Friday
Dec182020

Venus

The planet Venus rising at about 6am yesterday morning.

Sunday
Nov222020

The End State of Systems that grow by Accretion

Brian Kernighan and Adam Gordon Bell discussing the origin of Unix (from https://corecursive.com/058-brian-kernighan-unix-bell-labs):

Adam:

… So you guys, you’re in the Unix room, you were building all these little tools and the tools were starting to accrete and like Node.js, is just a world that is accreted all of things, or Python. So it’s just that the end state of this process or something.

Brian:

Yeah, it probably is. Accretion is probably the right world, and I don’t know how that ends if it ever does.

In physics the end state of a system that grows by accretion is a black hole.

Sunday
Oct252020

Linking to a Github Repository

In general, when you link to a Gihub repository you should include the #readme fragment in the URL instead of just linking to the bare repository URL.  This means users don't have to scroll down to find out what he repository holds. For example: you should prefer

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust#readme

over:

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust

Monday
Sep212020

Moth

A box-tree moth, Cydalima perspectalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) which I found early this morning on the front door to our block of flats. This species was first detected in this country as recently as 2008.

Photo taken in Reading, UK on 2020-09-21.

Monday
Aug172020

Wasp Spider

A wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi (Araneae: Araneidae), my first from Whiteknights Park, though I have come across 2 before on the other side of Reading near Chazey Wood, on 2014-08-27 and 2014-09-06.

Specimen taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading, UK on 2020-08-14.