In the 1970s I got to visit my grandparents every summer. They had a big house, and sometimes I liked to play in the large basement. My grandfather’s wood shop was down there, though I didn’t spend much time in it when he wasn’t there working on something. There was a lot [...]

The most recent release of my Bare Bones interpreter made identifiers case-insensitive, and added an optional peephole optimizer that recognizes a common idiom:

while N not 0 do;
  decr N;
  incr X;
end;

Such a loop adds N to X, clearing N in the process. Without the optimizer, this is has time complexity [...]

Over the weekend I finished the homework assignment for the “Theory of Computation” chapter of Computer Science: An Overview, Ninth Edition, by J. Glenn Brookshear. Brookshear defines a very minimal programming language called Bare Bones, in which variables may contain arbitrarily large non-negative integers. The only operations available are:

clear var; — set a [...]

I was a little disappointed to learn that I’ve earned only a B+ in my English composition class at De Anza College, bringing down my GPA slightly. While De Anza counts a B+ as 3.3 points, most universities use only the letter for transfer credit, so it will transfer as a 3.0.
I’ve returned to school part [...]

When I walk to an Electrical Engineering class at San Jose State University, I usually pass by Boyce Gate at Ninth Street and San Fernando Street. Usually there is a banner for the Spartans. Last week, however, the banner was for “Academic Integrity Week“, and I was reminded of what Tom Lehrer had [...]

I plan to apply to graduate school in a few years, and will need to take the GRE General Test.  I’m currently working on a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, and since I’m doing it on a part-time basis, it will take a while to complete.  In the mean time, I decided to take the [...]

I’m trying to take an EE class at San Jose State University.  Although I might apply for admission to a degree program there in the future, currently I just want to take the one class.  They have something called “Open University“, which allows most people who are not admitted students there to take a limited [...]

In 100 reasons why lists are stupid, Tom Harrison explains that the smallest interesting number is 4.  I presume he is only considering natural numbers.  But even there, I think he’s wrong.  1 is interesting since it is the smallest natural number.  2 is interesting since it is the only even prime.  3 is interesting [...]

Timmy: “Are we gonna discover the secret of life, Mr. Wizard?”
Mr. Wizard: “We will if we’re not careful, Timmy!”
—”Mr. Wizard and Timmy” parody by Stevens & Grdnic
I’m not old enough to have seen the original “Watch Mr. Wizard” show, and I hadn’t even heard of Don Herbert’s more recent Nickelodeon series “Mr. Wizard’s [...]

A high school physics teacher in the UK explains why their new physics syllabus is not actually physics (or even science), but rather what I would describe as an assortment of politically correct bullshit.
I don’t know how this compares to the current physics curriculum in US high schools; as far as I know, we don’t [...]