Jeff Zeitlin

general recent conversations

Discussion on question by Monty Wild:…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...

Jeff Zeitlin

Jul 17 13:22

@Escapeddentalpatient. - Then the pictures on that wiki article were misleading; they all appeared to be left-drive - that is, the driver sat on the left, not in the centre, as the querent proposes.

Jeff Zeitlin

Jul 17 13:22

Even as "family cars", placing the driver in the centre of a row of three is potentially awkward, especially if, for example, a police officer pulls the vehicle over for unsafe operation.

Jeff Zeitlin

Jul 17 13:22

@Escapeddentalpatient. - The Bagheera was a centre-engine design, not a centre-drive design.

Jeff Zeitlin

Jul 17 13:22

Whilst I don't have any real arguments against centre drive, I think that in the larger vehicles, it might make more sense to isolate the driver - that is, vehicle capacities would be 3n+1, where n is the number of rows, and the +1 is the isolated driver's position up front. The equivalent of the two-seat sports car might be 1+1 or 1+2. but three-in-a-line with the driver in the centre would be awkward for the driver to enter or leave.

Discussion on question by RedStoneMat…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...

Jeff Zeitlin

Mar 27 01:38

It's not uncommon to hear phrases such as "the week/month/year ending «date»".

Discussion on question by Pablo Virus…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 2 14:36

Yes; the only time I would read the symbol as a symbol ('emm gee') is when I'm specifically talking about the symbol rather than the underlying element, or when I'm reading a formula - "Ethanol is see two aitch five oh aitch".

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 2 14:36

I read element symbols as though the name of the element was written out, and use the proper article on that basis. Thus, "a Mg salt" or "a Na oxide" are correct, because they're "a magnesium salt" or "a sodium oxide". It's also "a U fluoride", because the pronunciation of "uranium" starts with a consonantal "y" sound.

Discussion on answer by Rand al'Thor:…

Imported from a comment discussion on scifi.stackexchange.com/...

Jeff Zeitlin

Jan 8 19:24

@ToddWilcox - That would be the implication, yes, making her name pronounced approximately "yo-win", but hitting the "y" a little harder.

Jeff Zeitlin

Jan 8 19:24

No "real" language that I'm aware of, actually, but Tolkien did so throughout the Middle Earth stories. If he'd wanted the shorter "e" in Sméagol, he'd have written it Smeägol to preserve the three-syllable pronunciation. Since he wanted the longer "e" (é), the dieresis was superfluous.

Jeff Zeitlin

Jan 8 19:24

Accents, including both the acute and the dieresis, were also used to indicate that two vowels were to be pronounced separately, not as a diphthong, so that Sméagol would be three syllables, smay-a-gol, rather than two, smee-gol (ea as in meat).

Discussion on question by Dan: Are sp…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 9, 2024 16:25

I consider most appearances of 's with years to be erroneous; it's not something that belongs to 1960; it's a characteristic of a collection of ten years beginning with 1960.

Discussion on question by James Matha…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...

Jeff Zeitlin

Aug 8, 2024 02:25

Have you tried searching the web for both terms?

Discussion on question by Ar3s: How w…

Imported from a comment discussion on rpg.stackexchange.com/qu...

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 28, 2023 14:27

...erom The fact that the word in question is real-French with an etymology that goes back to real-Greek is a convenience that develops from the fact that the players, not the characters, speak French.

Discussion on question by Krišjānis L…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 16, 2023 03:00

Bear in mind that calendar development is going to be based on both visible astronomical phenomena and cultural attitudes. You may want to look at the culture(s) of the inhabitants before deciding what their calendar(s) look like. Mesoamerican cultures, for example, actually used three calendars in conjunction - the Long Count, the Haab, and the Tzolkin. Any particular combination of Haab and Tzolkin dates was unique in a period of 52 years.

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 16, 2023 03:00

(Link to the Haab, which I misremembered as 12 of 30; it's really 18 of 20.)

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 16, 2023 03:00

There's also the practice of the Jewish calendar (often miscalled the Hebrew calendar, including by Wikipedia, where its (normally) 12 months add up to 354 days, and when the 11-day-per-year deficit adds up to 30 days or more, an extra month is added. This end up happening in 7 of every 19 years.

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 16, 2023 03:00

The mesoamerican Haab (Mayan name) calendar has 12 months of 30 days, and then a period not part of any month called the Uayeb (or Wayeb) of five days. There's no reason you can't do something like that...

Discussion on question by Schezuk: Di…

Imported from a comment discussion on retrocomputing.stackexch...

Jeff Zeitlin

Feb 12, 2023 18:03

I started out as a Pascal programmer, and moved on to Modula-2, then to a proprietary called Euphoria, then to compiled BASICs (principally QuickBASIC and compatibles), then to what are now called 'scripting' languages like Python and PowerShell. I haven't touched Java and it is unlikely I ever will.

The APL Orchard

apl.chat ― Learn, teach, ask, code, golf, & discuss usage. See ...

Jeff Zeitlin

Dec 29, 2022 20:06

@Adám - I thought your solution to codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/256050/friend-or-foe was quite elegant and nicely symmetrical. :)

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 30, 2022 13:33

@Adám - Not quite; there are no words in English that are apostrophe-followed-by-single-letter as there are in Dutch. But yes, the apostrophe can start a word in English.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 19:13

@Adám - In American, the normal word is 'cars', though 'carriages' isn't unknown.

Jeff Zeitlin

Oct 25, 2022 14:50

@Adám - OK, thanks!

