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Haspina

A while ago, I had an idea for a program that I called Haspina (a Lilitic word, meaning 'magic spells'.) The goal was to take the simple principle of living text, and push it as far as it could go: automatic hyperlinks, spelling correction, math, code execution, geographical annotation, filename and command name completion, generation of real-time graphs, reformatting and indentation, set completion, internal document linking, embedded files, music interpretation, figure-drawing from a very simple command language, thesaurus, et cetera. Everything in Hypercard, Emacs, Wolfram Alpha, Google's calculator features, and as many of Bret Victor's ideas about how to improve Javascript editing as possible. At the time I was thinking I would try to implement a Haskell interpreter inside of it as the native language, since Haskell maps well to conventional mathematical forms and isn't as parenthetically hungry as Lisp.  […]
Samantics comment   read more (1254 bytes) · 8452.209 tgc / 2012.196 ce

The Case of the Missing Cases

After much consternation and a survey of classical Latin and Greek, it's come to my attention that the current form of Lilitic completely misses the Latin instrumental ablative, Greek instrumental dative, and Greek proper dative cases. Much ado has been made of the locative, which has six forms (from/at/toward, since/while/until) but there's still no "with" or "unto" in Lilitic! […]
Thet comment   read more (1997 bytes) · 8452.137 tgc / 2012.059 ce

The PCA Song

There was a time, when to analyze EM waves,
You had to store tons and tons of tiny values.
Then along came a guy named Dr. Karl Pearson,
Said you can store signals in vectors, just as well.  […]
Samantics comment   read more (714 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

Just Ice - DHMO

It's always the same
Always ashamed
The proton-binding
When I can come in
To a hopeless electrolyte
But one more time
my answer stands
I swear I mean "no offence"
But you better learn to read
it's all 'bout electrochemistry  […]
Samantics comment   read more (627 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

itsMyParty/2

itsMyParty(Me, Party) :-
    belongs(Party, Me), want_to(Me, cry) -> cry(Me),
    want_to(Me, cry) -> cry(Me),
    want_to(Me, cry) -> cry(Me),
    happened(It, You) -> cry(You), !,
  […]
Samantics comment   read more (1510 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

Graduate School Supplication

(Required) Please attach and upload a PDF containing a 1000-word essay describing why you are interested specifically in attending the University of Bogos. Do not include any material that may apply to other institutions. Applicants will be evaluated primarily on their ability to appeal to the President's thirst for self-indulgence. In addition, please meet the following criteria:  […]
Samantics comment   read more (1 comment, 745 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

The Franklin Strand

I once asked this of a first-year biology professor, who had been brought up thoroughly English and spoke of "Watson" and "Crick" strands, greatly confusing those of us who knew only of coding and template (or anti-coding) strands. Her response was that I was very clever and possibly after her heart—but I think I finally have an answer.  […]
Samantics comment   read more (352 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

Backronym Generator!

Rules:

1. If the abbreviation does not contain A, B, C, D, E, F, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, W, or Y, then I wasn't clever enough to come up with a noun for these words, and the algorithm fails.

2. Find the last letter in the word that is A, B, C, D, E, F, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, W, or Y, and assign it a random noun from the list of nouns that start with that letter.

3. Assign random adjectives from the "prefixes" table to the letters that precede the one chosen as the noun. Optionally, assign the entire string to the first letter (creating a recursive backronym)

4. Assign random adjectives from the "suffixes" table to the remaining letters.  […]
Samantics read more (3 comments, 1363 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

Two Letters to the Future

Letter 1:
We complain a lot, but life for many of us is pretty OK. As Mark Rosenfelder (zompist.com) once said, the twentieth century was the first time that we saw a higher average standard of living than the pre-agricultural era. I hope things are going better for you—and let me know how all that gender politicking works out.
  […]
Samantics comment   read more (1218 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce

Describing Palate

Okay, big shot. You've collected a comprehensive list of everyone's favourite musicians, ever. You've even roughly clumped them by how popular they are, instead of using linear algebra to do it properly using a huge linear regression (a trick I'm still working on.) Now what?  […]
Samantics comment   read more (2264 bytes) · 8452.136 tgc / 2012.056 ce


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