Squaring is a lossy process. That is, when a number is squared the root is lost. The search for roots is further complicated because many whole numbers have irrational roots. Even intuition is misleading, take a guess that the square root of 4 might be half (and you’d be right), but geometric growth would indicate […]
Author Archives: Shaun
Holding off on evaluating variables
There is a difference between performing a calculation and solving a problem. I’ve been considering the equation of a circle, . Except, you see, that’s not the entire thing. There’s a bit that we’ve dropped because it’s zeroes (and therefore doesn’t affect our equation): . This equation contains the full information–everything that is necessary to draw and position […]
Switching Wireless, a Soap Opera
Now that I’ve gotten my Wireless Perceptions guide out of the way, I can mention one of my favorite misconceptions. Myth: “Switch to MUSTANG, it’s faster than MORNINGSIDE.” The observant reader will note that this myth is contradictory to my previous assertions. No right-thinking person would possibly believe that something is slower when it is faster. One wrinkle […]
Wireless Perceptions
It has come to my attention that wireless is still considered somewhat amorphous and, as a result, I’ve seen some pretty interesting misconceptions. How does our wireless work? Small radios have a limited range so we have many of them all over campus. Sometimes they are in visible locations and sometimes they are hidden in […]
How to attach to a remote emacs session
I was away from my workstation which was running an emacs with several open files (some potentially unsaved!) when I wanted to access some of those files. My emacs is always configured to run the server process. This means I can start an emacs process and edit any file with `emacsclient $file`. Instead of a […]