Freeform 1

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I'm gonna try blogging a bit. I've been writing most of my ideas down in IRC for the past few years and it occurs to me that publishing the logs is about as likely as me becoming a prolific blogger, so let's see if blogging works. Then I'll just write actually ephemeral text into IRC.

Javantea's hand x-ray

Here's an example of some of the stuff I wrote into IRC on Wed, June 26. The day before my surgery.

Day changed to 26 Jun 2019
03:06 < Javantea> okay, slept 8:30-3am due to jet lag + exhaustion. took sheets from laundry
03:07 < Javantea> they're in fine shape..
03:24 < Javantea> thinking whether any of my todo list can be done now..
03:39 < Javantea> https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/06/innovations-in-graph-representation.html
03:39 < Javantea> http://angusreid.org/social-isolation-loneliness-canada/
03:54 < Javantea> learned how to use volumes in docker, pretty useful for dev
04:00 < Javantea> watching lambda calculus video
04:00 < Javantea> λx.x+1
04:01 < Javantea> it apparently is unnamed function..
04:02 < Javantea> λx.λy.x+y
04:03 < Javantea> he seems to be limiting the number of delimiters
04:03 < Javantea> (λx.x+1)5
04:03 < Javantea> =6
04:06 < Javantea> ah, so without state you can encode any computation, but efficiency is not guaranteed
04:06 < Javantea> in the same way turing machines can..
04:07 < Javantea> TRUE = λx.λy.x
04:07 < Javantea> weird..
04:07 < Javantea> FALSE = λx.λy.y
04:08 < Javantea> NOT = λb.b FALSE TRUE
04:09 < Javantea> NOT TRUE = (λb.b FALSE TRUE) TRUE
04:10 < Javantea> = TRUE FALSE TRUE
04:11 < Javantea> = (λx.λy.x) FALSE TRUE
04:11 < Javantea> = FALSE
04:11 < Javantea> NOT FALSE = (λb.b FALSE TRUE) FALSE
04:11 < Javantea> = FALSE FALSE TRUE
04:12 < Javantea> = (λx.λy.y) FALSE TRUE
04:12 < Javantea> = TRUE
04:15 < Javantea> he then challenges the viewer to come up with and and or. I am having a bit of trouble..
04:15 < Javantea> are +&| allowed?
04:15 < Javantea> are constants allowed?
04:17 < Javantea> + is allowed for sure. but if & is allowed, then I'll just use it. I bet it isn't.
04:19 < Javantea> Y combinator is the key to recursion in lambda calculus..

If you watch the video, you can see that I'm just regurgitating the key concepts of the video and then thinking aloud about them. So let's do the same.

You might be wondering how I'm typing with a broken wrist. Many people can type with a broken wrist, but the reason I can't work and am using sick days and PTO to deal with this injury is because I had surgery on Thursday to screw a plate into my radius. Sucks, huh? Let's quickly discuss the progress that has been made since Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning I was in a brace which let me type with a bit of pain but nothing I couldn't work through for a very short amount of time. Realize that I stopped typing at 11:09 on Wed and spent the rest of the day preparing for surgery. I wrote another document on Wednesday evening which has 998 words. That is -- with a broken wrist and a brace I was able to type for about >8 hours 2444 words. On Thursday I might have been able to repeat this if I hadn't gone in for surgery making it impossible for me to type much more than a few words into my laptop with my right hand. My entire left arm was numb from the nerve block until I woke on Friday. I could have typed a bit more if I wasn't expecting pain worse than I had ever felt in my life (my doctors warned me). That pain never came, so I was able to combat the pain and discomfort with Tylenol and Naproxen along with distraction of streaming video services Amazon Prime and VRV. Friday was pretty similar but I created an e-mail account for my laptop. A pretty lame step, but seemed necessary at the time. Saturday I checked the fluids on my car. My car battery was down to 11.6v, so I charged it to 12.0v. I checked the tire pressure and found that two of the tires were down to ~25psi, which is really low and none were at the standard pressure of 35psi. Remember to inflate your tires every once in a while. New car, new tires, old car, old tires, inflate them. On Sunday I did a bit of research, but nothing too technical. I bought tickets to DEF CON and a hotel room. I computed the energy usage of a person who used off-grid solar, energy efficient refrigerator, and didn't have to heat their home. It was interesting because most of my assumptions were wrong by using simple back of the napkin guesses. The main one was energy production in the winter. If you produced nothing in the winter, you'd be in some trouble. How would you heat your house? How would you keep your refrigerator running? Battery doesn't solve this because the winter is long and even an expensive battery solution won't run a fridge for long. The only solution I came up with was to expect quite a bit of sun in the winter and just less energy production due to the clouds and shorter day.