Jeff Zeitlin

Oct 25, 2022 14:47

@Adám - Some questions re: 18.2/Windows: (1) Must I/Is it recommended that I uninstall 17.x before installing 18.2? (2) Does 18.2 install over/alongside 17.x? (3) Is there a free runtime for projects that will be distributed to other users for free (hobby/toy programs)?

Jeff Zeitlin

Oct 21, 2022 10:42

@Adám - If it is vendor-specific, IBM was the vendor that first implemented it, lots and lots of years ago - it was specifically mentioned in the docs for the APL implementation that I used at RPI in the early '80s - and RPI was using an old IBM implementation of APL even then (I think it was actually either APL\360 or APL\370).

Jeff Zeitlin

Oct 19, 2022 11:00

(...more) I'll grant that locked tradfns are probably arguably an edge case currently, and I know we've discussed the idea of 'binding' a workspace to the interpreter to (a) conceal source and (b) provide "single file" APL programs, which would essentially obsolete the locked fn - but IIRC it's still part of the defintion of the language.

Jeff Zeitlin

Oct 19, 2022 10:59

@Adám - Not a fan of repurposing in general, but unless/until tradfns are completely dropped from the language - at which point I'd be hesitant to call it APL as opposed to an APL-derived language - I would consider repurposing that would break compatibility to be a bad idea. (more...)

Jeff Zeitlin

Oct 18, 2022 19:37

@Adám - I wouldn't, only because deltilde was used in tradAPL for locked functions.

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 19:49

But ¨ wasn't part of APL\360

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 19:48

∇Z←DF W
[1] Z←×/(-(1=2|W))+2×⍳⌈W÷2
[2] ∇
DF¨1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 8 15

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 19:44

Hmmm... it occurs to me that the expression inside my dfn would actually work to compute the double-factorial of a positive scalar in pretty much any APL back to APL\360... but I wonder how one would implement an "each-ism" in APL\360, so that if you passed a vector to the function, it would iterate over it as scalars...

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 19:18

⎕←{×/(-(1=2|⍵))+2×⍳⌈⍵÷2}¨ 1 2 3 4 5

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 13:59

But 17.1, at least, doesn't like it

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 13:58

U+203C, ‼ (the DOUBLE EXCLAMATION POINT) would be an ideal name for this dfn...

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 12:59

OTOH, if I "each" mine, it does work for vectors. On my copy of 17.1:

{×/(-(1=2|⍵))+2×⍳⌈⍵÷2}¨ 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 8 15

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 12:57

Hmm... Mine gives a rank error for vectors, but works fine for scalars.

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 12:55

Hrm. No bot?

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 12:55

⎕←{×/(-(1=2|⍵))+2×⍳⌈⍵÷2} 1 2 3 4 5

Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 13, 2022 12:54

For ⎕IO←1

Discussion on answer by Jeff Zeitlin:…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - Incidentally, dogs are varelse unless they go feral; it's wild canines, wolves, that are djur.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - That was essentially my point: A human writing about aliens and their games is still human, and that human imagination in doing the worldbuilding is still going to be essentially human, including the games. It's why Demosthenes (Card) referred to ramen as "humans of another species".

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - Not only would they look like games, they would be "familiar" in the same sense that someone who knows only European chess would still recognize Shogi or Xiangqi as "chess-like" games - there would be some familiar core element that would make the game fundamentally understandable, even if one doesn't know the rules.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - You're unquestionably correct on the Adar and Dreen; I would consider the Hexosehr unquestionably raman; it may be difficult to communicate with them for technical reasons, but if the technical difficulties can be overcome and a commonality of viewpoint established, that essentially defines them as raman. Helen Keller, in spite of being blind and deaf, and requiring special means to communicate with sighted and hearing people, was still utlanning, not varelse.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - which would make them at best varelse in the Hierarchy. If they play games (unlikely), humans might not even recognize them as games; there's no point of commonality (which is essentially the definintion of varelse).

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - Which makes them "Campbellian" in their alienness - but they're still understandable in that sense. That we can understand them to that level makes them raman, and if they play games at all (what you've said about their psychology suggests that that might be a stretch), I would expect them to have some level of conceptual familiarity to a human [or vice-versa], just like cricket does to someone who knows baseball, or korfball for someone who knows basketball.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - All you're doing in that case is turning the usual trope around; you still end up with "humans in rubber suits". By making them less than human, you still have a situation where you're writing aliens that can usefully interact with humans to mutual benefit - i.e., ramen in Card's Hierarchy of Foreignness. And when you're telling the story from the human point of view - which a human author invariably will - you still end up with that fundamental familiarity.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

@Nosajimiki - Can you provide pointers to some examples?

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

The same summary is also available over on Scifi.se.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

There are a few places that you can get an overview of the concept until you read the books; a few that I found are Everything2, A Geek's-Eye View, and the Ender's Game wiki.

Jeff Zeitlin

Nov 2, 2022 17:32

I've read quite a lot of SF over the years, and while I have, in fact, encountered several alien species that meet John W. Campbell's demands on his authors ('Show me an alien that thinks as good as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man'), but in no case would I consider any of them other than ramen in Card's Hierarchy of Foreignness, and in no case would I be able to argue against an 'accusation' of them being "humans in funny suits" - in fact, I consider that, ultimately, the essence of a good story.

talk.tryitonline.net

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Jeff Zeitlin

Sep 15, 2022 13:32

Auntie Frijs