Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on Breaking Cat News

   Fun facts, the punch card size was chosen because it was the same size as an old dollar bill, and machines that could handle them had already been designed. The first use was in the 1888 US census, as data storage for a totally mechanical relational data base. It is genius, storing binary data in the form of hole/not-hole. and allowing a search by any field. (Thank you James Burke for the ‘Connections’ to Jacquard and Charles Babbage) You can search “Hollerith Machine” to read more.

2. about 2 months ago on Sarah's Scribbles

   So, you’re a cat, its all good.

3. about 2 months ago on Wallace the Brave

   The ocarina has a very good approximation of a true sine wave, gives it that light, smooth timbre. It is also just wrong as a resonator compared to a flute or a recorder or a penny whistle. They are all create a simple ‘tube’ pattern of sound generation based on a quarter of a sine wave and the length of the tube. Its high school level physics. But the ‘sweet potato’ /ocarina has the internal shape of a yellow squash or giant tear drop. how the energy bounces around in there and comes out beautiful is bonkers. If you look at wiki for ocarina there is a gorgeous blue ceramic one pictured, a work of art in it’s own right. OK, I will stop geeking out now. SO cool oish!!

4. about 2 months ago on Wallace the Brave

   Hellboy, “Gonna be sore in the morning…”

5. 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   A four ellipse faux pas!! Elvis … gently… rebuked

6. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Right? I studied Cobol but actually coded in Pascal… That makes me feel like I also drew bison with ocher on a cave wall.

7. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   There are different kinds of AI. Can’t lump them all in a single box. Neural nets had some huge benefits environmentally and fiscally. Organizing the cargo shipments of the US military saved huge amounts of fuel and money. Like any very powerful tool, it is double edged. Fire is great if you are cooking or heating but makes a fine method for destroying homes and inquisitions. Most of the pop culture AI is questionable at best, but the AI designing new non rare earth electric motors in England, solved a 12 year old issue in months without the need for building and testing every iteration of the design. AI is very good at tasks of huge scale, and parsing the whole to find efficiency and waste. True AI (not chatgpt) does more than parrot, it can run its own tests to find answers and incorporate those answers into the next calculation. I don’t want it to make my movies or paintings, I want it to manage airline schedules and traffic lights. Blaming AI is like blaming the dog instead of the owner. Computers do as they are programmed, people are the issue! And the resource calculations are horribly biased, compare the energy/resources used by AI to those used by the number of humans it would take to perform the same task. Power consumption in modern chips falls with every generation as does waste heat. I will now yield my soapbox…

8. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Respect for the diphthong! At last…

9. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Definitely Iggy!! There’s the famous Nazca Roomba, the Uffington “White Roomba”, the Cerne Abbas Giant Roomba, of course “Roomba Henge”, as well as the “Roomba of Rhodes”, “Machu-roomba”, and “Temple of the Roomba” near the sphinx in Egypt, and the Norse Saga “Roombawulf”, “The 12 Roombas of Hercules”, the list goes on. (See: Eric Von Suction, “Roombas of the Gods”)

10. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

    In best Gollum voice, “The pun! It burns us!”