Edwin Brady

Blanket fort

...which are:

1. Can Hollywood tell a single story without gun violence?
2. Does the average American think you can stop a bullet by holding up a tea tray?

(Please don't attempt to answer either of these, thanks...)

I watched "Renfield" because Netflix told me it was going away, and I love Dracula (Stoker's original). It was fun, but not in a way I'd recommend to anyone. Also I have questions...

Although I know quite a few songs off this album, I've never actually heard the whole thing. Hungry Heart is great, indeed.

Side 2 even includes the Rust Borrow Checker song ("You can look but you better not touch")

The River by Bruce Springsteen, spinning on my recently acquired LP ROM drive. I'm old enough now that I don't care what you think :).

It's time for Late Night Album club with this week's LP find. You are welcome to mock my taste as long as you do it somewhere else.

I'm having some difficulty with my "repost something fun for everything that makes me angry" rule tonight.

I know we need to keep fighting (please keep fighting everyone) but let's keep our morale up while we're at it.

Banjolele threat remains.

im getting really tired of everything being bad bc like 12 ppl can't fill the hole in their hearts despite being billionaires

A combination of things led to me singing a song about Pac-man in a Kirkcaldy cafe this evening. I suppose things could be worse.

(For example, you could have been there and had to hear it :))

But, please recognize that however vicious it is to take a guy out of his place of work, throw him in a bus, and force him to go to a place where he can't succeed, it is equally inhumane to keep people out in the first place. There are millions of children growing up in refugee camps, *today*

YouTube video by Lambda Miner Edwin The Elements (updated) (Tom Lehrer cover, Groucho's open mic, Dundee)

A similar thing happened yesterday, when a local teacher friend and I decided we should do a Tom Lehrer tribute. A heartfelt thanks to the two people paying attention, and apologies to everyone else :)

youtu.be/BSxKK8blPqQ?...

I was planning to be a hermit this week, but sometimes you just want to go out and make a loud noise. Or at least as loud as you can be with uke and harmonica.

Someone just told me it was like Michael Rosen but with music. They were drunk but I'm definitely taking that.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

"From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs." - That's a career goal right there.

RIP Tom. To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high 👓

If you like "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, or They Might Be Giants' brand new album, Flood, then I have a game for you.

Start here:

I like to keep the volume on a prime number. Please don't judge me.

This would definitely have been my favourite English teacher. But... did they have a banjolele?

I'm not sure if you're saying I should sing a thing or not ;).

(As well as "Poetical Science" I have a song about the undecidability of the halting problem. Perhaps that's the one... but mostly, it's probably best I don't put them through any of this.)

I've nearly sorted out my SPLV lectures for the coming week and I'm very much looking forward to it. It's made me think about things I haven't done for too long.

There's a point early on where I'm tempted to threaten them with a banjolele, for reasons. I'm going to wimp out aren't I?

"Be the machine" was concise advise given to me by my PhD supervisor (James McKinna) and that I pass on to students when learning complex programming language features, or theorem provers.

I don't think this is what either of us have in mind though.

Now I come to think of it, the publisher's influence was big. The book was so much better for having professional editors and reviewers in ways I could never have predicted.

But yes, definitely, it should all be free, because information wants to be free, of course...

Manning told me it wasn't impossible eventually, but not immediately, if I remember rightly. It was important to me that at least the example code was freely available.

Actually given that anyone who's going to buy it probably has, maybe I should reopen that conversation...

In my case really I'm interested in more eyes on the book so it's not a problem either way. I mean, I have a job so it's not like it's my only income... But even so, the attitude irritated me.

I am a Go player after AlphaGo, and one more thing that can beat me at Go is not a surprise. It's still fun.

I'm also a Computer Scientist (so kind of a mathematician). Understanding other people's work is, similarly, fascinating. The game's still there to be played, and we all understand more.

Not that I ever bothered checking if they did. Life's too short, and the copyright belongs to someone else anyway. I'm sure somebody must have. I'd almost be offended if they hadn't.

Still. I would love to live in a world where I could do this sort of thing for free. Alas, I don't.

I remember someone proudly telling me they were going to post the Idris book online because information should be free, don't you know, and taking money for books etc is immoral.

Obviously my time and creating/collecting and organising and explaining the information is worth nothing then...

It's got to be The Magic Roundabout

👻

Three LPs: Larn Yersel' Geordie, Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the Best of Jasper Carrott

As of this week I own a turntable. Dragged kicking and screaming into the 1970s... I've just bought these in a charity shop for £1 each. I may have been overcharged.

One of these things is not like the others. I just don't know which one it is.

Incidentally, if a faceless corporation makes me grade an individual (say, it's someone at a call centre, or a courier) they get top marks every single time, even if something went wrong, because JUST STOP IT.