Bad Writing, Golden Writing, Good Writing

Atlanta Nights - The Worst Book Ever Written
An apallingly bad novel written by a bunch of writers. The purpose was to reveal that PublishAmerica isn't a genuine publishing house, but is a vanity press that will print any garbage as long as you give them money. It's almost as bad as The Eye of Argon. Argon wins because it was written by a bad writer who was trying to be good, instead of good writers who were trying to be bad.
(Via critters.org, an online workshop where you can submit your writings for others to critique.)

The Golden Age of Science Fiction
A short page that had the following interesting quote:

Isaac Asimov divided the history of modern science fiction, i.e., works written after 1926, into four types of stories:

* 1926-38--adventure dominant
* 1938-50--science dominant
* 1950-65--sociology dominant
* 1966-present--style dominant

Lionel Fanthorpe Appreciation Page
The florid prose of a guy who wrote 180 novels. Is bad or is it good?

Trinkle did not possess a legal mind. He was a mental grasshopper, an intellectual kangaroo, a mind wallaby.
......
Pain and discomfort seemed to mean nothing to them. Vengeance was their anaesthetic. Revenge was their analgesic.
......
He stood trembling like a bladder of lard...

It's entertaining for sure, and it seems like the author was having fun when he wrote it. Maybe it falls under the category of "so bad it's good."
(Via POE.)

Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian
Well-known guide that's been on the intarweb (Usenet) since 1992. A more recent guide can be found here.

Writing for the Web
Kilian's weblog.

Writing Fiction
Kilian's fiction writing weblog. Kilian's a multiblogger -- he currently has ten weblogs on different topics going on in parallel. Here's his post on the lessons of multiple blogging.

Fluids Gallery; Aristotle; Theoretical Simplicity

Gallery of Fluid Flow Images
Large gallery of scientific images relating to fluid dynamics. All images have brief explanations, and a few have links to external papers.

Aristotle: On the Generation of Animals
Back in those days, you could become a world famous philosopher by basically making shit up. To wit:

The cause of the hairs being long or short depends on the evaporating moisture not being easily dried. Of this there are two causes, quantity and quality; if the liquid is much it does not dry up easily nor if it is greasy. And for this reason the hairs of the head are longest in man, for the brain, being fluid and cold, supplies great abundance of moisture.
...
Men go grey on the temples first, because the back of the head is empty of moisture owing to its containing no brain, and the 'bregma' has a great deal of moisture, a large quantity not being liable to decay; the hair on the temples however has neither so little that it can concoct it nor so much that it cannot decay, for this region of the head being between the two extremes is exempt from both states. The cause of greyness in man has now been stated.

I was born in the wrong millenium. I would have been a GREAT philosopher!

Simplicity Theory
Is this a new field of mathematics? Or is it just the name of a course? Via the super MIT OpenCourseWare page.

The DG (-, ≡) is left translation-invariant.

This is an advanced topics course in model theory whose main theme is simple theories. We treat simple theories in the framework of compact abstract theories, which is more general than that of first order theories. We cover the basic properties of independence (i.e., non-dividing) in simple theories, the characterisation of simple theories by the existence of a notion of independence, and hyperimaginary canonical bases.

Yeah, what he said.

War of the Worlds Tripods

War of the Worlds - Tripod Gait
Animated analysis of different types of gaits a WOTW walker might have.

MARTIAN TRIPOD
Do-it-yourself paper model of the WOTW walker from the 1978 musical(?) version.

AintItCoolNews: WOTW
Speculative drawings of WOTW alien and tripod.

the above WOTW sketches are not "production sketches" - but rather were done by Kermici Farid - a professional production designer and storyboard artist from France - (worked on CRIMSON RIVERS among others) and he did these after he saw the latest trailer to satiate and make more clear sense regarding what he saw in the trailer. He is not associated with Spielberg's film, but very talented regardless.

Test Animation
Big Quicktime file (that eventually crashed my browser) of a CGI generated tripod from the 1978 version.

Screencap Galleries
Some fog-enshrouded images from various sources.


"A probe, looking for Ray's family"

"Tripod Call" Sound for download!

Due to popular demand, you can now download the unique and scary "tripod call" sound that is heard when the Tripods call their comrades in the film.

Sounds like a tuba.

Rotten Tomatos Forums
Some Spielberg tripod pics, a few pre 2005 favorites, and some funnies (like a picture of a 3-legged dog named Tripod).



Fighting Machines Gallery
Lengthy thread on alternate conceptions of the WOTW walker.


A version from 1955.

Cosmic Zooms

Variety of books, movies and websites on the topic of zooming in (or out) by exponentially increasing (or decreasing) the magnification factor.

Cosmic Zoom 1968
I think this is the original "zoom oriented film" by the NFB of Canada.

Eames Office - Powers of Ten,
Book based on the movie,
Review of the movie.
Very popular book and movie.

How Much Information
Exponential zooming applied to quantities of information.

Quarks to Quasars
Nicely put-together web site.

Yet another Powers of Ten page
Doesn't seem to have a relative zoom selection. You have to select the absolute zoom factor at the bottom of the page.

Museums; Toilets; Drunks; Skylab

Chase Studio
You ever wonder who makes all those models and dioramas you see in museums? Chase Studio might have made a few of them. Well-illustrated site with lots of explanations.

---

Toilets of the World
One man's gallery of toilets he's seen from all over. Fortunately, he refuses to show us the worst of the worst:

Toilets I WON'T Show...
the flat-out scariest toilet I've ever seen, a vision of Hell to give Dante the heebie-jeebies, was an underground public toilet in a park near Novodevichy Convent in Moscow. The "toilets" were knee-high stubs of culvert drainage pipes. The floor was covered in about an inch of liquified filth continuously replenished by a couple of "toilets" in reverse ooze mode. The atmosphere had an ammonia content about equal to that of Venus.

