eric+'s New Writeups

August 10, 2001 (idea)

2001-08-10T07:52:26Z

Wow. I just submitted my first write-up in about six months. Well, second if you consider the my E2 nuke request (which I don't.) I really haven't been noding regularly for about a year.

I think I'm at this point where I'm very ambiguous about E2. In the beginning, I had a lot of fun churning out nodes like crazy. I wanted to vote, so I noded until I was level 2. I wanted to cool, so I noded until I was level 4. Etc. It was even mildly social at times. But eventually, noding started to become something I did because it was something I do. I don't know if that makes any sense. What I mean is that I kept on noding because I was used to noding. There was no real ambition, no real goal.

It's not that noding became like work or a chore, it was just ... less fun.

So I stopped.

If you look at my nodelist, you'll see my first 500 nodes took about two months, last…

strike zone (idea)

2001-08-10T07:25:53Z

The sixth Star Trek: The Next Generation book (although it's listed as number five because the first book, Encounter at Farpoint, is un-numbered). Written by Peter David and published by Pocket Books in 1989.

The plot involves a conflict between the Klingon and the Kreel, a primitive and violent species (think Vogons in THHGTTG). The Kreel have discovered a long-hidden cache of advanced weapons which threatens to disturb the balance of power in the sector. The Enterprise is sent to broker a peace deal between the two factions before a full-on war starts.

Typical Star Trek fare, really.

I think this is one of the funniest Star Trek books that I've read (although I can't say I've read all that many). In particular, I liked the mild innuendo between Worf and Gava (a…

V-2 (thing)

2001-02-24T13:19:35Z

A big rocket. The V-2 (aka "A4" or "Aggregat 4") was built by Wernher von Braun's team of rocket scientists at Peenemünde for Nazi Germany during World War II. It was capable of delivering a 2,000 pound payload to a target up to 230 miles away. About 2,500 rockets were launched by the Nazis with about 500 of them aimed towards London.

A good website for V-2 information is:
http://www.v2rocket.com

The Everlasting Story of Nory (thing)

2001-02-19T08:03:07Z

A book by Nicholson Baker (most famously known as the author of Vox), published by Random House in 1998. It follows an almost-year in the the life of Eleanor Winslow, nicknamed "Nory" (which sounds Japanese, but it's not). Nory is a nine year-old American girl who is living in Threll, England. She has a wonderful imagination and wants to grow up to become a dentist (with a Ph. D.). Her main problem is that she hasn't got not too many friends, at least not in England. And the two friends she kinda does have (Kira and Pamela) don't like each other (especially Kira). I would say that The Everlasting Story of Nory about her adventures, but really there isn't any real adventure -- at least not in the Saturday Matinee-sense -- except maybe for her day-to-day living which, really, when you think about it, is adventure enough.

While I was reading …

Kristine Kochanski (person)

2001-02-06T22:13:10Z

There have been two distinct Kristine Kochanskis (just as there have been two Krytens and two Hollys.) The first, CP Grogan (lead singer for the early-80's band Altered Images), played Krissie from 1988 (Red Dwarf Series 1) through 1996 (Series 6). Chloe Annett (pedantically, "Chloë Annett") has been Konchanski from 1997 (Series 7) to the present.

In the earlier Red Dwarf series, Dave actually never went out with Kochanski, he has only admired her from afar (in Series 1, Dave asks Holly why he brought back Rimmer rather than, say, Kristine Kochanski and Holly says that in Dave's entire life, the sum of all of their conversations was only 173 words.) It was only later on (Series 5? Series 6?) that the meme that the two had been an item came into being.

I sti…

Stemmer (thing)

2001-02-04T01:02:40Z

A stemmer is a computer program or algorithm in natural language processing that, given an inflected form of a word returns its root. For example,

        dogs    dog
        flies   fly
        geese   goose 
        axes    ax or axis

Stemming in English is relatively easy because the rules are fairly simple and regular (exceptions like axes nothwithstanding). Russian and Hebrew are two of the more difficult languages to design stemmers for.