qntm's Blog, page 4
January 2, 2015
Easter is a coding horror
Blog » You may be like me. Every now and then, at least once a year, when you think about Easter, you go to try and find out exactly how the date of Easter is calculated. You get as far as this Wikipedia page, you read it for a while, and then your head sort of caves in a little.
In my case, I have a page called the Lent Countdown. Currently, the date of Easter is hard-coded in that small bit of JavaScript, which means it needs updating manually every year. Every year I try to write an extra small bit of JavaScript to save myself the effort and every year I give up and fix the date manually, handing the problem off to a future self who is potentially more intelligent or tenacious.
Easter, it seems, is a coding horror. It may be the human race's first.
Most calendar systems are of necessity pretty horrible due to the way in which the rotation of the Earth, the revolution of the Sun, the phases of the Moon and the normal progression of SI seconds all fail to synchronise with one another. The ec...
In my case, I have a page called the Lent Countdown. Currently, the date of Easter is hard-coded in that small bit of JavaScript, which means it needs updating manually every year. Every year I try to write an extra small bit of JavaScript to save myself the effort and every year I give up and fix the date manually, handing the problem off to a future self who is potentially more intelligent or tenacious.
Easter, it seems, is a coding horror. It may be the human race's first.
Most calendar systems are of necessity pretty horrible due to the way in which the rotation of the Earth, the revolution of the Sun, the phases of the Moon and the normal progression of SI seconds all fail to synchronise with one another. The ec...
December 19, 2014
Time travel in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Blog » "Don't worry, it'll all make sense. I'm a professional."
It's about time I wrote this up. I have a lot of non-time travel-related praise for both of these films, but I'm going to try to stay on topic.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is the first film in the unexpectedly successful, and still one hundred percent canonical, if sadly short-lived, American reboot of Doctor Who. It's one of two films - along with Back To The Future, obviously - which forms the bedrock of what most people of my generation understand about time travel in fiction.
Excellent Adventure adopts the second-simplest model of time travel. As is well recorded, in the simplest model of time travel, time travel is completely impossible and no time travel takes place. This is the model of time travel seen in almost all works of fiction. In the second simplest model, known as "fixed history", time travel is, by whatever means, possible, but the timeline is absolutely rigid, unalterable and perfectly internally consi...
It's about time I wrote this up. I have a lot of non-time travel-related praise for both of these films, but I'm going to try to stay on topic.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is the first film in the unexpectedly successful, and still one hundred percent canonical, if sadly short-lived, American reboot of Doctor Who. It's one of two films - along with Back To The Future, obviously - which forms the bedrock of what most people of my generation understand about time travel in fiction.
Excellent Adventure adopts the second-simplest model of time travel. As is well recorded, in the simplest model of time travel, time travel is completely impossible and no time travel takes place. This is the model of time travel seen in almost all works of fiction. In the second simplest model, known as "fixed history", time travel is, by whatever means, possible, but the timeline is absolutely rigid, unalterable and perfectly internally consi...
December 14, 2014
The Ra playlist
Blog » While writing Ra I listened to the following tracks pretty much incessantly. There were more in the list but I've cut it down to about one track per artist, and also randomised it.
James Shimoji - Red Line
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
Nine Inch Nails - And All That Could Have Been
Mansun - Railings
Idlewild - Modern Way Of Letting Go
Cliff Martinez - Bride Of Deluxe
CHVRCHES - Science/Vision
Arkasia - She's The One
Massive Noise Machine - What Army
Mike Foyle - Pandora (The Blizzard remix)
BANKS - Drowning (Lido Remix)
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - AKA... What A Life!
Fleetwood Mac - The Chain
Deadmau5 - Ghosts N Stuff
Tool - The Grudge
Hans Zimmer - Mombasa
Mogwai - Auto Rock
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Dead Metheny...
