Hey friend, if it helps, every “song” you make will eventually become a symbol and memory of a time in your life. It doesn’t have to be good. Sometimes these sounds have even more fidelity than text when it comes to capturing your emotional state and thoughts at the time. I didn’t realize that for a while but in retrospect all of the “it sounds bad” and “I didn’t finish it” didn’t matter
Part of my training for doing "engine room checks" on a boat involved checking for any unusual smells, e.g. fuel leak, burning oil (from generator/engine), burning coolant (from generator/engine), or burning rubber (from sea chest raw water impeller). All of the components in there are equipped with sensors[1] that measure levels, temperature, etc. Perhaps there is room for a new olfactory sensor there? Aside from avoiding catostrophic issues like fire and engine or generator failure, it's also important to not pump out[2] any water from the compartment into the ocean if it's contaminated with oil, fuel, or coolant (the laws about this are super strict).
[1] There are digital sensors that are readable directly from the pilothouse by the captain which are rigged to automated alarms, as well as manual sensors (e.g. a pressure dial) that are readable from the engine room itself, for redundancy. So I don't think an olfactory sensor would replace the unusual smell check, but it could maybe augment it.
[2] The "bilge pump" is used to pump out water from the bilge (bottom floor cavity of engine room). To be honest on my vessel the policy is to never turn on the bilge pumps in the engine room at all because the risk of dumping contaminants is too high. But I still thought to mention this just in case there's an idea there.
Ha! I just had a debate about this with my friend. A certain ferry company uses a big Google Sheet to track where all of its vessels are currently docked in their home port, as well as which employee is assigned to which vessel for the day, etc (it's very information dense with color coding, and employees check it daily to get their vessel assignment). My friend thought this was completely unacceptable for a big company, and that they should build a bespoke software for this purpose. I think that it was a brilliant idea to use Google Sheets, it already solves all of the difficult problems and obviates the need to have an inhouse software development team or an expensive contract. I buried my hubris deep underground
Oh wow thanks for writing out that summary of Sockwell's talk. I had a sort of similar line of thought a few years ago which I haven't followed since, but this just brought me back. https://josh8.com/blog/personal_computing.html
I was musing about the point on which technologies one ought to use for writing personal (or FOSS) software vs. corporate software like in the talk, but also whether the ethos we bring to the table between the two should differ -- i.e. 'software as a soap bubble' rather than only allowing yourself to write scalable and maintainable programs that are generalized for re-use. It's as if a whole class of programs which would help us Personally Compute never come into existence because of this mindset. I think the AI vibe coding thingy majingies are not too bad of an antidote to this actually
That quote about conjecture reminds me of a big point from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author suggests that 'science' / 'the scientific method' don't actually account for the process by which ideas/hypotheses come into existence, science only comes into play once the hypothesis appears (from whence does it appear?). He calls that magic smoke 'Quality'. (Using the language you cited, I guess we would be asking about where the conjecture itself comes from). I'm realizing now that this is tangential to your point, sorry, but thanks for posting this interesting comment.
> What confuses me is that other people can form images in their minds. Are all those with character amnesia also aphantasic? That can't be, given that aphantasics amount to less than 5% of the population, while a much larger number of people forget how to write (70% of teenage participants in a Chinese TV show were unable to write the word "toad"!).
They were discussing their aphantasia as a precursor to other very interesting points, e.g. about how "seeing" a character in your mind isn't enough to be able to draw it, --> verbatim traces and gist traces.
I was expecting something snobby but this was actually a very interesting view into the mind of a self-actualized person. I guess this is what happens if you keep working hard and don't burn out! Thanks for posting this
Communicating Sequential Processes (Hoare),
The Next 700 Programming Languages (Landin),
As We May Think (Bush),
Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style (Backus)
And this seems to be a cool course: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/34992/assignments/syllabu...
> This course examines papers every computer scientist should have read, from the 1930s to the present. It is meant to be a synthesizing experience for advanced students in computer science: a way for them to see the field as a whole, not through a survey, but by reliving the experience of its creation. The idea is to create a unified view of the field of computer science, for students who already know something about it, by replaying its entire evolution at an accelerated frame rate.
You’re on the right path my friend, hang on to the feeling that drove you to write this. Not everyone has it, and you may even find yourself having woken up with it missing one day. So use it while you have it
Random tip... I noticed the volume sliders only take effect when you stop dragging the knob. You can use the 'oninput' event for the slider to set its value as the user moves it around. Something like: