Let's just say I'm looking forward to the upcoming Les Miserables movie.

Dead End

Dear Readers,

Ever heard of text-based adventure games? You will after you finish this post. I have only a few comments before we get into the riveting action.
First, I'm not playing computer games of late, in an effort to redeem time for better activities. So far most of the "redeemed" time has gone to watching other people play computer games. I would like to say this didn't count as breaking my virtual fast, but I'm not so sure. Just because it's old and text-based doesn't mean it isn't a time-nivorous computer game.
Second, if you have Ubuntu linux you can get this game for yourself. It actually comes with the emacs GTK text editor (who would have thought?) which I just installed to use for fortran editing. So I was actually innocently checking out the capabilities of my new editor when I stumbled upon the "games" folder in the menu. Who knew so many games could be built on a text editor?
Enough of this. Enjoy my first attempt at a little game known as:
"Adventure."

You are at a dead end of a dirt road. The road goes to the east.
In the distance you can see that it will eventually fork off. The
trees here are very tall royal palms, and they are spaced equidistant
from each other.
There is a shovel here.

>take shovel
Taken.

>examine shovel
It is a normal shovel with a price tag attached that says $19.99.

>remove tag
I don't understand that.

>walk east
I don't understand that.

>go east
E/W Dirt road
You are on the continuation of a dirt road. There are more trees on
both sides of you. The road continues to the east and west.
There is a large boulder here.

>examine boulder
It is just a boulder. It cannot be moved.

>sit boulder
I don't understand that.

>stand boulder
I don't understand that.

>examine sky
I don't know what that is.

>examine road
I don't know what that is.

>examine trees
They are palm trees with a bountiful supply of coconuts in them.

>climb tree
You manage to get about two feet up the tree and fall back down. You
notice that the tree is very unsteady.

>shake tree
You begin to shake a tree, and notice a coconut begin to fall from the air.
As you try to get your hand up to block it, you feel the impact as it lands
on your head.
You are dead.
You have scored 0 out of a possible 90 points.

Weakly Typed Languages, or, I Don't Get the Point

Dear Readers,

It got all dark outside the office and started raining about half an hour ago, so I'm sticking around until it lets up a bit before making the 0.25-0.5 mile walk home. While I'm sticking, I might as well write up what I've learned today.

I'm working with IDL, a weak-typed language, which means you don't have to specify a type, such as int, long, double, or string, when you create your variables (real computer people are probably rolling over in their cubicles at this definition; it is more complicated than I'm making it out to be (don't get the idea from this mention of rolling over in cubicles that I in any way believe computer people have no lives; it's all in good fun)).
Weak-typed languages have all sorts of benefits and problems compared to strongly-typed languages.
Today I discovered one of the problems.
I was fitting some data by changing various parameters and running a batch of scripts that took a little under two-minutes to complete, then looking at my results and trying again. About three hours in I ran into a strange trend. A certain parameter did affect my results; I had observed it do so before, and was observing it do so now; however, no matter how I varied the parameter, I got only one of two outcomes, whereas I expected a whole continuum of variation as I varied the parameter. Above a certain parameter value, I got one answer, below it, another, and, the more tests I ran, the smaller the possible value of that, well, certain value became, until at last I determined there was indeed an integer parameter value above which I got one result, below which I got a strikingly different one. This was most odd, so I typed

help

at my idl command line, and idl did its best, which was to give me a list of all the variables of which it was aware, their contents, and their current type. The parameter I was varying was a ratio of two numbers, yet it, amongst a host of other ratios, was registered as an int. That was the problem, because I was working with a ratio very close to one. Any ratio with a value between one and two was assigned the integer value one. Any ratio between two and three was truncated to two. Well, that couldn't be my fault. After all, it's a weakly-typed language -- it's responsible for such matters!
And yet, it was my fault. As soon as I asked myself why the compiler would assign this particular ratio as an int, and looked at the various parameters in the parameter file, I realized my mistake.
All the other numbers in ratio form had these annoying little decimals at the end of them. I, of course, had deleted the decimal in this ratio after changing the value. No point in leaving it in, you know? But of course that was the whole point. In order to let the computer know it's dealing with a floating-point number rather than an int, IDL allows the user to simply add a hanging decimal. Well, isn't that convenient! And now I know.

Before I conclude this post, I ought to answer a question I am sure many of you are asking yourselves. The question is as follows: I thought he was an intern, yet he knows when it gets dark outside and starts raining. Do interns have windowed offices? The answer to this question is that yes, I do work in a windowed office. There are AC pipes hanging from the ceiling. Beneath, upon, above, and about my desk are seven computer monitors (besides my own -- five CRT, three flat panel) and ten computer chassis (although a few look like they've been cannibalized). There is also a window running the width of the room. It's at the top of the wall, though, leading to the somewhat jaded comment I was privy to a few weeks ago: "there's piping in the ceiling and the window's are raised; it's either prison or a grad-student's office." That statement, of course, now proves to be false, as this office is my very own, and I am neither graduate student nor prisoner.

There's So Many People! or Reflections on Summer at a Bigger College

During the school year, I attend Covenant College, which is home to about 1000 undergraduate students and very few graduate students. This summer I am living at Clemson university, home to around 14000 undergrads and 3000 graduate students and post-docs. Clemson has more faculty than Covenant has students.

Knowledge of this disparity in size led me to two notable expectations.

First, I believed that the larger size of Clemson's campus meant I would take longer to get everywhere. This is false. Certainly, there's no way I can sprint all the way to the physics department and back if I want to drop off a paper. It's close to a mile round trip. However, the food is, in truth, closer than it was at Covenant, due to the fact that even on most days I cook in my apartment, and on the others, Clemson has spread the edible joy around by building several cafeterias. And, most importantly, I don't know most of the students at Clemson. I never realized until I strolled across campus one lazy sunny afternoon, that it is rare for me to pass five students at Covenant without at least smiling and saying hello to one or two, and, most likely, striking up a conversation. It can take me hours to make the few hundred meter walk to the library. My comparative isolation is not sad. I have friends at Clemson, and I live in a world where most of my friends are no more than a phone call away. It is, however, causing me to smile fondly as I think of all my kind and faithful friends and acquaintances on the mountain.

An irony connected to the first expectation is that one would think summer-school at a major university would involve ghost-town reminiscent environments. To the contrary, there is quite a bit of life at Clemson, although it is a little more spread out than I am used to. Covenant is, after all perched on a mountaintop. In fact, I am already a little bit concerned about the sheer number of people around. What's going to happen in the Fall! Will everyone be lost in a sea of antlike undergraduates rushing hither and thither? Will the spacious-seeming anterooms, courtyards, and monuments be clogged with the academically-minded future of the nation?

I comfort myself by supposing the administration at Clemson has dealt with this problem in the past. Anyway, they have at least an entire building all to themselves, so I can't imagine them not being able to come up with some sort of viable plan.

In the meantime, I will walk long distances per conversation and find the ratio of campus size to distance to food to be smaller than anticipated.