Jamie N Commons - The Preacher
Cloudkicker - Seattle
Markus Shulz - Blown Away
Homeland OST - It Was Always About Him
Celldweller - Birthright
Homestuck - Cascade
Hiroyuki Sawano - The Reluctant Heroes
Steven Price - Debris
Donna Burke - Sins Of The Father...
James Shimoji - Red Line
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
Nine Inch Nails - And All That Could Have Been
Mansun - Railings
Idlewild - Modern Way Of Letting Go
Cliff Martinez - Bride Of Deluxe
CHVRCHES - Science/Vision
Arkasia - She's The One
Massive Noise Machine - What Army
Mike Foyle - Pandora (The Blizzard remix)
BANKS - Drowning (Lido Remix)
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - AKA... What A Life!
Fleetwood Mac - The Chain
Deadmau5 - Ghosts N Stuff
Tool - The Grudge
Hans Zimmer - Mombasa
Mogwai - Auto Rock
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Dead Metheny...
Jamie N Commons - The Preacher
Cloudkicker - Seattle
Markus Shulz - Blown Away
Homeland OST - It Was Always About Him
Celldweller - Birthright
Homestuck - Cascade
Hiroyuki Sawano - The Reluctant Heroes
Steven Price - Debris
Donna Burke - Sins Of The Father...
March 17, 2014
Futurama timeline
Blog » Now including all of season 7B. This may be the final significant update of the Futurama timeline. It's been an emotional day for me.
Notes
The Futurama universe is assumed to be exactly identical to ours except where the show explicitly diverges from reality.
Several episodes' dates are formed based on projections which may prove unreliable. For example, "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" can be firmly dated to 14th February only if Valentine's Day doesn't get moved over the next thousand years, and "That's Lobstertainment!" features the 1074th Academy Awards, which places it in 3002 only if no Oscar ceremonies are cancelled.
Except where stated (and where direct contradictions arise), it is assumed that production order of episodes is the same as chronological order.
The events of the episodes "The Why Of Fry", "Bender's Big Score", "All The Presidents' Heads" and "Decision 3012" resulted in changes to the Futurama timeline. This timeline deals solely with the final timeline to dat...
Notes
The Futurama universe is assumed to be exactly identical to ours except where the show explicitly diverges from reality.
Several episodes' dates are formed based on projections which may prove unreliable. For example, "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" can be firmly dated to 14th February only if Valentine's Day doesn't get moved over the next thousand years, and "That's Lobstertainment!" features the 1074th Academy Awards, which places it in 3002 only if no Oscar ceremonies are cancelled.
Except where stated (and where direct contradictions arise), it is assumed that production order of episodes is the same as chronological order.
The events of the episodes "The Why Of Fry", "Bender's Big Score", "All The Presidents' Heads" and "Decision 3012" resulted in changes to the Futurama timeline. This timeline deals solely with the final timeline to dat...
February 3, 2014
Magic spells
Blog » Magic spells
This is background information about how magic spells work in Ra. This is information that I've been keeping up to date since the story began, but now it can be released publically.
This article contains one serious spoiler for anybody who hasn't finished reading chapter 18, Deeper Magic, and mild spoilers beyond that point. In fact, you should probably read the whole of Ra to date before reading this. This is reference information; Ra is the real story.
The language of magic
The (spoken) language of magic is called "" (the empty string). Or rather, it calls itself this. This has been demonstrated experimentally:
The language of magic has a pronouncable name for itself.
This name contains no syllables.
Like many languages, magic has an alphabet, a vocabulary, a grammar and an accent. The language is convoluted, ugly to look at and difficult to speak correctly. Like natural languages, it has very good expressive power and numerous inconsistencies/edge cas...
This is background information about how magic spells work in Ra. This is information that I've been keeping up to date since the story began, but now it can be released publically.
This article contains one serious spoiler for anybody who hasn't finished reading chapter 18, Deeper Magic, and mild spoilers beyond that point. In fact, you should probably read the whole of Ra to date before reading this. This is reference information; Ra is the real story.
The language of magic
The (spoken) language of magic is called "" (the empty string). Or rather, it calls itself this. This has been demonstrated experimentally:
The language of magic has a pronouncable name for itself.