Today is Monday and I can type with a bit of pain, so I'm not going to do a lot more than just this blog post. (Sorry, the wrist dictates how much I can do.) I'm resting my wrist on a box of bandages because it hurts to put it on the table. I didn't take any Tylenol or Naproxen yesterday and I will only take some today if I screw things up by overdoing it. The goal for today is to take it easy and think. I think I can do that. The reason I'm not going to spend 8 hours typing is because my wrist needs rest to heal and that's what I'm going to give it =].

Recently I've been thinking about building a geodesic dome. The numbers I've gotten from the Internet say that they are very cheap to build and aren't very dangerous to build. So why don't people build them? First step in why people don't build geodesic domes: the shape dictates what you put inside it. If you want boxy things inside it against the walls, you are going to lose space. Can you just add space by making the struts longer? The longer your struts, the stronger they have to be. The stronger they have to be, the heavier they will be, the heavier they will be, the stronger they have to be. There is an optimal size for a geodesic dome, and the materials that amateurs can build with cheaply limit the size of a geodesic dome. The second step in why people don't build geodesic domes is building codes. They inhibit the building of just about any structure, but they mean that windows, fire escapes, electrical wiring, and so forth become difficult. Difficulty is solved by involving knowledgeable people, most people go with architects to build their home and architects will generally avoid geodesic domes to reduce labor costs. So why are there so many geodesic domes at camps like Toorcamp and Burning Man? They are easy to construct and tear down, they are strong, and they are futuristic -- being one of the best structures buildable with simple materials. If you simply disregard building codes entirely, then the building of a home is actually pretty straightforward for an amateur. The main problem I see for home construction by a complete amateur is stability, so it makes sense to iterate --

Build a small structure like a shed or garage.
Test the structural integrity 10x more than the intended load without putting yourself underneath it.
Build a full size structure that you intend to scrap for parts.
Test the full size structure to ~5-10x the intended load.
For example, if you plan to have a second story hanging from the rafters, don't just hang a second story from the rafters and load it with 10x as much weight as your stuff, instead create a test where you can safely add weight to a secure piece of material without putting yourself in danger if the structure collapses.
Then build a final structure that benefits from the knowledge you have learned.

So why build a geodesic dome? For one, they're cheap. They cost a ton of labor in construction, but materials are cheap. So where will this geodesic dome go? That's the main issue I'm trying to figure out right now. So assuming I found an excellent place to put it, when would I ever go visit my dome? Well, I guess I'd think of it like a cabin in the woods. Drive out there, set up my tent (because tents are great even if you have a dome), and spend the day doing science and spend a little time at night doing astronomy. It seems odd to drive for hours to get to a cabin to do science and astronomy, right? Why do people buy cabins? Oh right, to get away from the city. Okay.. Seems fine to me.

Is that all? Of course not. But I'm running out of steam on this post. So I've been having a bunch of good ideas. Some of them better than others. =] I can use my digitizer (aka tablet) with my right hand, so drawing is possible. I can watch videos that require attention. I can type slowly with my right hand, and I can walk about 3 blocks (though I've stayed at home except for checking the fluids of my automobile). Can you think of anything productive that fits that? My mom has given me a list of things to do, but they are things that are difficult. I feel like there ought to be something that I can do that is fun, easy, and not very destructive to my poor wrist. Yes, I have a very long todo list. Almost all of it requires either two or more hands or a lot of effort. Neither of which are available. Respond in the comments and I'll post another blog soon, just like IRC. =]

1744 words, Javantea out.

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