Sunday, Debtember 09, 2001
50,000 dancing, singing, wisecracking cockroaches can't be wrong
Another film we rented along with Art House was Joe's Apartment, which no one else here wanted to see. Something about 50,000 cockroaches seems to have been the deciding factor.
But it was a very funny, albeit odd, film about a kid fresh from Iowa moving to New York City and lucking into a rent controlled apartment for only $100/month in the lower East Side. Now granted, he has to share this with 50,000 dancing, singing, wisecracking cockroaches but that's not the reason why the apartment is so cheap—it's slated for demolition to make way for the world's largest single building prison.
Yes, there are a few gross out scenes involving cockroaches but for the most part the computer generated cockroaches aren't that horrific and it is a funny film. 50,000 dancing, singing, wisecracking cockroaches can't be wrong.
Nondeterministic Control Words in Forth
I borrowed a Dr. Dobb's Journal from Mark yesterday. I'm only mentioning it because Spring was commenting on it as I was reading it.
It's the Annual Forth Issue from September of 1983 (#83). It's not the fourth issue of the year, but instead about the computer language Forth, developed by Chuck Moore.
I enjoy going through old computer magazines and technical manuals and that's what Spring said separated the geeks from the nerds—geeks like looking through old magazines and technical manuals. I personally can't say I do it because I'm a geek, but I do do it because there are sometimes some interesting techniques that might otherwise get lost (and let's face it—looking at old computer ads are always fun (10Mbyte hard disk for any computer for only $2,300! What a steal!).
For this issue, it's the articles about Forth that are interesting. A couple of articles about Forth on the Motorola 68000 which are still relevant today, nearly 18 years later because of the popularity of the Palm Pilot, which uses a Motorola 68000.
The real mind bending article was NonDeterministic Control Words in Forth by L. L. Odette. The gist is having the program just randomly pick one branch of code or another, plus the ability to backtrack and pick the other choice (if the current branch leads nowhere towards the solution) makes for elegant solutions to certain classes of problems. It's an intriguing method—at any point where you can select a course of action, you save the program state and pick one course. If that turns out to be a non-solution, or a poor solution, you restore the program state and automatically take another course.
Something to think about, which is why I love going through old magazines like this. There are possible treasures to find like this.
Hold me …
And speaking of old computers I came across something very scary and something that probably shouldn't have been done. I mean, there's doing something just to prove it possible, but, like INTERCAL, some things are better left dead and unimplemented.
