Author archives: Mike
Happy I did the extra hour last night (I've run out of steam for the VoIP project this week)
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Snaking.
I did an extra hour of work last night after getting back from Linux Caffe. That means I'm now done for the day (and week). The 9 billable hours/day target gets a little draining. Right about now I just want to curl up and let my hands do nothing for a year or two.
On ...
Kant's object-ivity (Reading on the TTC)
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Design Theory.
About the most exciting thing to happen today was reading the book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Luckily it was fairly exciting, mostly because there seems to be something wrong with his formulation (at least, as presented in the book). It's not that the formulation is wrong per se, but that it assumes something ...
Details are depressing (Give me mountains to build, not potholes to fill...)
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Snaking.
The bulk of today is being spent on the VOIP project (still going at it, just needed to take a break). Mostly it's just implementing a new organisation by rewriting scripts here and there. It's the kind of work that can be readily handled by one who has had a frontal lobotomy.
I've found myself ...
Yay! The walls are getting fixed! (Finally...)
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Vindaloo.
We finally are going to get the walls fixed. The plaster in the living room has broken right open (about 4 feet wide), there's lots of other places where the plaster is "bubbling", and the stuff in the bathroom is just rotting away. Anyway, that means the next 3 days we're going to have work-people ...
Having trouble with describing perception (Don't have a good feel for the audience's knowledge of the subject)
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Design Theory.
I've been starting and restarting the next section of the thesis rewrite for an hour or so now. It's such a vast topic, and I really haven't got a good idea of how to present it to someone yet (I really need someone with whom to discuss these things). The original treatment worked from the ...
Compile farm account (Problems with PyOpenGL on RedHat)
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Design Theory,
Snaking.
I finally registered for a SourceForge compile farm account. Steven has been reporting failures to build on RedHat, so I figure I need a platform on which to test and debug. Should have it sometime tomorrow. Then just find the time to actually fix the problem.
I've been reading "Kant's Theory of Knowledge" by Georges ...
Pleasant evening as they played poker (Conversation is so much more interesting)
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Vindaloo.
Spent much of the the day on the little tasks that have to be done to avoid sliding into chaos and disorder; grocery shopping, house cleaning, that kind of stuff. After that spent a few hours on Kant before the party started.
Simon's girlfriend Leigh came. As always, she was a wonderful conversationalist, with lots ...
To Escape the Mania
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Vindaloo.
Should you need it
In some far off future
Though I cannot imagine why
I will instruct you here
Though I suggest you never try
To drop from joyous mania
Leaping through life
Peace and hope in all you say
Loving each face on the street
Smiling at all you survey
To escape from such ...
Definition of Design pt. 2 (When you forget to read the outline as you type...)
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Design Theory.
Reading the original outline I realised that my definition so far left off a number of key points. So, tack this onto the end (it feels tacked on when you read the whole thing through, will have to edit them into something a little less jarring):
What about âpaper designsâ or other unrealized plans; does ...
Definition of Design (Drafting a better introduction...)
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Design Theory.
The following is a very rough first draft of rewriting the introduction to my thesis. The summaries of Kant and Hume are a little too brief, I guess I'll have to flesh them out eventually. Anyway, here goes:
The problem with writing about design theory is that by and large designers and artists are mistrustful ...
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.