Temporal index
2015: Third Quarter
2014: Third Quarter
2014: Second Quarter

Atemporal notes
Quotations

2015: Third Quarter

Engelbart: "Augmenting Human Intellect" Rough working slides for a small-group discusion with people at the Recurse Center, August 10, 2015.

Why are there so many parentheses in Lisp? To make representing and manipulating the abstract syntax tree easy. This, in turn, makes macros and DSLs easy. For more detail, see the notes.

2014: Third Quarter

My electronic library slideshow: Intended for display on my living room wall, as a conversation piece. Created because I enjoy discussing my recent reading with visiting friends, but most of my reading is now done electronically, not on paper. Note that this is not intended for casual web browsing – the 30 second delay between frames is far too slow.

The future of computing: rough notes toward a syllabus

Interface culture: working notes: User interface design is difficult. It's a rich art and craft – at least as rich as movie-making or writing. Some thoughts on how to get good (do a lot, vary the type of system, do redesign, and do and share critiques). The dichotomy between user-driven and technically-driven user interface design.

Working notes: An early experiment in note-taking: incomplete notes on a few subjects. The most interesting notion is that of an out-of-control explanation (as opposed to the usual controlled explanation).

Typography: A complete ignoramus gives himself a first lesson. Verdict: it's more interesting (and important) than I thought!

2014: Second Quarter

Kill math: notes: On new user interfaces for mathematics. Introducing new fundamental (atomic) objects, operations and representations which we can use to think about mathematics. Nice traditional example: some systems makes graphs things we can operate on, and treat as single objects. Scrubabble numbers as a new type of number. Moving theorems into the user interface. The accident that we think of theorems as static statements. Example Euclid: the Game, as a simple case where we make theorems active parts of the user interface. User interfaces which cue the user. The need for a flexible, expressive type system.

On the area of a planar shape projected onto a screen: In response to a problem of Jonathan Blow.