figments ineffable

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:27:15 -0500

“They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

- Carl Sagan (via reddit)

Robot readable world (by Timo) How do robots see the world? How...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:23:28 -0500

Robot readable world (by Timo)

How do robots see the world? How do they gather meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us?
This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye.

Future World Orchestra - Desire (1982), via Boing Boing: A...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:51:00 -0500

Future World Orchestra - Desire (1982), via Boing Boing:

A modern electronica duo can only dream of being as good as Future World Orchestra. [via Robert Popper]

Younger Brother - Halloween Mix: The Twilight zone Crystalline...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:17:00 -0400

Younger Brother - Halloween Mix:

The Twilight zone
Crystalline
your friends are scary
weird on a monday night
I am a Freak
Pound a Rhythm
Pound a Rhythm ( ruff electronic mix)
Safety in Numbers
Safety in numbers ( ruff electronic mix)
All I Want
Train
Tetris
Bed Time Story

clojure + emacs on windows (the september 2011 version)

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:06:00 -0400

There are a bunch of tutorials floating around online on how to get started with an emacs/slime setup for clojure on windows, but—not surprising given the rapid rate of changes in the clojure ecosystem—I wasn’t able to find one that wasn’t outdated or ran without throwing esoteric errors on installation. After a lot of trial-and-error, I managed to get a proper workflow up and running, and decided to document it in case I forget.

I’ve added a few extra steps to make sure nothing is stored in C:\ (which makes it easy for me when I need to reinstall the OS) that you’ll likely need to change/ignore depending on your partition setup, but on the whole I’m happy with this checklist. As always, YMMV and all that; I frankly don’t expect this to last a few months from now, but it might at least be a starting point:

Pre-install checks
1. Delete ~/.emacs.d/ and ~/.emacs
Installing Leiningen
1. Get the Windows distribution from here (e.g., leiningen-1.5.2.zip)
2. Extract it to A:\lein
3. Replace lein.bat with the latest stable version
4. Add A:\lein to $PATH
5. Set the LEIN_HOME environment variable to D:\.lein to make Leiningen store its executables there (instead of %USERPROFILE%\.lein)
6. Create a junction at %USERPROFILE%\.m2 pointing to D:\.m2 so that the Maven local repository is stored in D:\:
  junction.exe %USERPROFILE%\.m2 D:\.m2
7. Run lein self-install, which fetches the lein jar file
Installing emacs
1. Get the latest emacs distribution from here. Make sure it’s v23 or above
2. Extract it to A:\emacs\. Don’t open emacs yet!
3. Set the HOME environment variable to D: to make emacs pick up its config files from D:\
Installing emacs-startup-kit
1. cd to D:\
2. Run git clone git://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit.git .emacs.d
3. Open emacs
4. M-x package-list-packages
5. Select the following packages by pressing I to mark for installation:
  - clojure-mode
  - clojure-test-mode
  - slime
  - slime-repl
6. Press X to install the selected packages
7. After it’s done installing, C-X C-C to quit emacs
Installing swank-clojure
1. Run lein plugin install swank-clojure 1.3.2 (or whatever’s the latest version recommended at the project site)
Running everything
1. After creating a project (lein new project-name), open one of the files in emacs
2. M-x clojure-jack-in
3. That’s it! The Slime REPL should open in a bit, and you’re all set
Customizing Emacs
1. Contents of my ~/.emacs, after installing color-theme and color-theme-zenburn using M-x package-list-packages:
```
(load "~/.emacs.d/init.el")
(set-default-font "Consolas-11")
(eval (color-theme-zenburn))
```
2. An insanely roundabout way to pin Emacs to the Win7 taskbar:
  (From here; I’m really surprised this actually worked)
  Pinning Emacs to the windows 7 taskbar is somewhat of an annoyance: the preferred way to run Emacs seems to be via runemacs.exe, which launches Emacs without the background console window that you’d get when running emacs.exe directly. However, runemacs.exe and emacs.exe have different GUIDs, and therefore, you end up with two buttons for Emacs in the taskbar when you try to pin either one and try to use it. Not really a problem, but annoying in a vague sort of way. This can be fixed by pinning the emacs.exe process first, right-clicking the taskbar shortcut to get the Close/Unpin/emacs… menu, then right-clicking the emacs option to get to its Properties window, and changing the target from …emacs.exe to …runemacs.exe.

Knuffingen Airport: Kleinster Flughafen der Welt // The...

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:40:30 -0400

Knuffingen Airport: Kleinster Flughafen der Welt // The world’s smallest airport (by MiWuLaTV)

(via)

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:27:00 -0400

(via)

I have no idea why but this makes me laugh every time

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:22:00 -0400

I have no idea why but this makes me laugh every time

I think everyone’s got Al Qaeda confused with a different...

Mon, 02 May 2011 10:59:19 -0400

I think everyone’s got Al Qaeda confused with a different group

(via Underwater Photographer Ofer Ketter’s Gallery:...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:07:14 -0400

(via Underwater Photographer Ofer Ketter’s Gallery: Featured Gallery: B&W Manta Ray - DivePhotoGuide.com)

Cognitive Dissonance Alert! A Natural History of the Giraffe (by...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:19:00 -0400

Cognitive Dissonance Alert!

A Natural History of the Giraffe (by yushimoto_02 [christian])

Photo

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:58:10 -0400

"If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is..."

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:11:29 -0400

“If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

- Trin Tragula (attributed)

"In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. Little minds have little worries, big minds..."

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:58:18 -0400

“In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Our best thoughts come from others.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:46:04 -0400

Basic Instructions - How to Rise to the Challenge

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:48:27 -0500

Basic Instructions - How to Rise to the Challenge

IMG_3503 (by perb67)

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:13:35 -0500

IMG_3503 (by perb67)

Discovery’s last mission More shuttle stuff: This is a video of...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 12:19:03 -0500

Discovery’s last mission

More shuttle stuff:

This is a video of the launch from an airplane: (via)

Lt. Col. Gabriel Green and Capt. Zachary Bartoe patrol the airspace in an F-15E Strike Eagle as the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches May 14, 2010, at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

Photo

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:18:29 -0500

Abstruse Goose » Astronaut

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:44:41 -0500

Abstruse Goose » Astronaut