This name contains no syllables.
Like many languages, magic has an alphabet, a vocabulary, a grammar and an accent. The language is convoluted, ugly to look at and difficult to speak correctly. Like natural languages, it has very good expressive power and numerous inconsistencies/edge cas...
December 31, 2013
Personas: imaginary friends for software developers
Blog »
In the beginning there were user stories.
Well, actually in the beginning there were requirements, but that was too easy, so it came to pass that everything had to be phrased using the following snowclone:
"As an X, I want to Y."
where X is some kind of user and Y was something you could sell. This was easy enough to subvert:
"As Dave, the IT guy, I want customers to stop yelling at me about our terrible software."
But somewhere along the line, some daydreamer had a thought bubble in which the following words appeared: "What about the users of these so-called 'user stories'?"
Now, instead of having a simple requirement or even a user story, you create an entire fake human being, with their own thoughts and dreams and needs. In fact, you create several such humans, and the user stories are attached to them. After you've done that, you hope that all of your requirements were attached in at least one of these fake people, otherwise it'll fall through the cracks, never to...
In the beginning there were user stories.
Well, actually in the beginning there were requirements, but that was too easy, so it came to pass that everything had to be phrased using the following snowclone:
"As an X, I want to Y."
where X is some kind of user and Y was something you could sell. This was easy enough to subvert:
"As Dave, the IT guy, I want customers to stop yelling at me about our terrible software."
But somewhere along the line, some daydreamer had a thought bubble in which the following words appeared: "What about the users of these so-called 'user stories'?"
Now, instead of having a simple requirement or even a user story, you create an entire fake human being, with their own thoughts and dreams and needs. In fact, you create several such humans, and the user stories are attached to them. After you've done that, you hope that all of your requirements were attached in at least one of these fake people, otherwise it'll fall through the cracks, never to...
December 9, 2013
You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform...
Blog » You advocate a
( ) lunar ( ) solar ( ) lunisolar ( ) atomic ( ) metric ( ) Luddite
approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is why:
( ) solar years are real and the calendar year needs to remain in sync with them
( ) solar days are real and the calendar day needs to remain in sync with them
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into solar days
( ) the solar day cannot be evenly divided into seconds
( ) leap days suck
( ) leap seconds suck
( ) the length of the solar day is not constant
( ) inconsistent intercalation of leap seconds sucks even more
( ) leap seconds have been a fact of life for more than forty years
( ) high-tech applications need far more accuracy than your scheme allows
( ) years which count down instead of up are not very funny
( ) there needs to be a year 0
( ) the lunar month cannot be evenly divided into solar days
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into lunar months
( ) having one or two days per year w...
( ) lunar ( ) solar ( ) lunisolar ( ) atomic ( ) metric ( ) Luddite
approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is why:
( ) solar years are real and the calendar year needs to remain in sync with them
( ) solar days are real and the calendar day needs to remain in sync with them
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into solar days
( ) the solar day cannot be evenly divided into seconds
( ) leap days suck
( ) leap seconds suck
( ) the length of the solar day is not constant
( ) inconsistent intercalation of leap seconds sucks even more
( ) leap seconds have been a fact of life for more than forty years
( ) high-tech applications need far more accuracy than your scheme allows
( ) years which count down instead of up are not very funny
( ) there needs to be a year 0
( ) the lunar month cannot be evenly divided into solar days
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into lunar months
( ) having one or two days per year w...
November 29, 2013
The Hunt For Red October as hard science fiction
Blog » On reflection after a recent re-watch, I've decided that The Hunt For Red October has everything I look for in a hard science fiction film.
A complete, functional universe with its own rules and jargon. This film mostly takes place in the north Atlantic Ocean, an extremely hostile environment where life, while practical and even routine, has to follow completely different rules from those that most of us are familiar with. Red October presents a relatively small window on this universe, or maybe a tour of its most interesting parts. The sensation, though, is that this is a place where these people have been carrying out difficult work for decades, work which is going to continue for decades after the film is over. The scenario is consistent and convincing. "There are other stories here, but today we show you this one."
