Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

I've progressed on the software more than expected, so the time has come
to return to California.  Between Christmas and my birthday I finished
the subroutines for copying, deleting, and comparing subtrees, and for
saving and loading trees from the disk.  Now it's very easy to factor an
expression like "2x + 3x", for instance.  The 'x' can be anything, as
long as they're both the same, so the two subtrees corresponding to it
have to be compared.  If they're found to be the same, then one subtree
is deleted and the tree is reconnected as "(2 + 3) * x".  To go in
reverse, a copy of x (a new subtree) must be created.  So it's easy to
see why all these subroutines had to be done before continuing.  Now
it's quite easy to implement any rule of algebra.  But there are so many
rules that it ought to take me about 2 weeks of intense work.  After
that I need a subroutine to print equations and expressions as a math
teacher would write them, with pretty fraction bars and exponents.  I'm
already planning it.  It needs to use postorder traversal, since it has
to plan in reverse for how to space each item on the screen.  Then the
software will be ready for preliminary testing on students.

We're in search of a name.  I like "Algebra EMT (Electronic Math
Teacher)" better than "E. L. M. Trees", I think, but I can't believe
it's not taken (I haven't checked yet).  Nowadays there's a strange
consequence to living with a government that sells words for a profit.
   Thanks to this lunacy, there's only one place in America (maybe in
the whole world) where you can "have it your way."  (Oops, I hope I
don't owe anyone a royalty now that I used that phrase in my email!)
Often the best names are already copyrighted, but they're attached to
products that are no longer manufactured, or extremely inferior gag
items, or ones that don't even exist.  So if you do ever come up with a
good "electronic math teacher" you might have to pay some shyster to use
that name.  Some day the exclusive use of the word "wow" may be sold by
the government.  I (literally) can't say "I'm lovin' it" about it
all!  I'm reminded of Mad TV's recent spoof of their host network (Fox):
"They've got the names (of shows); if only they had the writing."

We successfully acquired the correct, perennial species of native
clover.  Lee bought six plants in Tomales.  His trip was more arduous
than ever.  Thankfully he made it safe and sound.

The calves have been processed, and 300 lbs. of beef are now in the
freezer.  I think I'll wait a year before raising any more beef calves.
  I need to clear some more pasture down below to lock them in.  The
miniature lambs, by contrast, were no problem in the orchard.  Except
for really young trees, it's better to leave the little fences off,
since lambs can eat the grass that sprouts when you fertilize a tree.
They did great in the herb garden, carefully picking out grass from
among the lavender.  Frankly I like the lamb better.  Like storebought,
the beef still requires meat tenderizer (or other methods), for the most
part, but the lamb is tender and mild-tasting.

The fall vegetable crops were all a success, except for the bolting
broccoli.  Cauliflower doesn't keep long, of course, but there are bags
full of kohlrabi, turnips, beets, parsnips, and carrots.  Some celeriac
is holding in the garden, and we've finished the Brussels sprouts.  At
this point we don't eat much of anything from the store besides some
fruit and milk products, and bulk dry goods like grain.  I'm on a strict
low-fat diet because of my gall bladder, so the Christmas chocolate has
lasted and lasted.

I guess it's OK to tell about my big secret idea in general terms, since
we're just giving it away as a tool for viewing math software.  The goal
is for the computer to detect the position and orientation of the
viewer's head.  Imagine placing a very small lit bulb above your head
(like having an idea).  Now picture a rainbow strip of colored film
arranged in an arc around the bulb, so that the light shines through the
plastic.  The basic principle is that the color of the light indicates
where the light is passing through the plastic, and can so be used to
determine the angle of the viewer's head.  We've played around with the
digital camera and a strip of plastic with a red-purple-blue transition,
and the preliminary results are promising, but there are many hurdles to
overcome.  Not the least of these is figuring out how to access the
video stream from within a program.  Then there's the problem of ambient
room light affecting the result.  After I finish the algebra software,
which seems so clear-cut and easy by comparison, I think I'll have the
patience to deal with it all.  It's likely that the signal coming from
that colored dot may be quite noisy, but the same continuity conditions
that are applied to speech analysis should be capable of smoothing it
remarkably.  In other words, since it's impossible to move one's head
very rapidly and back again without getting a headache (no more than
it's possible to change the pitch of one's voice suddenly by an octave
and back again, for instance), sudden apparent changes in the signal can
be dismissed as noise and smoothed out.

The shed is pretty much finished.  For the first time I have a
relatively dry place to store things.  I'm in the process of moving
things down there selectively, starting with unused building materials.

Enjoy the attached picture of our acacia.  I was tempted to name it
sarcastically "The Gloom of Winter Descends Upon the Oregon Coast" but
it wouldn't fit in the Attachment Window.


Lá fhéile Brighid shona díobh!  Happy Groundhog Day!

Bill