For once, there are no bugs to report, or fix. There are some utility methods I should add, and the perennial chore of updating the documentation. All that is all well and good, and I’ll get it done well… or good. However, since I can, I spent a few days just playing with the system …
A couple of bugs delayed me for about a week. Once those were fixed, setting up the experiment was easy. I did that yesterday, along with cleaning up some sloppy code. I did a test run and ended up with a stable population. I haven’t seen that many of them since I increased the population …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:37 — 12.9MB) | Embed
Life rocks To take a bit of a break from life and natural history, we talk about geology, which is part of natural history, and life, which is part of life. Specifically we talk about rocks that are formed by life.
Last time, we left our intrepid heroes—our desperate digital desperadoes—trapped—at the mercy of the extremely rare and apparently invisible 2,147,483,646! The villainous variable had been masquerading as 2147483, by all accounts a hardworking and kindhearted value, who wishes to say that she is in no way affiliated with that more nefarious number. 2147483646, at last …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:12 — 12.5MB) | Embed
Cuddling Cretaceous dinosaurs Today we chat about the Cretaceous period, when some of the most well-known dinosaurs appear. In this period, birds became much more like modern birds. Flowering plants spread across the land, along with new insects like ants and bees. The mammals began to diversify. Then, a rock hit the earth, and it …
It was somewhere between first and fifth grade, closer to the former than the latter. Hanging around in the classroom, I was half listening to a couple of the teachers talking. One of them complimented the other on the decorations. “thankyou,” she replied, “I like to have something with color… you know, something cheerful for …
Here’s some disturbing output. “ Exception in thread “Thread-0” java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 2147483 646 at Figure.nextTurn(Figure.java:799) at Realm.cycle(Realm.java:83) at CyclerThread.run(CyclerThread.java:41) “
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:54 — 16.7MB) | Embed
What did Jurassic dinosaurs taste like? Today we cover the Jurassic period, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, growing large and being in charge. One group began, during this period, to evolve toward becoming birds, and we talk a little bit about some early mammals.
My robo-eye is sitting in my desk at the moment. It’s a pair of smart glasses, with a camera built in. I put these things on and run the vOICe, an app that changes what the camera sees into sound. With practice, blind folk like me can use such a setup to help navigate the …