|
|
Facebook
has a page for me.
Roger
Burgess is my best friend and was one of my Stage 1
computer science students
from 1998. Now he works in Christchurch as an I.T. expert for
Nurse Maude.
Graham
Dockrill was another one of my Stage 1 computer science students
in 1998. Now he runs a successful Web design company
called Hairy Lemon.
Diane
Maclagan was my classmate during the years of 1992-1994 while I
was at university studying
mathematics. She was
always getting better grades than me, which was very damaging to
my ego, and to top it all off she is now at the
University of Warwick. The best
that I can do to try to beat her brilliance is for me to try to
make my Website a lot cooler than hers. I hope that I have
succeeded! You can find pictures of her using
Google Image Search.
Tim Sturge is
another of my classmates from 1992-1994 while I was at university
studying mathematics.
Chris Wright was an old school mate from the years 1986-1991 at
Christchurch Boys’ High
School. Although he died in 2015 at the early age of 41 he was a
grand-master chess player, one of only three in New Zealand! He
worked as a professional chess tutor tutoring young players for
the junior world championships. If you are another graduate of
the class of 1991 then I would like to get in touch with you.
Frank Pearson (who died in 2003 at the early age of 63) was my uncle (father’s older brother) in San Francisco.
Bjarne
Stroustrup. Creator of the C++ programming language. My
feeling about C++ is that if it hadn’t been invented yet and I was
as intelligent as Bjarne Stroustrup, then I would have invented it!
Esoteric Information Warning: I believe that Stroustrup got his clever and useful idea of
C++ classes and privacy from the
Simula language.
Richard Stallman. Founder
of the Free Software Foundation, the
GNU Project and principal author of
(among other things) the
GNU Emacs
text editor, the
G.C.C. compiler and the
GNU Debugger,
which ultimately led to the
GNU/Linux
operating system. He’s also quite a character as I found out
when I went to one of his lectures.
Esoteric Information Warning: I believe that Stallman wrote Emacs by copying the
existing Lisp systems at M.I.T. where he worked, and wrote G.C.C.
using the design decision of having no calls to the
free C
library function so that it ran with a bigger memory footprint
than other compilers but vastly simplified the design of the
program. This worked because the memory requirements of the
program are proportional to the size of the source file being
compiled.
John McCarthy (who died in 2001, aged 84) for inventing the Lisp programming
language, and founder of the A.I. labs at M.I.T. and Stanford.
Click on the following link
for information about Common Lisp including a video interview with
John McCarthy. This link was provided to me by Bryan Innes
(Email: bryan <dot> innes <at> wiht-email <dot> com).
Shawn
Hargreaves for producing the multi-platform games library
Allegro. I wrote my first P.C. game
called
Dangerous Driving
under Allegro and I have used it to
write six computer games.
Eli Zaretskii (eliz <at> gnu <dot> org) for helping me overcome my install problems and learning difficulties with GNU Emacs (via the Internet newsgroup gnu.emacs.help).
DJ Delorie for
producing a GNU system inside MS-DOS called
DJ.G.P.P., short for DJ’s
GNU Programming Platform. His first name is not an acronym but is
literally DJ which causes much confusion on the part of banks who
insist that DJ stands for something. I have adapted his motto:
‘‘Making it harder to hate computers’’ for my Website.
Frank Tipler
for writing a book explaining how religion will eventually become
a branch of science. I have written
an article about his book
on my Website.
for creating
the Java
programming language. for preaching about
The Selfish Gene.
Nelson
Mandela (who died in 2013, aged 95) for his ability to unite
people for a single cause, namely equality for all, regardless of
skin colour. Because of his achievements he is often referred to
as ‘‘The Father of the Nation’’ (namely South Africa).
Bill Gates who
along with others founded
Microsoft.
Because of his tremendous success in business we all love to hate
him, but it is hard to deny his intelligence that caused him to
succeed so dramatically. For example, when he first wrote the
Microsoft
Windows operating system it ran like a dog at the time but he
foresaw that computers would rapidly get a lot faster than they
were at the time, rendering Windows usable. He also recognised
that people tend to favour standardisation in the field of
computers, and foresaw that his operating systems would become the
default standard. Despite Microsoft’s present domination of
the computer software market I believe that a free operating
system (such as GNU/Linux) will ultimately triumph.
Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the World Wide Web.
Sir Edmund
Hillary (who died in 2008, aged 88) is probably New
Zealand’s most famous New Zealander. He was the first person
to conquer the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest. Then
he re-payed his debt to the local Nepalese people by building
schools and hospitals for them. Although he is now dead, Hillary
is the first living New Zealander to appear on our national
currency. It must have been believed that the probability of
Hillary turning into a child molester was low enough to risk
placing his face on every $5 of New Zealand currency.
Sir Peter
Jackson who put New Zealand on the map as a place to make high
quality high computer graphics content films such as most notably
Heavenly
Creatures,
The Lord of the Rings movies and
King
Kong. His earlier splatter films (such as
Bad Taste and
Braindead)
are worth a look too.
Mike Leigh
is one of the world’s greatest living film directors. All of his
films are groundbreaking in different ways.
Happy-Go-Lucky,
Secrets & Lies,
Career
Girls,
and
All
or Nothing
are emotional dramas that are impossible to hate, whereas
Vera Drake and
Topsy Turvy
are compelling period drama,
and Naked is dark and shocking, although too dark for most
tastes.
Kim Stolz
from
America’s Next Top Model. Why is that the most
attractive women are lesbians? (This is just my opinion of course!)
You can find pictures of her
using Google Image Search.
Shawn
Johnson is an Olympic gold medal winning gymnast who is
particularly gorgeous to look at. You can find pictures of her
using
Google Image Search.
The The Wizard of New Zealand is
one of Christchurch’s most famous living individuals. His
views on women are controversial. When I saw him one day he was
talking about a woman who complained about getting bruised
fingernails from clawing the eyes out of her husband... to
which I replied to him: ‘‘You're trying to become a woman in
the 1950's sense of the term’’. He then quickly changed the
subject to something less controversial: the history of
religion. And that was when I left him.
Wikipedia is a free
encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to. Has
over 5,040,833 articles in English and almost all written to a very high
standard of scholarship. I use Wikipedia almost exclusively for
the links on the The Greatest
Artists of all Time page of my Website. You can view the
pages I
have written for Wikipedia. I have also written an article
about Wikipedia versus
Britannica. This Website heavily borrows from the
layout
style of Wikipedia, especially the (lack of) capitalisation of
titles/headings and the (lack of) italicisation of certain items.
The site wiktionary.org
is Wikipedia’s version of a wiki-based Open Content dictionary.
TradeMe is the definitive
site for buying and selling goods within New Zealand. Be warned
however that this Website is highly addictive.
The Simpsons. Favourite ten episodes listed roughly in
order of decreasing merit:
| Rank | Episode | Season | Code | Synopsis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | ‘‘You Only Move
Twice’’ | 8 / 26 | 3F23 | Homer is hired for a new job on the basis of his supposed expertise. |
| 2. | ‘‘King Size Homer’’ | 7 / 26 | 3F05 | Homer purposely gains 61 pounds in weight in order to qualify for a disability allowance. |
| 3. | ‘‘Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every
Fish’’ | 2 / 26 | 7F01 | Mr Burns runs for mayor. |
| 4. | ‘‘The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie
Show’’ | 8 / 26 | 4F12 | A new character is added to the Itchy & Scratchy Show |
| 5. | ‘‘Simpson and
Delilah’’ | 2 / 26 | 7F02 | Homer finds a miracle treatment for baldness. |
| 6. | ‘‘Last Exit to
Springfield’’ | 4 / 26 | 9F15 | Homer becomes a union representative. |
| 7. | ‘‘Brush with
Greatness’’ | 2 / 26 | 7F18 | The Simpsons visit Mount Splashmore and Marge paints Mr. Burns. |
| 8. | ‘‘Some Enchanted
Evening’’ | 1 / 26 | 7G01 | The Simpsons face a babysitter with sinister intentions. |
| 9. | ‘‘Marge vs. the
Monorail’’ | 4 / 26 | 9F10 | Springfield invests in a monorail. |
| 10. | ‘‘Homer's Enemy’’ | 8 / 26 | 4F19 | Homer meets his nemesis with hilarious consequences. |
I have found the
List of The Simpsons Episodes helpful to compose the above list.