Everything's explained, but never dumbed down. The audience has to pay attention. I'm thinking of things like the Crazy Ivan manoeuvre, the caterpillar drive's noise...
A complete, functional universe with its own rules and jargon. This film mostly takes place in the north Atlantic Ocean, an extremely hostile environment where life, while practical and even routine, has to follow completely different rules from those that most of us are familiar with. Red October presents a relatively small window on this universe, or maybe a tour of its most interesting parts. The sensation, though, is that this is a place where these people have been carrying out difficult work for decades, work which is going to continue for decades after the film is over. The scenario is consistent and convincing. "There are other stories here, but today we show you this one."
Everything's explained, but never dumbed down. The audience has to pay attention. I'm thinking of things like the Crazy Ivan manoeuvre, the caterpillar drive's noise...
November 18, 2013
Gravity
Blog » "I hate space!"
Gravity is a spectacular, awe-inspiring and thrilling film which retrospectively really ticks me off.
It never ceases to astonish me how good special effects are right now. We're spoilt! Ron "Apollo 13" Howard would have killed for this technology. I saw Gravity on a screen which claimed to be IMAX (but realistically, probably wasn't quite there), and what I saw was crystal clear and so lush as to be almost edible. We are finally, finally in an era in which 2001: A Space Odyssey - the high water mark of space technology FX for what, four decades? - has been definitively surpassed. We have perfect clarity of picture in an environment entirely without atmospheric effects. More importantly, we're finally in an era which can do that environment justice. It really looks like that!
We have impressively accurate reproduction of real-world space hardware from the Space Shuttle (called Explorer in the film, but for some reason still referred to as Atlantis on the soundtrack?)...
Gravity is a spectacular, awe-inspiring and thrilling film which retrospectively really ticks me off.
It never ceases to astonish me how good special effects are right now. We're spoilt! Ron "Apollo 13" Howard would have killed for this technology. I saw Gravity on a screen which claimed to be IMAX (but realistically, probably wasn't quite there), and what I saw was crystal clear and so lush as to be almost edible. We are finally, finally in an era in which 2001: A Space Odyssey - the high water mark of space technology FX for what, four decades? - has been definitively surpassed. We have perfect clarity of picture in an environment entirely without atmospheric effects. More importantly, we're finally in an era which can do that environment justice. It really looks like that!
We have impressively accurate reproduction of real-world space hardware from the Space Shuttle (called Explorer in the film, but for some reason still referred to as Atlantis on the soundtrack?)...
November 4, 2013
What is magic?
Blog » I have a directory full of background information about the Ra universe, and I realised recently that some of this information is now wholly "declassified". That means you folks might want to see it. Here's the first one.
Technically, there are no spoilers here, even if you haven't started reading Ra yet. However, this is not the preferred entry point to the story! This is reference information.
What is magic?
Magic is a type of energy and a set of methods for manipulating and transducing that energy into other, more useful forms. Magic energy is called mana to distinguish it from the practice of magic.
Mana is moved around and spent by people, using verbal commands known as magic words or spells. Spells form a sort of API for requesting magical services. Spells are localised and for the most part take effect at the point in space where they are spoken. Simply speaking the words is not sufficient. The words serve as a mantra for the person speaking them, and it is the proce...
Technically, there are no spoilers here, even if you haven't started reading Ra yet. However, this is not the preferred entry point to the story! This is reference information.
What is magic?
Magic is a type of energy and a set of methods for manipulating and transducing that energy into other, more useful forms. Magic energy is called mana to distinguish it from the practice of magic.
Mana is moved around and spent by people, using verbal commands known as magic words or spells. Spells form a sort of API for requesting magical services. Spells are localised and for the most part take effect at the point in space where they are spoken. Simply speaking the words is not sufficient. The words serve as a mantra for the person speaking them, and it is the proce...
