The King of Pointland

Deep Throat

So we now know the identity of Deep Throat. And for the next few hours or so (and ignoring the integrated news results), you can (more easily) see who came close to guessing correctly.

Putting the QA in QA 273.F3713

Just a quick note to let you know I'm fixing the world one mistake at a time. I found a book with Call Number QA 273.F3713, when, in fact, the correct call number is QA 273.F3712. The authorities have been notified and are working on it now.

Unphrased

These phrases, both recently used by me in conversation, result in no Google hits:

• wild, protestant sex
• matzah slurry

This will change.

It Makes (Ad)Sense

This is kind of neat. A fellow named Colin Percival appears to have discovered a security flaw in Intel's Hyper-Threading technology. "This flaw permits local information disclosure, including allowing an unprivileged user to steal an RSA private key being used on the same machine."

What's neat is that he has Google Adsense on his page. We benefit from his research, and he'll make a little money, in proportion to the interest in his results.

Graph Her Movies

One can also make a movie.

Grapher? I Just Met Her!

You say Spotlight? I say shmotlight. You say Dashboard? I say shmashboard. You say something cool? I take that something, replace the first consonant with shmuh, and you are undone.

Why is no one talking about what is clearly the most awesome part of OS X Tiger? I'm talking about Grapher. Look, I can't even hyperlink "Grapher." The best I can do is direct you here. It's down there on the left somewhere. If you happen to have Tiger, look in the Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder).

When I accidentally stumbled upon it, I thought Grapher would be a cute little toy that could show you what y=x² looks like. While it can do that, it can do a whole lot more. Check it out:

It's all Apple-ey, too. If you type y=x^2, it moves the cursor up when you type the carat so you can work on the exponent. Want to go back down? Just hit the down arrow. What happens if instead of "y=x²" you enter just "x²" ? Then, if you're in 2D mode, it gives you a contour plot. Pretty much any expression that makes sense can be graphed. If you type "x² + y² = 10" you get a circle. And it works in 3D, as well: "x² + y² + z² = 10" gives you a sphere. You can also use parameterized equations to produce surfaces. You can define and view a 3D vector field with arrows distributed in space. You can grab the graph with your mouse and rotate it. You can pan, zoom in and out. And it is all beautifully rendered with shadows and shinyness, using OpenGL I suspect. It's just so much fun to play with and experiment. In no time flat I was demonstrating conic sections to my friends! In 3D! I have no life!

Think of Grapher as a poor man's Mathematica (without the symbolic math). It's almost worth what I paid for the entire OS.