2023-10-28 10:25:07 <KipIngram   > I'm running a little Python program I wrote to determine pi using rndom numbers.  It just takes pairs of numbers and treats them as points in the unit square (0,0) -> (1,1).  Counts the number of points, counts the number of them that have radius <=1; pi is four times that ratio.  I want to see how many random numbers I have to produce to get a ten-digit correct value for pi.
2023-10-28 10:25:29 <KipIngram   > I'm currently at about 140 million random numbers and it's got four correct decimal places.
2023-10-28 10:25:55 <KipIngram   > So it's certainly not going to win any speed contests for getting pi.  :-)
2023-10-28 10:27:15 <KipIngram   > Oh, I watched a Matt Parker video last night that went through the arithmetic issues associated with how seats have been historically allocated in the US House of Representatives.
2023-10-28 10:27:19 <KipIngram   > what a mess...
2023-10-28 10:27:31 <KipIngram   > Some weird stuff has happened with that at times.
2023-10-28 10:28:07 <KipIngram   > From time to time they have increased the total number of seats, and in some cases that causes a state's seat count to go DOWN.
2023-10-28 10:30:01 <KipIngram   > The goal of course is to make each state's influence proportional to its population.  I think the easiest way to solve the "edge conditions" of the situation would just be to give each state's representatives a non-integer vote.  So reps from state A might have 1.013 votes, each while those from state  have 0.998 or 1.083 or whatever.  If you allowed that you could make the votes PERFECTLY population
2023-10-28 10:30:02 <KipIngram   > dependent; all the difficult cases would just go away.
2023-10-28 10:30:38 <KipIngram   > So you'd use one of the existing methods to set each state's seat count, then tweak their vote weights to dial things in.
2023-10-28 10:33:24 <KipIngram   > This is cute:
2023-10-28 10:33:26 <KipIngram   > https://www.youtube.com/@mr.kittersthecat2307
2023-10-28 10:33:36 <KipIngram   > Those folks let their cat wander around wearing a camera.
2023-10-28 10:33:44 <KipIngram   > That could definitely get interesting.
2023-10-28 10:38:40 <KipIngram   > there are probably "random walk" results that would be pertinent to this pi calculation.  Now I want to learn how to actually predict how many samples it would take.  :-)
2023-10-28 10:54:55 <KipIngram   > Ok, I don't think I'm going to get 10 decimal places.  Which actually makes sense - if the points were perfectly uniform in their distribution, then it would take order of 10^11 points to get 11 significant figures.  And on TOP of that I'll need a factor to cover the randomness.  So it's not unlikely that it would take 10^13-is points.  I'm not even up to 10^9 points yet.
2023-10-28 11:31:50 <zelgomer    > KipIngram> I love that movie, but I wish it had been a little longer.  Parts of it felt super-rushed.
2023-10-28 11:31:58 <zelgomer    > i just reeatched recently
2023-10-28 11:32:24 <zelgomer    > had a similar thought. it would have made a great cinimatic tv series
2023-10-28 11:33:02 <zelgomer    > the ww2 scene where he meets rachel feels shoehorned, in particular
2023-10-28 11:34:11 <zelgomer    > it would have been cool to follow conner's life in a new era each episode
2023-10-28 12:04:42 <MrMobius    > KipIngram: switch to C maybe?
2023-10-28 12:48:52 <KipIngram   > Well, that scene with young Rachel was added in the director's cut.
2023-10-28 12:48:59 <KipIngram   > It wasn't in the theatrical release at all.
2023-10-28 12:49:50 <KipIngram   > The part that seems super rushed to me is the relationship with Brenda.  They meet, they but heads, she discovers his secret and confronts him.  BAM - they're in bed.  Then bam - they're at the zoo and he's dumping her because she's at risk knowing him.
2023-10-28 12:49:55 <KipIngram   > Just way too fast.
2023-10-28 12:50:26 <KipIngram   > The TV show was able to delve far more completely in to Duncan's past than the movie could do with Connor.
2023-10-28 12:50:55 <KipIngram   > You got a huge number of glimpses into how he became today's Duncan over the years.
2023-10-28 12:51:35 <KipIngram   > And he played it quite well too - early on, when he was still just a century or two old, he was a lot more immature, rowdy, brash, etc.  Didn't even learn to read until he was in his 50's.
2023-10-28 12:51:51 <KipIngram   > But you see him gradually become more genteel and refined as the centuries flow by.
2023-10-28 12:53:13 <KipIngram   > In the years immediately after he was "cast out" by his clan he was basically still an uncivilized savage.
2023-10-28 12:53:35 <KipIngram   > And had no idea what the heck was going on with him.
2023-10-28 13:06:21 <KipIngram   > MrMobius: For the random number pi thing?
2023-10-28 13:06:38 <KipIngram   > That would certainly speed it up, but I still don't think I'd get to 10 digits in a reasonable time.
2023-10-28 13:07:15 <KipIngram   > Maybe if I ran it for some days.
2023-10-28 13:08:26 <KipIngram   > There was a guy named William Shanks back in the 1800's who spent years calculating 700-something digits of pi; he sent it in to the Royal Society, and they published it.  Then in the 1940's as calculating machines began to appear someone checked it and discovered he'd made an error somewhere 500-odd digits in.
2023-10-28 13:08:48 <KipIngram   > Can you imagine how those guys would freak out if they could see our computers?
2023-10-28 13:09:06 <KipIngram   > We're just incredibly blessed with resources in this age we live in.
2023-10-28 13:13:18 <gordonjcp   > huh, Highlander
2023-10-28 13:13:33 <gordonjcp   > I used to drive past the bit where they shot the "medieval Scotland" part about once a week
2023-10-28 13:14:04 <gordonjcp   > it looks like a remote idyllic peaceful spot in the middle of nowhere but it's about 50m from one of the UK's busiest roads
2023-10-28 13:14:28 <KipIngram   > There's some great scenery in that franchise.
2023-10-28 13:16:43 <MrMobius    > KipIngram: ya
2023-10-28 13:17:21 <KipIngram   > Heck, I've got a little FPGA development board, for the Xilinx Artix family.  We could commit the process to hardware.
2023-10-28 13:17:34 <KipIngram   > Pipeline it.
2023-10-28 13:17:55 <thrig       > why are we pipelining highlander?
2023-10-28 13:18:06 <KipIngram   > random number calculation of pi.
2023-10-28 13:18:13 <KipIngram   > Two conversations going on here.
2023-10-28 13:19:39 <KipIngram   > Make a pseudo-random shift register to produce the random numbers.
2023-10-28 13:20:57 <KipIngram   > You don't actually have to take the square root - you can use r^2 < 1 as the criterion just as well as r < 1.
2023-10-28 13:27:30 <gordonjcp   > KipIngram: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gMC6GsM95TrK6sZ49 <- basically in the middle there
2023-10-28 13:54:21 <zelgomer    > KipIngram> Well, that scene with young Rachel was added in the director's cut.
2023-10-28 13:54:47 <zelgomer    > oooh right. i thought so, but it's been so long since i've seen the original cut i wasn't sure i had imagined that
2023-10-28 13:55:11 <GeDaMo      > That scene is in the novelization
2023-10-28 13:55:53 <zelgomer    > i didn't watch the tv show. having a second macleod is dumb.
2023-10-28 13:56:22 <zelgomer    > the problem is they named the movie Highlander so that kind of paints them into a corner so far as creating new properties
2023-10-28 14:06:21 <gordonjcp   > zelgomer: here's a crazy thought, maybe they could just stop remaking and remaking and remaking the same things over and over
2023-10-28 14:06:59 <thrig       > dudes beating on one another with weapons isn't a new thing
2023-10-28 14:10:11 <zelgomer    > gordonjcp: yep
2023-10-28 14:10:41 <zelgomer    > gordonjcp: it's bad marketting though. if you reuse a known brand then you get free recognition
2023-10-28 14:11:16 <gordonjcp   > it's so fucking *boring* though
2023-10-28 14:11:49 <zelgomer    > yeah well you and i aren't in the majority paying for this stupid crap :)
2023-10-28 14:12:15 <gordonjcp   > the only remake I've seen which I genuinely enjoyed was the 2011 version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2023-10-28 14:12:50 <gordonjcp   > it wasn't really a remake, at that, it was another adaptation strictly speaking
2023-10-28 14:31:38 <zelgomer    > how about john carpenter's the thing?
