Filler 42

Jesus H Christ it was a beautiful day today. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better one, at least not in London.

Even though it wasn't a Sunday -- and even though Warrick was in Brighton and Alastair and D were in Cambridge, leaving me all on my tod -- I schlepped down to Hyde Park to skate, and had a thoroughly lovely time doing so. Not only due to the scenery, although that helped; as I put it to the absent Doctor:

A weaker man might have collapsed from the sheer erotic potential of it all.

I have found myself, lately, engaging in essentially recreational programming for the first time in months, perhaps even years. To some extent this is a side effect of the more systemic wind up to the terrifying business of being a student again, but it's also kind of fun in its own right. I used to do this for entertainment, just like I used to tumble and fly and teach step. Nowadays, loosely speaking, I skate and climb; and sometimes I also code.

The latest example being the implementation of a genetic algorithm for fitting a polynomial to an input dataset. It's not at all clear that GAs provide an optimal solution to this problem (in fact, I'm almost certain they don't), but they're fun to play with. And, heaven help me, I'm implementing this nonsense in Perl, which seems to have become, despite its inarguable monstrousness, my cheap hack language of choice. James, well may you worry...

Tomorrow, I'm getting my hair cut, and Ian is playing another concert; on which I may or may not report. In the meantime, I leave you with this delightful quote from the splendid indie sf flick Primer:

Tee hee :)
Posted by matt at July 15, 2006 10:41 PM