In a software design meeting the other day, I found myself saying “it needs to be a little less here” (tapping myself on the forehead) “and a little more here” (tapping myself on the heart). As a pointy-eared technical guy, I’ve long been resistant to this type of language, knowing it to be logically meaningless. [...]

Whoever made this had too much time on his/her hands. – Truth-lover Some people have way too much free time on their hands. –

While visiting the Gold Bug shop in Pasadena, a wonderful place that more closely resembles a cabinet of curiosity than a gift store, jewelry shop or art gallery, I was reminded of my love for the unclassifiable. Its a fundamental problem that accompanies our need for taxonomy, I guess. When I used to visit real [...]

Etude in G Minor, 1983 I thought it might be a good idea to catalog and record all my old piano pieces, many of which exist solely in my head, and haven’t been notated or recorded. “Etude in G Minor” is something I used to play a lot in 1983, during a period when I [...]

My employer, Topspin, has been nominated for a Crunchie award for “Best New Startup of 2008.” I will personally vouch for us: Among all the Crunchie nominees, Topspin is indeed the best new startup of 2008! Okay, seriously, I don’t know a heck of a lot about the other nominees, who I imagine are very [...]

Have you noticed that both Obama and Biden’s names have five letters apiece? If you stack them on top of each other, you can draw various paths to spell out such things as “BO BI DA ME NA” and “O BIBA DE MAN” I don’t know if this is actually useful, but then, utility is [...]

Engineers who use the phrase “Best Practices” to rationalize doing, or not doing things. This strikes me as a lazy way to state an opinion, and make it sound more authoritative. If something works, or doesn’t work, explain precisely why. Don’t just invoke the nebulous specter of “Best Practices”.

A few times each year – once or twice a semester at Art Center, I get to explain to the uninitiated what a “variable” really is. Not the mysterious x from high school algebra, whose contents are unknown, and which we must decipher — even though there is no tangible reward! No, not an annoying [...]

About 18 months ago, I was contacted by a publisher, Ulysses press, that wanted to put out some Kakuro books, and I provided enough puzzles for three books. Like most small publishers, Ulysses was blindsided when the Sudoku craze hit, and didn’t manage to get any books in the pipeline before the market was glutted [...]

If you read this blog regularly, you know that a lot of the things I make involve circles. My fascination with circles and radial symmetry has extended to kaleidoscopes, fibonacci spirals, music, card tricks, spinning wheels of lunch, and so on. You may also know that I am prone to develop short term obsessions, which [...]