Control Option Command

It seems like people have a hair trigger when it comes to labeling their links “NSFW“. I’ve even seen warnings about NSFW language which seems like overdoing it a bit to me. Anyway, since using the label “NSFW” to refer to anything from cuss words in plain text to “Harry Potter / Tentacle Rape Slash Porn” seems pretty unhelpful, I’ve devised this easy to understand rating system.

Please rate your links accordingly from now on, so I can filter out the seriously freaky shit from some of the kindergarden stuff that seems to be NSF your W.

This article was cross-posted on ria.creuna.com.

Hear ye; Codesmiths and Script Artisans. Nay; Hear ye all who labour with keyboard and mouse, for you owe a debt to the singular person we commemorate today.

Ahem. On this day, the 10th of december, a shockingly large number of years ago the First Programmer was born. If this story isn’t old hat to you you might be surprised to learn the bearer of this distinct honorific was born in 1815 in London.
What might also surprise you, a pleasant surprise, is that she was a woman.

Ada Lovelace

Born Augusta Ada Byron she was the daughter of Lord Byron (he of poetry fame and infamy) and Anne Isabella Milbanke.
Her mother, who was not impressed with Lord Byrons debauchery and loose morals focused her education on mathematics and science, forbidding her to pursue the social sciences in order to prevent her from becoming a bohemian bum like her father. At seventeen Ada showed remarkable aptitude in mathematics and her interest continued even after her marriage; Contrary to the custom of women at the time.

Charles Babbage, her friend and fellow math wiz (amongst other things) had been working with logarithms and in an effort to remove uncertainty and human errors in this line of work he conceived of a Mechanical Computing Device to replace the traditional system of the time which were human clerks with the title ‘Computer’; “One who computes”.

Babbage; For all his genius ground work, was severely limited in his conception of the computer. He saw it as a mechanical means to execute mathematical operations with high precision. Enter our heroine Lady Lovelace.

In 1842-43 she translated a memoir of italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on Babbages conceptual machine. Her additional notes were longer than the memoir itself, and substantially more visionary in nature. In these notes she conceived of making the analytical device accept, comprehend and execute commands; In essence creating the first programming language.

Babbage was never able to actually create his machine, and Ada never got to see the fruits of her labour. Vindicated in history her notes are published and distributed today, she has post-humously been awarded a medal from The British Computer Society and the contemporary programming language Ada is named in her honor. As a side note; Babbages machine have later been constructed as per his notes and was found to be highly accurate at mathematical operations.

Why should we care?

Geek holidays are great, and we need more of them. But if you look at the notable dates and personalities in this industry there are two factors that separate Ada Lovelace from the rest.
Firstly; she is by far one of the strongest examples of the long heritage of brilliant people on whose shoulders we stand to todays technology. Secondly: and it’s sad that this should matters, but it remains to be a factor and an important one at that; She is a woman. Our industry is heavily male-dominated. Not only in our workplaces but also in our heroes and legends.
I mean no slight to Alan Turing, Steve Wozniak, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and their esteemed co-idols, but by god; this sausage party needs some dames.

Searching for “Ada Lovelace” yields among other links a page that declares 24th of March to be Ada Lovelace Day and ask bloggers to pledge to write a post about Ada. Since the site seemed defunct after this date I propose that Ada Lovelace Day should be her birthday; the 10th of December and that we geeks make room for it among Towel Day, Blue Beanie Day and PI Day so this amazing historical figure gets the attention she deserves.

Who’s with me?

Further studies.

• The wikipedia article on Ada Lovelace from which most of this post was taken
• iTunes link for “The Enchantress of Numbers“. The episode of the great podcast “Stuff you missed in history class“.
• The difference engine; A site dedicated to the work of Charles Babbage.

I’m a sucker for nice illustrations, and these are pretty damn awesome.

Finally I can keep track of all my favorite people and BFFs.

The picture was taken at a “Tattoo and General Freak-me-out Stuff”-convention in Oslo 2004 or so.

Time has always been subject of scrutiny and discourse, philosophy and theory, science and fiction. The very concept of time is frequently disputed as at best a faulty system to explain the sequencing of entropy and extropy based on certain recurring natural phenomenae; and at worst an imaginary crutch for our lack of ability to comprehend the world in more than three dimensions.

There is little controversy however concerning the fact that we perceive time as a real and measurable phenomenon. Artifacts from the Palaeolithic suggest that the moon was used to calculate time as early as 12,000, and possibly even 30,000 BCE. A multitude of different systems have been devised to measure, calculate and conceptualize time. The study of devices and systems to measure time is called Horology, and is a field broad enough to warrant museums, libraries and doctorates.
The act of arranging past events in ordered sequences is referred to as Chronology, while the conceptualizing of ordering and arranging future events is referred to as any one of planning, predicting, anticipating, divining, foretelling or hoping.

As a means of bringing some measure of order to the art of organizing future anticipated events several systems were devised to facilitate this process. These systems are known as calendars, and are typically agreed on as the official system for such measurements in a given society. That is; The sequence of days, weeks, months and years as well as the occurrence of any holidays or annually reoccurring events are predetermined by the official calendar.

In the western world the Gregorian calendar, decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, is the by far most common calendar in use. With a predetermined discrepancy of only 1 second per year, and one day every four years, the calendar divides the progression of time neatly into days, weeks, months and years; corresponding to the rotation of the earth on it’s own axis, cycles of the moon and the earths orbit of the sun.

The discrepancies mentioned means that there is, predictably, some few discrepancies in the amount of seconds in a year and the days of a month (although always the same month). However the remaining larger units of time, and their progression are static and as such even more of a central focus around which to organize, conceptualize and express measurement of time.

Take the week; A repeating cyclical pattern consisting of 7 days. It always start with the same day (sunday or monday according to region) and progresses from one day to the next until the week has come full circle, and thus starts again. If on a tuesday you inquire about when a certain event will occur, and you get the reply that it will occur the coming friday; You may safely assume that wednesday and thursday will pass between now (still, for the sake of argument: tuesday) and when said event is likely to happen.

…

And that is why I haven’t finished your project yet.