2023-10-28 14:31:42 <zelgomer    > that's a remake :)
2023-10-28 14:36:04 <gordonjcp   > true, but it's not a potboiler bandwagon tihng
2023-10-28 14:36:06 <gordonjcp   > *thing
2023-10-28 14:37:22 <GeDaMo      > I think John Carpenter's version is more like the original story than the first film version
2023-10-28 14:41:28 <gordonjcp   > also, all the John Carpenter stuff is quite "home made"
2023-10-28 14:41:36 <gordonjcp   > I think
2023-10-28 14:42:25 <gordonjcp   > you've got to wonder how many filmmakers got started watching Carpenter movies and thinking "y'know what? I'm going to borrow a camcorder!"
2023-10-28 14:43:00 <GeDaMo      > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)
2023-10-28 14:43:21 <gordonjcp   > yup
2023-10-28 14:43:38 <gordonjcp   > my mate ran a BBS called Dark Star after that film for years
2023-10-28 17:26:38 <KipIngram   > zelgomer: The Highlander series is good.  Definitely worth a watch.
2023-10-28 17:27:00 <KipIngram   > Not that I disagree with you re: the probability of another macleod immortal, but... I can hum and look the other way.
2023-10-28 17:28:01 <KipIngram   > Besides, my wife enjoyed looking at Duncan.
2023-10-28 17:28:45 <KipIngram   > You can tell that show was made in the early 1990's - he's right off of the cover of a romance novel.
2023-10-28 17:29:14 <KipIngram   > The muscles, check - the long hair, check...
2023-10-28 17:31:04 <KipIngram   > That was the early 90's "guy mode."  Back in the early 80's there was an evening soap named Falcon Crest.  An actor named Lorenzo Lamas was in it, and he was very much the early 80's "clean cut ish" look.  But then in the 90's he did a show called Renegade, and totally reworked himself into that muscles and long hair look.  Guess successful actors roll with the times.
2023-10-28 17:33:01 <KipIngram   > anyway, zelgomer, my point is that cheesy coincidences or not, they were just able to "work" the Highlander idea a lot more thoroughly in the show than the movie was able to do.
2023-10-28 17:34:45 <KipIngram   > Sometimes it seemed a bit like a "beheading of the week" kind of thing, but at other times they got some pretty good arcs going.
2023-10-28 17:35:47 <KipIngram   > I rewatched it a few months ago; probably will again in future years.  Little too soon at the moment, though.
2023-10-28 17:41:27 <zelgomer    > maybe i'll give a try some day
2023-10-28 18:27:38 <Croran      > What's the tiniest mass-production computer that has been hacked to run Forth? I want a set of earbuds that runs forth over a bluetooth serial terminal :)
2023-10-28 19:07:22 <Zarutian_iPad> Croran: ya want a System on a Chip one or? KipIngram mentioned one the other day
2023-10-28 19:32:52 <Croran      > Zarutian_iPad: I want a cheap one that's already built into a device with power source and casing, that I can hack to use Forth.
2023-10-28 20:43:03 <KipIngram   > I did?
2023-10-28 20:43:28 <KipIngram   > I mentioned the MAX32655 the other day, but as far as I know it doesn't have  Forth on it "yet" (I'm planning one).  I mean, it may, but I'm not aware of it.
2023-10-28 20:43:54 <KipIngram   > Someone else mentioned something in the last couple of weeks, though - I'll have to see if I can recover it.  It was awfully cute.
2023-10-28 20:44:19 <KipIngram   > The 32655 is a little board, but it's not earbud size.
2023-10-28 20:44:30 <KipIngram   > It's like 2.5" x 1" -ish.
2023-10-28 20:56:53 <KipIngram   > My plan for it is to solder it onto larger "project boards" and thereby have all of its fleet of onboard peripherals already Forth-supported.
2023-10-28 20:57:10 <KipIngram   > Just pop it on and write project-specific code in Forth.
2023-10-28 21:11:44 <KipIngram   > Aha... this is what I was remembering:
2023-10-28 21:11:47 <KipIngram   > https://www.tindie.com/products/johncatsoulis/scamp/
2023-10-28 21:11:52 <KipIngram   > Also not earbud size.
2023-10-28 21:13:12 <KipIngram   > 175773 2023-09-22 19:28:13  dlowe https://www.tindie.com/products/johncatsoulis/scamp/