Sorting Algorithms Spotlight
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Sig9 has a new spotlight today: Sorting Algorithms. If you’re interested, do go and read, it’s an excellent writeup by Vivek.
Related link: Sorting For Newbies
Tags: development
Marriage, a definition
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
This article, and many related, made me formulate my definition of
Dissected, marriage is…
- …a relationship between people. The extent of plurality in the relationship is not an issue, and because of this, the definition does condone polygamy, or other related forms, providing the other conditions are met.
- …a relationship where each person maintains consensual, independent and unobligatory links with every other person. Consensual implies consent (both in the legal context and in the ordinary one). Independent means that a person’s relationship to a partner in the marriage does not depend on other partners. Unobligatory means a consent which is freely given and not based on external considerations. Also note that every one of the persons united by marriage should consent to every other person. See the examples for more detail.
- …for the welfare of progeny. This is a condition which can be, but generally should not be relaxed. The major purpose of a relationship of this nature to demand codification by society (imho) is to accord recognition to its children, and as such, the purpose of this kind of sanction is null and void without this clause.
Now, some scenarios to clarify things:
Suppose you are in a two-person heterosexual monogamous relationship (the commonest form of marriage on the planet). Suppose your spouse desires another person and maintains an active relationship with that person. Even with your consent, this kind of relationship cannot be a marriage between you three unless you and that person has a meaningful relationship too (this does not necessarily imply a sexual one). Since marriage also implies a responsibilty to progeny, all three of you would have to contribute to raising children.
Again, if you and your spouse have an “open marriage” (a term often associated with swinging, but generally only implying that lawbook adultery is not a consideration), and if you have regular sexual relationships with other people, this situation does not preclude a marriage by this definition, as long as you and your spouse have a meaningful relationship (even if not sexual). As such, two people who are not attracted to each other (sexually) can be meaningfully married.
Of course, interesting things happen when marriage becomes more plural. Language will have to rush to keep up. Co-husbands & co-wives anyone?
Tags: musings
Sorting for Newbies
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Following on the last two posts, I’ve added another source file to Sig9 Forums: Sorting for Newbies.
To develop mini-projects in this vein, we’ve also created a new project at Sarovar: Sig9works. Check our CVS repository (under /sources/C/) for the latest versions of these files.
Tags: development • me outside
Function Pointers for Newbies
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Over at Sig9: Function Pointers for Newbies: Part One, which serves as a quick introduction on how to pass functions as arguments and Part Two, which illustrates how function callback works (in its most primitive form). Download the sources and play with it.
Tags: development • me outside
Data Structures for Newbies
Friday, March 12, 2004
Over at Sig9: Data Structures for Newbies: Part One, which deals with Stacks and Queues and Part Two which deals with Binary Search Trees. All interested people are encouraged to hack the code.
Tags: development • me outside
Pickle Jar Theory
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Your aim: To fill a pickle jar to the absolute maximum. The things that you can put in: Water, Pebbles, Rocks and Sand.
The stupid way: Fill the jar with sand, put some rocks in, try to squeeze in some water and then add pebbles. The sorry jar will vomit out the things you throw in.
The intelligent way: Fill it with rocks, then the small pebbles, add some sand till you can’t squeeze anything in and then add water. It’ll take even more than you can throw at it.
The pickle jar theory of time management works in a similar vein: To efficiently use your time, assign tasks that takes the longest to complete first. Then smaller and smaller tasks until your time is filled. I like this method because of its simplicity and because of the pickle jar analogy.
Further reading over at Alistapart: The Pickle Jar Theory
Tags: chaff
Rational Anarchy
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Defining
- Anarchy
- Anarchy exists when there is no form of government control over the people and they do as they please.
Rational Anarchy is something a little different. Rational Anarchists deplore any form of government and realize that in the end, all forms of organizational control curtail rights which should be free. The reasons that Anarchists are against autocratic government are obvious, but some explanation might be required for democracy:
- Men are created unequal.
- The majority is not always right.
- An uninformed majority is always wrong.
However rational anarchists by definition are not terrorists, loons or morons. They realize that they live in a less than perfect world, where other less secure people need rules to live by, and a functioning society to tell them what to do when. So while maintaining an indifference to governmental controls, they do their best to remain within the framework that society has placed on them. When they go out of bounds, rational anarchists may, depending on their moral code, shrug and accept punishment or retalitate.
There are many examples of anarchy in books (several authors seemed to have stumbled across it independent of each other) and a very few examples in history, but a working anarchy would, I think, mean an overhaul to our entire value system. Till then, we have rational anarchy to contend with.
Tags: musings
Seven, Chapter 4
Saturday, March 6, 2004
The fourth instalment in my ongoing fantasy series: Kharke. This chapter talks of Shinza’s Guard and Anaka’s journey to it.
[Link removed, see this]
My favorite color
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
My favorite color is a hard to explain green. See it in action over at EasyRGB.
Tags: chaff
Titles are unnecessary
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
There are many things I want to say in this post.
One, about the gap between my last post and this one. I had a semi-planned re-install session due on my comp last week, and due to some bad planning, I didn’t take backups of my documents folder before I f0rmatted the HD. As a result, I lost quite a lot of my bookmarks and writing and had to restore it from a backup a few months old. And in between, my computer developed some worrying symptoms that included the BIOS being wonked every now and then. I finally traced it to a boot-sector virus (ha!) and had to do a low-level format to bring my box back to shape. Everything is all ok now, and posting should resume.
Two, about Vysnu’s state and the big question that you see above. I still welcome your input, but I’ve decided to stick with the current layout, and improve page load speeds in other ways. I’m working on a page-cache system for the WP home page (and aside from chunking out MySQL errors, it works alright now) and that would speed this up enormously. As a quick remedy, I’ve enabled mod_gzip for the Apache install (both here and on Sig9) - it is an amazing piece of tool, and brought down my render times from +20s to -1s. That should take care of that for a while.
Three, I’m looking for guest bloggers to post on my site. If you don’t know about guest blogging, try looking at the famous posts by Howard Dean on Lawrence Lessig. Anyways, I’ll tell you what I’m looking for. People who read and like my site, and who would like to say something of their own, and also people who read and write a lot, or think and code a lot, or travel a lot are the best candidates. I’ll expect a few contributions to musings, but aside from that, all I’m looking for is some well written and thought-out writing. If you think you ought to be one of my guest bloggers, send me an email: vishnu AT sent DOT com, or leave a comment here. People who know me IRL should volunteer, or otherwise I’ll kick your asses to Tibet [If I don’t get anybody else, I’ll probably force you’all to write something =)].
There were many things I wanted to say in this post and there was no one single thing that I wanted to say; I’ve come to the conclusion that either the titles must be very long, or non-existant. Most future posts will be title-less. A change in the permalink structure is also in the works. Stay tuned. Don’t forget to join the bandwagon.
Tags: chaff