---

Off the Cuff and Under the Table
Glossary and etymology of terms for drunkeness. Lots of them I already knew, but a some of them ("to be plastered", "to be tight", or "three sheets to the wind") had interesting origins. (Thanks, Kirby!)

---

Figure 28. Astronaut activities during a typical 24-hour period.

SKYLAB: A Guidebook
All-inclusive guidebook on Skylab's design, operation, and research programs.


Skylab, first operational in 1973 (that's 32 years ago).

(via Skylab Program Overview.)

C++ Miscellanea

Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ Style and Technique FAQ

How do you pronounce "cout"?
"cout" is pronounced "see-out".

How do you pronounce "char"?
"char" is usually pronounced "tchar", not "kar".

Yeah, I've know people who pronounced it "kar", which not only is annoying, it's illogical. I mean, if they're basing the pronunciation on the first syllable of "character", then you should pronounce it "care", not "car" (as in rhyming with "far"). Nobody pronounces "character" like "far-actor". Besides, look up "char" in the dictionary if you want to know how it's pronounced. By the way, Thank you Mr. Stroustrup, for giving some credence to my wild-eyed rants over the years.


Bjarne's belt buckle.

JTC1/SC22/WG21 - C++
The main repository of C++ standards committee. Some of those documents are password protected — those would be the records of the closed-door meetings where briefcases full of unmarked bills were passed around. Rumor has it that Bill "The Kid" Gates offered Bjarne "The Godfather" Stroustrup 80 million dollars if he'd rename C++ to "Microsoft C-triple-X". Stroustrup allegedly replied, "what do you take me for, a rube? Come talk when you got some REAL money, beeyatch!"

The Design of C++0x (PDF file)
Bjarne talks about future developement (the 0x indicates some future year before 2010) and current weaknesses in C++. He spends some time addressing the issues of making C++ easier for non-experts:

If you are a physicist needing to do a few calculations a week, an expert in some business processes involving software, or a student learning to program, you want to learn only as many language facilities as you need to get your job done. You don’t want to become a language expert—you want to be (or become) an expert in your own field and know just enough of some programming language to get your work done.

Local cache here.
(via borland.public.cppbuilder.non-technical.)

Evolution WG issues list
Lengthy disorganized technical summary of possible features and directions for C++.

New C++ Operator: "Goes To"
C++ has a new operator "-->". It's called "goes to". It works
for recent versions of the g++ compiler. (Gnu compilers have always had a history of implementing experimential features.)

Here's some sample code:

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int x = 10;
    while( x --> 0 ) // x goes to 0
    {
      printf("%d ", x);
    }
}

(inspired by a post at perl.perl6.language.)

pi in e, e in pi, and shower stalls

American Scientist: The Third Base
Long article about the base 3 numbering system. It's almost the most efficient possible (base e is the best in that respect) and it's probably the prettiest system of them all. A base-3 digit is called a "trit".

e in pi, pi in e
e in base pi is 2.2021201002111. pi in base e is 10.101002020002111. So there!


The pi-and-e Shower Stall
Man calculates binary digits of pi and e. Man puts pi and e in shower stall. Geekitude ensues. (Speaking of pi, I hear that Home Depot is now selling pi toilets. If you measure the circumference of the bowl and divide by the diameter, you miraculously get the value of pi. What will they think of next!)

pi in base e code
If you want to calculate pi in base e to 10000 digits, cut and paste the following code into Maple:

Digits := 10000;
mye := evalf(exp(1), 10000);
mypi:= evalf(Pi, 10000);
pi_part := mypi;
pi_recon := evalf(0, 10000);
answer := evalf(0, 10000);
for i from 1 by -1 to -10000 do
 digit  := floor(pi_part / (mye^i));
 answer := 10 * answer + digit ;
 pi_part := pi_part - digit * mye ^ i ;  
 pi_recon := pi_recon + digit * mye ^ i ;
od;
evalf(answer, 10000);
evalf(mypi - pi_recon, 10000);

(DISCLAIMER: maybe that code works, maybe it doesn't. The first 17 digits seem OK.)

Getting the Mars Rover Unstuck

Some pics of scientists trying to figure out how to get the Opportunity Rover unstuck. Click on each image for details.

The mixture of sandy and powdery material brought in for these specific tests matched the way the soil underneath Opportunity caked onto wheels, filling the spaces between the cleats on the wheels.

UPDATE: Here's a more detailed press release from JPL.

UPDATE 2: They're almost ready to try a plan on Mars. They think it can be done:

We've learned quite a bit, and one of the things that we've learned is that it can take a lot of wheel turns to move the rover from a configuration like the one we're in.

(via Mars Rover Blog.)

Yawns; Math Writing; C++ Update

The Gaping Maw
Hundreds of pictures of animals with their mouths open. It's actually more interesting than it sounds. (via POE).

Knuth: Mathematical Writing (PDF)
The lecture notes for this video course. I watched a few of the lectures and they seemed interesting enough, but at 27 lectures of one hour each, reading the notes is much more efficient, time-wise. (local cache here).

C++ TR1 Information
C++ hippie Scott Meyers has combined links to all the proposed C++ enhancements (for the next standard update) in one place

TR1 ("Technical Report 1") is a specification for new functionality being added to C++'s standard library. This functionality takes the form of new class and function templates for things like hash tables, reference-counting smart pointers, regular expressions, and more.

(via comp.std.c++).

Busy Beaver Wang Tiles

What do you get when you cross some Wang tiles with a Busy Beaver machine? Why, you get some busy self-assembling squares! (Page 8 of PDF. If original has linkrotted away, here's a local cache.)