matt's pictures

sophie being cute

A sizable portion of this blogs readers come here just for cute photos of my wife. Who am I to argue?

Posted on 2014-02-27T15:18:37Z GMT

The mathematician “Paul Erdős”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s had a saying: when he came across a particularly beautiful proof, he’d say “That’s one from the book,” meaning the book that God kept all the best proofs in. bq. Although an agnostic atheist, he spoke of “The Book”, a visualization of a book in which God had written down the best and most elegant proofs for mathematical theorems. Lecturing in 1985 he said, “You don’t have to believe in God, but you should believe in The Book.” He was really a fascinating fellow; really, go read the “wikipedia page”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s about him. Fun fact: if Hank Aaron has an Erdos number of 1 because of a signed baseball, mine is four, because of a project I owned, and passed on to an academic. The book I’m talking about, though, is just the one I’m meant to be working on. In a world filled with wonders like Erdos numbers and cloudy skies and busy life all around, is it any wonder I get distracted?

Posted on 2014-02-27T07:04:05Z GMT

gonna start on a new book

I have a couple projects that at least have enough photos for book-ifying. I don’t know which one, though. The street stuff is a little premature, I think; I don’t know where it’s going yet. The photos from the ferry might be a good group. There’s also the signs project, which up until this moment only existed in my head… it’s really loosely framed at this point, and none of the pictures have made it up here yet. It’s also way too soon to put that one on paper. So, ferry photos it is. Of course, I have 10 other projects demanding my attention; there’s the watch that I’ve been planning to build, there’s the camera repair that I haven’t finished, there’s the postcard list, the wheels that I need to build for myself so sophie can have hers back, the bluetooth chording keyboard for my ipad, and the camera, which will happen about the time I retire at this rate. Anyway, don’t look for this book thing to happen soon. I’ve no idea what form it’ll be in, who’ll print it, or any of that. Silly details.

Posted on 2014-02-26T06:20:03Z GMT

new years 2014 (back on the air)

this was a very nice evening with some new friends here in the bay. Really great folks. D&C are the same pair we went to Yosemite with a couple weekends ago. Really fun couple, I’m glad we met them. So. We’re in the new house, and I’ve got my computer and network up. The RAID came up just fine, and everything else seems as well; wifi works, at least. There’s a lot of unpacking, organizing, and laying out of furniture to be done, but home is where “127.0.0.1”:http://127.0.0.1 is.

Posted on 2014-02-25T06:51:11Z GMT

a history of stragglers

So, we’re in the middle of moving, and the only real computer I have access to is my server, the one that runs the web site you’re reading. The server is cloudy, which means when I move house, I don’t have to move it. By real computer, I mean something that can run, at a minimum, vim and git. Those are the minimum tools I need to do a blog post. My rasberry pi also qualifies, but it’s in a box somewhere. Luckily, I had photos already out on the server, or theis would be a very boring post indeed. These are more from the period between Xmas and New Years. One from sonoma, and the others walking back from brunch at Portal. That’s what I meant by stragglers; I keep seeming to have one photo that should have gone with the previous set turn up the next time I open lightroom. It’s what I get for blogging tired. Not much to say right now. moving is hard, and it’s going to take us all week, I’m afraid. Tomorrow is the furniture, but there are a million little things that are going to take us a while to get. The kitchen, the closets, the camping stuff, yada yada yada. Up and down stairs until I’m tired of it, and then a few more trips. This was my idea, really. Save a little money, get into a nicer area. I’ll enjoy it once I get there, but now, I’m tired.