Diary, October 2015

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 25  26  27  28  29  30  31

Friday, October 2, 2015

Chestnuts

Yesterday evening, I picked four chestnuts from before the Chinese restaurant at the Haaksbergerstraat. This afternoon, I picked five chestnuts from at Wilminkweg where I also picked one exactly two years ago. This week, I also brought some chestnuts home that I had kept on the monitor stand in my office for the past years.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Palindrome date

Today is a palindrome date when written according to the (D)D-(M)M-(YYY)Y format: 5-10-2015. The previous such date was October 4, 2014 and the next will be October 6, 2016.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

PARR: Maximal connections (part 2)

I continued working on the question that given a number of points, what it the maximum of straight (horizontal or vertical) or diagonal connection between immediate neighbours when these points are placed on a square grid. This came up last week during my investigation into PARR configurations. PARR configurations are limited to a four by five grid, but here I investigate the problem when there are no limits. After some experimenting, it appeared that point configurations that resemble a 'round' octagon have the highest number of connections, which is not very surprising. I wrote a program to calculate the maximal number of connections for given points, which produced results for the number of points up to 1000. Each line start with the number of points, followed with the maximal number of connections, with, between brackets, the increment compared to the previous value. The rest of the line contains descriptions of the configurations, where, for example, 6x5-1,1,1,2-1 stands points placed inside a retangle of six by five points, where points from the corners have been removed, three of the corners have one point removed and the other had three points (equal one plus two) removed. Finally, one more point is removed at edge of a corner and one of the sides. Resulting in the following layout:

       *-*-*  
      /|X|X|\ 
   *-*-*-*-*-*
   |X|X|X|X|X|
   *-*-*-*-*-*
   |X|X|X|X|/ 
   *-*-*-*-*  
    \|X|X|/   
     *-*-*

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Book

At 10:53, I bought the book Foto Biennale Enschede 1993 from the thrift store Het Goed for €1.75. On pages 74 and 75 there are picture from Irmgard Lamers with the title 'Het Huwelijk' ('The Marriage').

Monday, October 12, 2015

I Am a Strange Loop

This morning, I finished reading the Dutch translation ("Ik ben een vreemde lus") of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter, which I started reading on March 5, after I bought it on Tuesday, July 23, 2013. I did not really read the last chapters of the book, just skipped through the pages to see if they might still contain some original thought. This book is full of repetitions. Hofstadter just keeps on saying the same thing in different ways. Often tries to explain things without not mentioning. As if you can explain the most fundamental theorems in computer science and mathematics, without having a basic grasp of these areas. He wrote this book because he was disappointed that people did not grasp the meaning of his Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which did include all the mathematics and computer science, and probably thought that people would grasp it if he would not mention those. A flawed idea, I think. I also feel that with this book he just circles around the main question, (what is the origin of subjective consciousness, the experience of the I?) without really touching the matter or making it relevant. I had always assumed that with the statement, I am a strange loop, he meant that in our brain we construct a model of the world around this, and this model includes a model of ourselves, which incluses our brain, causing a kind of end-less recursion. But it seems he simply means that we construct an idea of ourself based on all our previous experiences. Yes, that explains the 'I', but not the experience of subjective consciousness. I cannot but conclude that I find this the most most unsatisfactory read of the past years, because I feel that this book is just flawed in one too many ways.

Book

At 9:48, I bought the book Explore every day, ISBN:9781888387582, for €1.50 from thrift store Het Goed. I am going to carry it with me and use it too make sketches/droodles.

Tuesdag, October 13, 2015

Book

At 17:57:52, I bought the bookIntergemeentelijke structuurschets stedenband Twente 1968: omvattende de gemeenten Almelo, Borne, Hengelo en Enschede : beschrijving der in onderlinge samenhang meest gewenste ontwikkeling op langere termijn (art. 9, 1a Besluit op de Ruimtelijke Ordening) from bookshop Broekhuis for € 4.95. I bought this book because of the maps that show the ideas of almost fifty years ago, about how the cities Almelo, Borne, Hengelo, and Enschede should be developed further, and to see how this compares to what has been realized by now.

Tkkrlab

In the evening, I visited Tkkrlab to ask about the problems that I am having to connect my IJduino to my PC. There is nothing wrong with the USB controller. I was given some instruction about how to fix the problem, usin ven_id 16c0 and dev_id 05dc. I also looked around and talked with several people about the projects they are working on. I am considering to become a member.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Book

At 11:41, I bought the book Kinds of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett, ISBN:9780465073511, from thrift store Het Goed for €€2.95.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Pencils

At 17:17, I bought two drawing pencils from the department store V&D: a 3H pencil with barcode 871571770653 and a 3B pencil with barcode 871571770592. I start carrying them from that moment. Earlier this week, I started making small sketches in the Explore every day book. I have decided to focus on drawing 'solid' squares, which seems simple, but I think it is a good way to practice your drawing skills.

This months interesting links

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