has brought to the world Daria), The Outers is an enthralling read. Perhaps its only fault is that it The Angst Guy is not continuing it (or not currently, at least).

Finally...

My copy of CTM as finally arrived. It's only been 45 days since I ordered it.

On a similar note, a number of comic books I've ordered have arrived at Impact Comics which, on top of my recently ordered iMac, means that I'm going to be very broke for the foreseeable future. When it rains it pours...

Google

I'm currently reading up on Google so that I can prepare my presentation on The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Brin and Page. This paper describes the original implementation of the Google search engine (originally http://google.stanford.edu, but that is now Stanford's search engine, powered by Google though it may be).

I'm going to try to cover the original Google architecture described in the paper, and then move on to some more modern material from the Google File System and MapReduce papers, though I'm not sure how much detail I'll be able to give.

Depending on how useful they wind up being, I might put my report and slides on-line.

How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest

[physics/0505071] How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and
compatibility between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to physics (given my extremely basic knowledge of physics), but it is interesting anyway.

I'm Still Waiting...

I'm not sure what the hold-up is, but I am still waiting for my copy of Types and Programming Languages. I do wish they'd hurry it up a little.

In other, some what related (in the sense that is also involves an order), news I gave in to my primitive, lustful urges and ordered a 20-inch iMac.

In even more, ..., news some of the books I've had on order came in today. I have in my hot little hands (read: hot little desk), Ojo and Breakfast After Noon.

The Logic of Communicating Processes

I saw a talk by Professor Robin Cockett last night on the topic of The logic of communicating processes. I've just finished making a post to Lambda the Ultimate about the talk and related papers, so hopefully we'll see some interesting discussion.

Clublife

Clublife

There are two things that make me love Blogger, the whole 'free blogging' thing and their Blogs of Note list.

Some of the funniest stuff I see on the 'net comes from that list. If humour is your thing, stop wasting time with the shitty "joke" sites, and get a Blogger account. Its well worth it.

The Cost of Dead Trees

I've just been reading a bit of CTM. As I often do, I've used the receipt as a book mark (primarily because the bookshop staff put the receipt in the book when I ask them not to put my purchases in a bag).

CTM cost me, after the Co-op members discount, $97. The Revised Haskell 98 Report cost me $108. I'm sure there is some obtuse economic explanation involving economies of scale and the like, but it seems fairly counter intuitive that a book that is over 900 pages long is cheaper than one with less than 300.

The cost of books in general, and academic texts in particular, is (in my opinion) revolting.

Azumanga Daioh

I got the first volume of ADV Manga's translation of Azumanga Daioh today and, having just read about half of it, I much prefer the scanlations to the licensed product. Why can't the American companies that buy the rights to translate anime and manga into English resist the urge to re-interpret the characters and their lines?

We buy anime and manga precisely because we want to read Japanese comics and watch Japanese animations. The horrible, grating, little changes that ADV Manga made to make the book more palatable to an American audience (i.e. to dumb it down) mean that I'll not likely buy another book from ADV Manga. I'd rather buy books from Japan and download scanlations from the 'net than give my money to butchers...

Grice and Implication in Conversation

There was a meeting of NotYASS (Not Yet Another Seminar Series) tonight, this time with the topic of: 'Implicature and conversational meaning. Christian Rau began by talking a bit about communication in general before explaining the basics of Grice's account of communication (his maxims).

It led to an interesting discussion covering a range of topics, from the utility of the maxims, the difference between maxims and axioms, a rather large number of examples, various conditional operators (material, strict, Lewis/Stalnacker and intuitionistic) and the implications of/for AI.

A very interesting discussion.