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Hoc Est Qui Sumus
discoflamingo
14 December 2004 @ 01:32 pm
The binary language of moisture vaporators  
Reading a new geek tome, Write Great Code - Volume I: Understanding the Machine, by Randall Hyde (of The Art of Assembly Language fame). It could just as easily be titled Things You Should Have Learned in CS30* But Didn't, You High-Level Program-Abstracting Wimp. It does not include the phrase "similar to binary load-lifters in many respects", but that's a computer architecture book I'm just going to have to write myself.

I've been keeping up on my fiction reading as well - over the past few months I've finished The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien), The Cuckoo's Egg (Clifford Stoll), The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell), and The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem). I'm through the first half of Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges), and I see now why Zámpano is based on him.

I only wish I had a little more time for introspection, but watching gnfnrf play KOTOR 2 will suffice for now.

seiryu_16: what time is E3 next year? I'm trying to schedule my vacation for 2005 . . .

*: In the days of the Republic at Macalester, this was the Computer Architecture and Organization class.
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Stable Strangeletcuthalion on December 14th, 2004 02:03 pm (UTC)
kids these days!
Looking at chapter 3, and the table of contents, I think I learned all this stuff trying to do realtime demo style graphics in high school, using hardware from DOS*, and reading binary files.

:(

I want a book that will give me the cred of having written assembly and added instruction timings and so on, without the acutal hassle of doing so.

*Mode X all the way!
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Stable Strangeletcuthalion on December 14th, 2004 02:03 pm (UTC)
Re: kids these days!
That said, I think all of chapter 3 was covered in CS 30
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Hoc Est Qui Sumusdiscoflamingo on December 14th, 2004 02:14 pm (UTC)
Re: kids these days!
It was in CS30, BUT -
A. I hated the way Schneider taught it, and didn't learn much from that class I didn't learn in Digital Electronics.
B. Doing it for myself is a better way for me to learn.
C. I've been doing a lot of low-level programming for work, and I like the book's organization as a refernce better than Tanenbaum's.
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Hoc Est Qui Sumusdiscoflamingo on December 14th, 2004 02:19 pm (UTC)
Re: kids these days!
Have you read any of Michael Abrash? I'm not a particularly skilled assembly programmer, so this is more my speed.
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Stable Strangeletcuthalion on December 14th, 2004 02:46 pm (UTC)
Re: kids these days!
I think I read some articles by him about triangle filling, back in like 94
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ninja in the shadowsseiryu_16 on December 14th, 2004 02:12 pm (UTC)
May 18th-20th, my good man. Hella glad you're coming ::grin::
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Hoc Est Qui Sumusdiscoflamingo on December 15th, 2004 09:36 am (UTC)
The 17th to the 20th are now free for E3-related activities . . .
Muahaha!
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ninja in the shadows: thestupiddance!seiryu_16 on December 15th, 2004 01:38 pm (UTC)
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Oh man, and that leaves the weekend free too... PHAT.

Oh man. The geekery will be potently delicious. I am tempted to plan out what restaurants to have you visit while you're here. We are of course taking you to Chakra whether you like it or not, but for the others: you like Thai, Japanese Curry, big friggin cheeseburgers, what have you? Name your poison, Doc my friend. Oh, and also we need to make Josiah cook too, if only to prove that he and I CAN.

::rubs hands together in glee at the prospect::
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Nightwalkerhalfawake on December 14th, 2004 04:58 pm (UTC)

I've been keeping up on my fiction reading as well - over the past few months I've finished The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien), The Cuckoo's Egg (Clifford Stoll), The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell), and The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem). I'm through the first half of Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges), and I see now why Zámpano is based on him.


I remember reading The Things They Carried in my Junior year of high school. It's an awesome book - very well written. Let us know what you think of those books, I'd be interested to hear your opinions about them.
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Hoc Est Qui Sumusdiscoflamingo on December 15th, 2004 10:10 am (UTC)
I was almost planning on doing a book-by-book review, but you've given me the impetus to go through each of them. Give me a few hours - I'm on the job!
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Nightwalkerhalfawake on December 15th, 2004 01:26 pm (UTC)
Awesome, I'm looking forward to your review of them.
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