My laptop from work is a MacBook with an iSight on board – that means that I can video chat with people. All of my ’60′s dreams of the picture phone have come true, except for the nightmare of having nobody to video chat with. I’ve got Skype, iChat, and Yahoo Messenger that should all video chat, IM accounts on MSN, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Skype. But hardly anybody to play with. Woe is me.
Archive for August, 2006
Video Chat – Skype
Friday, August 25th, 2006
Working out.
Friday, August 25th, 2006You may never believe it.
I’ve been going to the Gym almost every workday for more than a month. I’ve been taking Cassie to daycare for just after 7, and then I have about an hour for workout and shower before I have to head off to work. Weights 3 days a week, and cardio 2. I guess everything Mike and Mark taught me didn’t go to waste – I’ve remembered a fair bit of the proper technique.
Cardio kicks my ass. I’m enjoying the recumbant bike, but I know I should be using the cross trainer. I tried the cross trainer one day and had to give up after 5 minutes, then I tried to finish up on the bike, but had to quit after just 6 more minutes – ARGH. I’ve tried the other way around – 20 mins on the bike and then I can do 7 on the X-trainer.
I complained a bit today at work that I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere – I’m staying at the same weight on the machines – althought cardio is a bit better. My boss said that one of his trainers told him – “it took you quite a long time to get chubby….”
Foolishly I didn’t do a lot of measurement baselines before I started so I’m a bit blurry about how I’m doing. Current goals are all about getting to the gym consistently and I’m very happy so far.
Cheese Grater
Friday, August 25th, 2006
One of the cool things about my new job is that I get to play with all the new toys. I haven’t been this cutting edge in 12 years. We got an Apple Mac Pro (like was just announced/released at WWDC 2006 a couple of weeks ago) in to set up as a server in a client’s office. It is a beautiful machine – everything they say about how easy it is to add Drives and RAM is true. I had to open it up and geek out to the technology beauty.
We’ll be setting up the software and doing the training for that office in a couple of weeks time. I’m learning a lot, and I have great people to work with.
Big Bang
Monday, August 21st, 2006
Another set of fun fireworks here in Ottawa, this time from the fireworks competition over in Gatineau. My new camera continues to rock.
Sandra is actually starting to think I’ve got too many pictures of Fireworks – it seems they all start to look the same after a while. Fortunately the Balloon Festival is next weekend so I’ll have pictures of hot air baloons to post. Sadly there will also be more Fireworks….
Occam’s Razor
Monday, August 21st, 2006I’ve probably taken too much Philosophy of Science, or read too much Heinlein; but I have quite a soft spot in my heart for Occam’s Razor.
Today I was sad to see John Gruber write:
The principle of Occam’s Razor holds that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true.
My understanding of Occam’s Razor is: “Given two explanations with equal predictive power, USE the simpler.”
The Wikipedia article John Links to seems to agree with me:
…when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities.
Occam’s razor doesn’t say anything about the “Truth” of theories. It just tells you which theory to prefer.
Example: in Physics we often use Newtonian Mechanics – it is simple, and makes very good predictions under many circumstances. However, most Physicists understand Einsteinian Mechanics to be more “True”, and under some circumstances they have much better predictive powers – in those circumstances we should choose to use Einsteinian Mechanics.
Now, I’m really focussing here on the simplicity part. However when I read the quote from Wikipedia they say that I should focus on the fewest assumptions, and fewest hypothetical entities, and doesn’t say anything about simplicity. Now on the Fewest assumptions Einsteinian Mechanics wins – you don’t have to assume velocities not near the speed of light so maybe I’m way off base and Occam’s razor wants me to use them all the time and it is lazyness that makes Newtonian Mechanics so popular with Physicists, and not Occam. Next some other person will say: “No Cameron, you are the crazy one here.”
