Today I interviewed someone that will be completing a master’s degree in computer science at MIT in June. With, at least at the moment, a very high GPA. Who didn’t know what a pointer is. Who was very intelligent, and had taken the SICP course. And didn’t remember a thing about scheme. No real unix knowledge. A bit of python.

Am I just ancient or something? Because all I can think is, MIT, WTF?!

Don’t miss this when shopping for that special someone:

Mangroomer

• Do-it-yourself electric back hair shaver
• Fully extendable and adjustable to reach all areas of your back

39.99

For the man, I suppose, who has a little too much of everything.

I turned 30 today. It’s been a protracted birthday, not least because I made a typo when entering the date on facebook, so people thought it was on the 11th. And it will continue to protract, because we’re celebrating it in style on Sunday. But that’s okay by me.

Janine made me a birthday dinner — lasagna! My favorite. Since I was little, I’ve loved lasagna. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, too — there’s always leftover lasagna. Janine is truly amazing. She works such long days since she started teaching, and somehow she managed to secretly set up a whole birthday evening for me, with presents, flowers, everything. I’m spoiled rotten.

The most interesting message I got for my birthday was from my grandparents, in my grandmother’s script, still beautiful: “Wish we were 30 again… It has been a very difficult year, but we made it. Each day is a gift.”

It is indeed.

Luke brought me to see Alan Kay speak at the Computer History Museum’s 40th anniversary of the dynabook hoedown on Wednesday. Alan said some really beautiful things. “[At ARPA] we were just bricks, but we were bricks in a place where the arch was working. Usually, people can only be piles of bricks.” Main takeaways from the event: never let a windbag host your panel discussion, and I’m not paying enough attention to the important problems.

Important problems. What would happen if you put the parser at the end of the compiler? Treat the whole program as a string all the way through analysis and optimization and then parse it at the end. What if the program was a query?

I’m reading a great little book called “Constraint-Based Grammar Formalisms”, and it’s got me thinking that way.

A wizard is usually somebody that’s had the exact problem as you’re currently having, and remembers what he did to get out. What do you call it if he’s had the problem before, didn’t see his way out, and confronting it again leaves him pale, still, frozen in place with warm urine trickling into his shoe? Wouldn’t that be striking?

My emotional stability has gone with the sun for the winter, or maybe it was never here, I don’t know. I’m going to go watch a Top Gear and hope it puts a better spin on things!

Test test test…

Oooh!

Looks like is working.

Read all about it in A Mathematician’s Lament, an entertaining deconstruction of public math education by Paul Lockhart.

I’m writing this on my OLPC XO, which finally arrived. This little machine just rocks! It’s a real toy. Like an old fashioned chemistry set that you can make TNT with. Three cheers for the people who made these things!

Now I’m going to the beach to read about the universality and expressiveness of fold on the only laptop I’ve ever owned with a screen that works even better outdoors. Apple, eat your heart out.

I’ve spent most of the evening mesmerized by the TED talks. My dad recommended Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, so I watched that one first. Wow! What a riveting speaker! So I thought I’d try another. While reading Lambda, the Ultimate earlier in the week, I’d seen mention of Murray Gell-Mann’s talk, so I watched that next. Neat! Hm, must be a fluke, try another…

I’ve watched six or seven of the talks now, and they’ve all been wonderful, mentally stimulating, and thoroughly entertaining. If television were like this, I too would construct a flatscreen temple to self dissolution and dutifully pay homage every evening, with a beer and maybe some potato chips.

In the most vicious sense. Let me know if you experience any problems.

redhat 7.3, it’s been nice knowin’ ya.

I just finished reading Dreaming In Code by Scott Rosenberg. If you’ve ever gotten bogged down on a software project and watched each deadline retreat like a desert mirage, (that is, if you’ve ever worked on any large commercial software project), you’ll love it. It’s exceptionally well researched and may give you some valuable insight into the difficulties of software development.

Thanks for loaning me the book, Oscar!