diego's pasta-r-us

diego's pasta-r-us

diego  //  staunch pastafarian. misplaced canadian. over-thinker extraordinaire.

Oct 10 / 9:34pm

Andrew and Shirin's anniversary

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Aug 29 / 7:09pm

15-Love

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Ping... Pong

Aug 12 / 3:43pm

Expectations

Institute for Advanced Study! Special exception! A position better than Einstein, even! It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd!

It was absurd. The other offers had made me feel worse, up to a point. They were expecting me to accomplish something. But this offer was so ridiculous, so impossible for me ever to live up to, so ridiculously out of proportion. The other ones were just mistakes; this was an absurdity! I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it.

And then I thought to myself, “You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it’s impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!”

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be.

It’s their mistake, not my failing.

- Richard Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" 

I bought my dad this book after enjoying it thoroughly myself, and he replied by highlighting this passage for me.

Jul 26 / 1:26am

Exercise 2.70

Use `generate-huffman-tree' (*Note Exercise 2-69::) to generate a corresponding Huffman tree, and use `encode' (*Note Exercise 2-68::) to encode the following message:

          Get a job

          Sha na na na na na na na na

          Get a job

          Sha na na na na na na na na

          Wah yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip

          Sha boom

-via SICP

Thought that was kind of funny.

In other news, my aspirations for a lambda tattoo were utterly dashed (I do support the movement, of course).

 

Filed under  //  sicp  
Jul 25 / 1:56pm

Symphony in Dolores Park!

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Jun 20 / 4:49pm

Mount San Bruno

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Beautiful morning ride with Chrix and Mark
Jun 9 / 8:59pm

Wolfram on Feynman

One of the things he often said was that "peace of mind is the most important prerequisite for creative work." And he thought one should do everything one could to achieve that. And he thought that meant, among other things, that one should always stay away from anything worldly, like management.

via http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/feynman/

Indeed, in my "real world job" I often find myself bogged down by never-ending administrativa.