Regular Singular Points

I just have to say that any television program that correctly uses the word “defenestrate” and even works the word into the plot is okay with me. CBS, the American television network, runs a television program on Friday nights called “NUMB3RS“. The show centers around the brother of an FBI agent who uses mathematics to help with difficult crime investigations. Episode 2.05, “Assissin”, which aired on October 21, 2005 correctly uses “defenestrate”.

When they finally mention the mathematician Georg Frobenius, as they did in the film “A Beautiful Mind”, I will feel complete.

This is the most disturbing meeting room. Ever. Now that I no longer work for the organization that created this meeting room, I feel compelled to share this photo.

Yesterday was my birthday.  Here is a picture of the New York style cheesecake that Siobhán made me for my birthday.  The stupid autofocus on the camera malfunctioned, but can you tell how old I am?

No, Ray, you don’t get to have a guess.  You already know I’m an engineer.

Nothing like an infection of the fluid in the spinal cord. There was about five days where I was so weak I could not hold a pen and sign my name. And even now I get this odd rash that pops up randomly on an arm or a leg, and then goes away, like some viral whack-a-mole game.

I’ll tell you something funny, though: when I told the doctor in the ER that I couldn’t even write my name, he asked to see my signature to see how bad it was. As he left to get a piece of paper, I started laughing. I told him how ironic I thought it was that a doctor was asking me to show him how illegible my handwriting was. He very nearly smiled.

Bloggers: Take the MIT Blog Survey! Only 15 minutes of your time!

The plural of “Euro” is “Euro”. A Euro has 100 “Cent”. Think of it in terms of using “Moose” for your currency, but with smaller pockets. One Moose, Two Moose. One Cent, Two Cent. One Euro, Two Euro. The reason for not adding an “s” for plurality is simply this: not all languages add an “s” to make something plural.

I didn’t say that it makes any SENSE, but that’s the way it is.

I’ve written my first “plugin” for WordPress. I’ve only been working with the technology for a few days, so it’s really simple. Basically, when WordPress reloads, the oblique strategy plugin generates a Brian Eno Oblique Strategy. You’ll find it in the sidebar.

Fans of Brian Eno know about the Oblique Strategy Cards that Eno and Peter Schmidt produced in the 1970’s to help solve creative problems. The original cards are nearly impossible to find, but Gregory Taylor is selling an updated deck.

The list of strategies is a conglomeration of all four versions of the deck plus the Eno “diary” Strategies. Let me know if you want the plugin.

Oblique, Zipped

I thought I’d try the E-Mail blogging thing again. I think I’ve got this somewhat configured.

So, to test the functionality of posting via e-mail, I’m including a scan of an old photograph: Chasing Bill. I suppose it should be "Chasing Liam" now since that’s 14-year-old Liam Lynch (the artist previously known as Bill Niederst) being chased. I thought you might like to see it.

Did you know that the geniuses on the interweb call blogging from a cell phone "moblogging" or some such rubbish? Sigh.

I was reading a back issue of Notre Dame Magazine and came across the name Robert Leader, Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. I hadn’t heard his name in years and I am amazed and delighted that he is still at Notre Dame. Dr. Leader was one of my father’s art professors. He designed, among many other things, the stained-glass windows in the chapel of Keenan Hall and painted the Stations of the Cross mural that spans the entire length of Little Flower Church in South Bend, Indiana. If you see paintings of my father’s from the 1950’s and early 1960’s, you would immediately recognize Dr. Leader’s style in my father’s work. What most people don’t know is that Dr. Leader was a Marine that fought on Iwo Jima when the American Flag was so famously raised on Mt. Suribachi. He was a 20-year-old Corporal at the time and I found a link to his recollections about that day. I have copied and pasted his story here, without permission, in case the link goes away. It’s quite long, but for history buffs, this is some interesting stuff.

The Killing Fields of Sulfur Island

Original Link:

Well, we have to begin somewhere, so here we are. I suppose it was more of a curiosity about blogging technology that caused all this. So far, after the first two days of working with PHP and MySQL, cron jobs and perl, things are going very nicely. I’ve already hacked this WordPress software in several places and made some minor usability enhancements to this equiX theme, so I really can’t complain. Still can’t suss the automatic pickup of e-mails in order to post via e-mail.