The Swedish Wikipedia is large. Outsized. Most things are well in hand. Today I met with something which needs an article! The concept of “majgreve”, which means “the Count of May”; a ceremonial feast title given someone worthy. The tiny preview of the NE (“the national encyclopedia”) notes that the term was used in the …
Author Archives: olleolleolle
Allow Leslie Lamport to explain to you what TLA+ is
Sat down with a good friend who’s in math + economic history. He’d taken me to school at the gym, introducing the Thai boxing exercise “kick the heavy bag” 45-seconds-per-leg. Brutal. Loud. I can perhaps recommend it. Afterwards at Nobes, enjoying a traditional meal of potatoes, gravy and vegan kålpudding, he asked me whether math …
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Portmanteau of the day
Cthulhu + FOMO = CthFOMO
The Stones of Venice
My friend J was at a large fika at my house, holding forth about the perennial mystery of Venice. I whispered the only thing I knew about the mystique of that place: some Englishman’s text about it. J winked and nodded, and knew it, of course. I have not read this work, except as an …
Reading The Morning Paper
In which I extol the greatness of The Morning Paper, a way to learn of things in computer science.
Revamping, again
Ha, the blogging. WordPress happens much quicker than I can follow it, which is completely wonderful. Quite a few innovations arrived today: a new editing interface, called Gutenberg. This is easy. And way more accessible. I might use it, even.
An Amsterdam Sunday
Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal’s syndrome, hyperkulturemia, or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to an experience of great personal significance, particularly viewing art. We did three museums in one day. That’s really pushing it. But we stayed ahead of the above …
An Amsterdam Saturday, a sketch
Amsterdam in harsh, punishing sunlight. A pre-cold is threatening my weekend, reminding me of bodily frailty, as I and my companion trudge through cobbled streets fraught with traffic peril from onrushing bikes, their bike bells a-clanging. The street scenes in the city center were the ones I’d been told to expect: tourists toting tourist gear, …
Ruby feature: Regular Expression replace once
About a year ago, programmer Tony Arcieri posed a question on the Ruby language bug tracker: Why was Thread.exclusive deprecated? Among the answers to this question, Shyouhei Urabe’s one of the tersest feature descriptions yet: “we already have such thing, to some extent at least”: /#{@mutex=Mutex.new}/o The pair of slashes are Regular Expression delimiters. A Regular …
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