Mathematical Structure of Floating Point Numbers

Floating Point Arithmetic
I am going to review a little bit the idea of floating point arithmetic, these ideas can be found in any elementary textbook on Numerical Analysis, or Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming Volume II. When necessary I will introduce algorithms if I find them relevant…
OK, so the basic idea behind floating point [...]

Numerology and DNA…

This is a really short post that is a random thought I had while discussing genetics with a friend over dinner. Here’s the idea: DNA has 4 nucleotides that pair up thus as AT and CG. Now, there are 4 possible nucleotides, so lets use modular arithmetic (yep ).
If we randomly pick one of the [...]

I’m not dead (yet)!

Alright, I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted, so let me get everyone up to date. The school year has started and I’m taking a number of advanced math courses, which of course requires a lot of math proofs.
I’ve always approached math proofs as a sort of “construction” exercise…like masonry for the [...]

If I’m not back in a week, avenge my death!

I’m leaving town for a week, so no one get worried over my absence.
I also wanted to quickly announce my programming blog “Object Oriented Kool Aid“. So far I am writing about my analysis of file systems and virtual file systems. I might include “How-tos” on programming file systems and/or virtual file systems. I have [...]

A Brief Anecdote and A Deformation Quantization of Gravity

The Brief Anecdote
OK, so I was talking with the lead developer of Brainix and we hit a snag. Largely because it’s a microkernel, it’s indescribably difficult to program correctly. So, we said to each other “What should we do?”
Our conclusion was, well, nonexistent. That’s right, we didn’t come to a conclusion (we’re too cool [...]

More Programming Notes of Pseudo-Interest…

I have stumbled upon a few gems worth noting. First off, there is the Metalinguistic Abstraction. It’s a “good read” as far as blogs go, with respect to programming.
There is also an Object Oriented version of Unix out: UnixLite. It’s (unfortunately) written in C++, but it’s interesting (to me at least) to observe an object [...]

Time to provoke thought or die trying!

OK, so we know that vectors are rank 1 tensors and have a direction and magnitude…sort of like the wind blows 30 miles per hour (a magnitude!) due East (a direction!). A scalar is a rank 0 tensor…sort of like how at a particular point it is 56 degrees Kelvin (a magnitude!).
Now, following this line [...]

My “To Do” List

All right, some may be wondering why I spontaneously (and seemingly randomly) update my blog with posts, but I do have some method to my madness. I just have to do some things…for instance, I have to finish writing the manual for Brainix (the manual that is out is admittedly far from finish, it’s not [...]

Unix Version 6 in Modern C (“Intro to xv6″)

As some may know, I’m an operating systems nerd (if not, you haven’t been reading this blog enough!).
Well, I ran across a fascinating toy operating system: xv6. It is Unix Version 6, but way back then C was little more than glorified assembly code (as opposed to now with C99 that’s more like Java). The [...]

American Pi: it’s 3 by the will of “God”

I thought it was funny, someone remembered the Bible (i.e. infallible source of all truth and knowledge on Earth) mentions that pi is exactly three.
So why aren’t Christian fascists demanding this be taught in school? Pi being 3.1415… is merely a theorem after all, it’s not really a law. We should teach alternative theorems, one’s [...]