7

-Overheard quote: "John doesn't want to do the hokey pokey with me!"-

Several interesting dreams this week, of which I remembered very little when I awoke. This is probably because I got to bed late (for me) almost every day. There was a dream about cookies -- I remember that one.

I will be going to a feast this weekend. By that, I mean I will actually be going to an event called a "feast", not just a large potluck or similar. 

You may recall, readers, that I have written several posts about the Society for Creative Anachronism, which I began exploring last fall. Since I started going to fencing practice, I have gone to one major SCA event, but that one involved an extra charge if you wanted to attend the feast, so my fencing group skipped that and went to a restaurant on our own.

Now, the group that I'm in is hosting a feast, and the site fee is donations only. I am amazed at my childlike glee about this event -- an opportunity to put on the garb that the other fencers have so graciously piled on the newcomer (me), raise up my wooden goblet (also given to me by the advanced fighters), and perhaps even do some knife fighting (which I hear is traditional at this feast, though done with decidedly nontraditional plastic knives).

And of course, eat some very, very delicious period food.

Reality check. It would be even cooler if the baroness of Caerthe (the SCA barony I live in) dropped by, but I suppose she probably has better things to do.

7tfjf

-Mystery quote: "There was not one single cent of money provided by the Legal Services Commission spent upon this paper, and thus they were not disclosed in the paper because there was no conflict of interest. The investigations in these children were done purely on the National Health Service, let me absolutely clear about that."-

In yet another dream demonstrating my inner (and not-too-hidden) geek, I actually managed to enter a coding competition and start work on a circuit-analysis program in my sleep. So yes, it is indeed possible to dream in code.

A local institution here in Golden, Colorado, sells a beverage called Genius Juice. While the fluid contained in the so-labelled bottles appears to be water, I cannot help but imagine that it must come from freshly squeezed geniuses, however that comes about.

I have one bottle of "Genius Juice" in storage at the moment, which I happened to get as a side effect when I ordered a sack lunch -- I'm not a particular fan of bottled water. I haven't drunk any of it yet, but my imaginative mind is coming up with many deliciously odd scenarios that could result of sampling the juice.

Reality check. On a completely different note, the US is trying to revive rail transportation. Personally, I think the huge, sparsely-populated expanses here are at the root of the difficulties we've had implementing public transportation, but we shall have to see how this idea fares. Thoughts?

nmqt nmqt

-Dream journal quote: "Hand asleep?" (not sure if this was in the dream or got jammed in by me sleeping on top of it and making it tingle in real life)-

The longest entry in my dream journal this week is extremely boring to retell. Essentially the only interesting part to the outside observer is the predictable inclusion of the color red, one of the few colors that stands out in my dreams (hm, The Giver comes to mind). It was an interesting dream to experience, mind you, but the same can be said of vacations; they may have been vastly interesting to the vacationer, but the large volumes of photographs from the trip -- foisted onto hapless passerby -- are not.

This Monday, I found out that someone who lives in the same building (or complex, or whatever you'd like to call it) as me committed suicide over the weekend. After the initial shock of realizing that someone that "close" to me had actually committed suicide -- that it wasn't just something that happened in the news -- I just felt strange, above everything else. I had never met the person who died. I only ever shed a tear or two when others around me did, as a purely communal response. 

Not quite true. I suppose I was a little overwhelmed with the tragedy of what had happened, the tragedy that no one I talked to seemed to have actually known the person. There were discussions enough about whether, if I or you or she or he had taken the time to speak to this person, who lived in the same four walls as all of us, then perhaps things would have turned out differently.

Or perhaps not. The human mind is an illogical and dangerous organ, sometimes.

Reality check. Oftentimes.

7 7t

-Hackaday quote: "Arduino" (now repeat 7 bajillion times)-

The most interesting dream I remember this week was one involving a function that contained a singularity. I know this because I was staring at the denominator of the function for a while, and it contained a (z - z₀) term, although with an actual number for z₀. Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the context for this observation, so why I was staring at a function with singularity z₀ will remain forever a mystery.

In other completely geeky news:

I was doing the usual Wikipedia crawl, where one article leads to another and another and another and another and another and another and... well, anyway.

I started on ADAM, then progressed through evolutionary computing, to, finally, Core War. Yes, Core War. It's a game for assembly language programmers (all you need to know about assembly code is that, while computers run it fast, it's horridly, horridly, difficult for humans to actually read -- I enjoy coding, but assembly language still eludes me). Essentially, it's a two-player game where each programmer makes a "warrior" program whose entire goal is to halt the processes of the other program.

I suppose this game appeals to me because it's similar to ordinary video games, except without the middle conversion from code to monsters or dragons or rpg worlds. It's actual "programs" "attacking" each other.

Reality check. A bit of a segue: Conway's Game of Life. A complete segue: http://www.thatsmyface.com/