In my opinion the earliest episodes are better than the more
recent ones, due to an apparent lack of good new ideas in the more
recent episodes.
Seinfeld is famously known as a show about nothing, or
more accurately: pondering over the minutiae of everyday social
interactions.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? The older British version has a
wider range of jokes and comedians than the newer American
version.
Fawlty
Towers is the greatest British comedy series of all time and
it seems like a travesty that they only produced twelve episodes.
It tells a story of a long-suffering man Basil Fawlty whose spirit
is regularly crushed by his domineering wife Sybil. He is
constantly entering into hilarious misunderstandings with his
waiter Manuel whose command of the English language is
frustratingly poor. Basil is also rude, sarcastic and cruel so
that the audience is not disappointed when he gets his just
desserts. Their funniest episode is called
‘‘Communication Problems’’ and is about how Basil secretly makes
a winning bet on a horse but is foiled by a near-deaf woman who
refuses to turn her hearing aid on because as she says: ‘‘It runs
the batteries down!’’.
The concept of a flawed character ultimately receiving negative consequences applies to most artistic works. The most beautiful and morally superior characters in an artistic work almost always never receive negative ultimate consequences while the uglier and morally inferior characters almost always do receive negative ultimate consequences. Most artists seem to be aware (either consciously or unconsciously) of this principle. The purpose of this principle is to increase our enjoyment of a work of art. Our emotional investment in the beautiful and morally superior characters is always rewarded with dividends and our emotional divestment (hatred) of uglier and morally inferior characters is also rewarded with dividends of the opposite kind. An example of this principle in action is horror movies where the people who have extramarital sex are almost always killed while the virgins almost always survive to the end of the story.
Photo: GNU Emacs |
Ubuntu is a distro for GNU/Linux
that I use for my programming work.
GNU Emacs
is a text editor and a religion in itself that is available on
almost all platforms. Here is a list of its features, listed in
order of decreasing coolness:
Support for editing programs in virtually any language. I use
Emacs to edit the following file types (in alphabetical order):
Bash Script,
binary,
Blitz BASIC,
C,
C++,
C.S.S.,
Emacs Lisp,
H.T.M.L.,
Java,
JavaScript,
LaTeX,
m4,
Makefile,
MyS.Q.L.,
P.H.P.,
and
Pov-Ray.
If Emacs does not support your favourite language, it can be
easily made so that it does.
Built-in Emacs Lisp programming language for implementing virtually any conceivable feature. You can read an article about some of the features that I have added to Emacs.
Customisable Syntax Highlighting
C/C++ keywords, comments and strings in their own colours.
C/C++ global variables in a different colour from local variables (a feature invented by me). The downside of this feature is that global variables must be prefixed by the word global_. Using too many global variables can be a source of bugs in a program, so it is useful to have syntax highlighting of their use. The dabbrev feature (see below) helps to mitigate the cost in terms of extra typing from longer variable names.
C/C++ Super Comments (a feature invented by me). Super Comments start with /// and end with the end of line. Super Comments are highlighted brighter then normal C/C++ comments and are analogous to Java’s /** ... */ comments in that they contain text for the programmer to read rather that just commented-out code.
C/C++ Allegro graphics library function calls in their own colour (a feature invented by me). Whatever libraries you use, it is possible to set up syntax highlighting for those libraries.
You can view a screen-shot of Emacs’ syntax highlighting using my personal choices of colours. Note: keywords are in bold black, function definition names are in bold black foreground with yellow background, types are in blue bold, comments are in dark green italics unbold, super comments are in red italics bold, strings are in black foreground with a blue background, variable definitions are in blue unbold, class properties are in orange bold and global variables are in green bold. I am using a variant of the much maligned Hungarian notation so that Emacs is able to highlight global variables and class properties in different colours. Without Hungarian notation such as prop_* for properties and global_* for global variables it would be impossible to do the syntax highlighting so that is why I use it.
