Made it! I survived class today, after which Frank dropped me at the Apple Store, where I would meet Si for the grand opening. I walked to the door, followed the line to the corner of Huron and Michigan, turned east and walked the whole block to St. Clair. I turned south on St. Clair, again following the line, and beginning to wonder whether Si had gotten there at all, when a woman somewhat older than I called out, “Dad!”
As I gazed at her in bewilderment, she pointed to her feet, where Josiah sat eating the sub he had bought for dinner.
By 6:00, the time the store was scheduled to open, the line stretched all the way around the block and lapped over the whole length of the Huron St. side of the block. We spotted Aaron Swartz while we were standing in line, and Si introduced himself later on. Eventually we made our way in, look around, tried in vain to win an iSight (I was very, very impressed at the image quality they generated, much better than any other webcam I’ve seen), and picked up our free T-shirts. (Pictures at my dot-Mac address.)
I was going to come home, eat popcorn, watch a movie, post my pictures, and drift to sleep — but I didn’t really have time to watch the movie, and though I could have eaten popcorn while I typed and image-edited, I hastened through the process so that I could sleep all the sooner.
Posted by AKMA at June 27, 2003 11:57 PM | TrackBackWhy has Si's very attractive blog page turned into all type b/w ?
Posted by: Mom at June 28, 2003 06:57 AMHe’s changing servers, from the Blog*Spot server to a server hosted by a family friend who lives in St. Louis. This morning, he and I will set up a redirect that will point visitors toward his new page.
His new blog will have a different look and feel also, but the commenting system, the page server, and various other aspects of the blog will be smoother and more reliable.
Posted by: AKMA at June 28, 2003 07:15 AMMany of us agree that 'ideas' represents an anemic effort by the
U.S. in dealing with Iran and other Middle East countries - and a
few others. Pushing a concept of 'democracy' is rightly perceived as
merely 'political' and thus unacceptable under their philosophical
and religious criteria -- and appears shallow compared to America's
true potential offering to the world out of our unique founding and
creative-growth values and inventive experience.
The definitive in human nature is the individual ability to make
choices. (Is there any other kind of human? 'Groups' are verbal con-
veniences - not Reality.) ALL humans share in this true depiction of
our nature. The human being is earth's choice-maker.
Such a valid assertion undercuts every alien opinion and is verified
everywhere on planet Earth - daily. Thus, nature itself has laid the
foundation for every human relationship, institution, and social act.
After all, the creative process is a choice-making process and
functions best in an environment of opportunity - Freedom.
What are our leaders waiting for? Mr. Jefferson's statement, "all men
are endowed by their Creator with...Liberty" says the same thing.
(Liberty is internal - the ability to choose. Freedom is external -
the opportunity to choose.)
As I taught my 5th Graders for over 30 years, it is as natural a
requisite for Earth's choice-maker to need Freedom as for a gold-
fish to require water!
Please take part in placing this concept before the leadership of our
nations -- and before your neighbors.
Always Faithful,
Jim Baxter
Santa Maria, CA
For the complete statement, see:
"What is man...?" Earth's Choicemaker
http://www.geocities.com/James-Baxter/
P.S. I successfully taught this concept in public, private,
and Christian schools for 30 years. My choicemaker-based
civics workbook (Gr. 5-8) won numerous awards in the '60's
and was placed in the Eisenhower Presidential Library,
Abilene, KS, by "Ike," himself.
Isn't it time for a universal "Season of Generation-Choicemaker"
to flower world-wide and bear fruit? Mr. Jefferson would choose to
agree. I trust you and others will also choose to agree. JFB
Add: Peace is not a Cause -- it is the Effect....
* * * * *
I found that the services that Nabih's of Evanston provides by far exceeds the need of the trip to the Apple store that offers nothing more than glitter and hipes. The products carried at Nabih's of Evanston are more than sufficient for my needs and whatever they don't have can be ordered and received often within the day. They are friendly and very knowledgable to their customers. I would not want to park in Downtown and pay the $30 for parking. These guys at Nabih's helped carry my new computer, printer and all the items to my car with a smile after transferring all the data from my old computer, setting my internet account and installing all my new software. Nothing beat the services provided by an independent. I am not a number to them.
Posted by: Ibrahim Levy at July 24, 2003 10:14 PMThis code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Cesar at January 12, 2004 08:34 PMThe most basic duality that exists with variables is how the programmer sees them in a totally different way than the computer does. When you're typing away in Project Builder, your variables are normal words smashed together, like software titles from the 80s. You deal with them on this level, moving them around and passing them back and forth.
Posted by: Bertram at January 12, 2004 08:34 PMThis is another function provided for dealing with the heap. After you've created some space in the Heap, it's yours until you let go of it. When your program is done using it, you have to explicitly tell the computer that you don't need it anymore or the computer will save it for your future use (or until your program quits, when it knows you won't be needing the memory anymore). The call to simply tells the computer that you had this space, but you're done and the memory can be freed for use by something else later on.
Posted by: Vincent at January 12, 2004 08:35 PMWe can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.
Posted by: Cornelius at January 13, 2004 12:06 PMInside each stack frame is a slew of useful information. It tells the computer what code is currently executing, where to go next, where to go in the case a return statement is found, and a whole lot of other things that are incredible useful to the computer, but not very useful to you most of the time. One of the things that is useful to you is the part of the frame that keeps track of all the variables you're using. So the first place for a variable to live is on the Stack. This is a very nice place to live, in that all the creation and destruction of space is handled for you as Stack Frames are created and destroyed. You seldom have to worry about making space for the variables on the stack. The only problem is that the variables here only live as long as the stack frame does, which is to say the length of the function those variables are declared in. This is often a fine situation, but when you need to store information for longer than a single function, you are instantly out of luck.
Posted by: Goughe at January 13, 2004 12:06 PMBut variables get one benefit people do not
Posted by: Clement at January 13, 2004 12:06 PM