Integrated make, gdb, grep, dired, info, calendar and eshell etc. means that programmers almost never need to leave Emacs while doing useful work.
Dynamic Abbreviations (dabbrev). For example: press z, and then repeatedly press Alt-/ to cycle through all words in memory that start with ‘‘z’’. This feature allows you to use long variable names (which are more descriptive than short variable names) without needing to type them in every time you use them.
Automatic indentation, so there is no need to waste time aligning code by hand.
Unlimited undo/redo.
Find matching brackets.
Re-definable keys to reduce the risk of developing R.S.I. (Repetitive Strain Injury). For example I have defined all of the function keys F1 - F12 to achieve different commonly-used operations, such as F1 for help, F2 to save all currently edited files, F3 to save and purge all currently edited files, F4 to delete all but one window, F5 to activate cbrow my own C++ class browser, F6 to toggle the value of the variable selective-display for folding and unfolding of buffers, F7 to toggle read-only status, F8 to undo and F9 to compile, F10 to go from *.hts files to *.html files, Shift F10 to go from *.html files back to *.hts files F11 is bound by Ubuntu to toggle maximisation of the current frame, Shift F11 is bound to d-complete-file, F12 is bound to eval-last-sexp, Shift F12 is bound to d-complete-lisp for Lisp dynamic symbol abbreviations. I have also redefined the command find-file from Control-x Control-f to the shorter Control-f or Control-d because it is used so much.
The downside of Emacs is that it is inevitably weighed down by its many features and can be quite daunting to learn. As a result I would only recommend this program to fellow nerds.
|
The GNU/Linux
system which includes such programs as:
bash
ls
mv
cp
grep
find
gcc
make
tar
gzip
m4
sed,
etc. I use Ubuntu GNU/Linux
For generating my Website I use m4 and Emacs’ batch mode to
generate pages with a wide variety of fonts and colours and
hierarchical menus.
The
Mozilla
Firefox Web Browser gives me freedom from pop-up windows that
plagues
the Internet
Explorer Web Browser.
The GNU
m4 preprocessor which I use for designing all of my Websites.
Of its many features, the ones that I use are file inclusion,
macros, conditional constructs and shell commands. An example of
its use is the navigation aids at the top and bottom of every page
in this Website. I have written
an article that shows how I
use m4 in this Website.
IrfanView is a
Windows graphics program. It has a lot of useful features such as
cropping, re-sizing, format conversion, batch conversion, gamma
correction, image effects, etc. What's better is that this program
works under GNU/Linux using the program wine.
Exact Audio
Copy (E.A.C.) and
Foobar2000 are a
pair of applications that serve as a superior replacement for
Windows
Media Player for the purposes of (respectively) ripping and
playing music files. Foobar2000 is superior to Windows Media
Player because you can change the artist name and album name of
multiple music files at the same time, whereas with Windows Media
Player you need to change them one at a time. Also the random
play feature of Foobar2000 also is more random than Windows Media
Player’s random play feature. E.A.C. is superior to Windows
Media Player because it rips tracks with fewer errors. I have a
1 TB Hard Drive for the purpose of storing my entire CD
collection (655 GB *.flac files) so that tracks can be
played at random with no repeats for over
5 weeks of continuous playing. This gives better performance
than most radio stations and anyhow is better than any radio
station because it only plays songs that I like and have chosen to
be in the play-list. For those of you who are interested in my
stereo, here are my specs:
WireWorld
U.S.B. cable connecting the computer to the DAC (Digital to
Analogue Converter).
Naim DAC-V1
DAC and Headphone Amplifier. See the following
review about
the Naim DAC-V1.
Sennheiser HD 800 Headphones. See the following
review. This is the best product that Sennheiser make and it
is so good that, in conjunction with the Naim DAC and Headphone
Amplifier, it makes C.D.’s sound like crap. I need to
upgrade my C.D. collection to 24 bit 96 kHz sampling
rate files or even better: 24 bit 192 kHz sampling
rate files.
| Back to Main Menu |
|
This page has the following hit count:
|
