notes on Tuesday night

- Paul Graham is one hoopy frood. Not only does he write books about Lisp and essays about programming, he's put out a lovely essay on the topic of essay-ing, surprise and being observant, and the development of weird situations in society like comb-overs and highschool and English departments. Here's an excerpt:

For example, everyone I've talked to while writing this essay felt the same about English classes-- that the whole process seemed pointless. But none of us had the balls at the time to hypothesize that it was, in fact, all a mistake. We all thought there was just something we weren't getting.

Yes, this was on /., but a lot of you don't read /., and a lot of you who do wouldn't follow a link from it to read an essay about essays by a guy who normally writes about Lisp. But I've read the article, and it's excellent... and I recommend that you read it too. So there!

- Earlier on tonight, Mike and I got our compilers project working, with nearly six hours to spare. *jubilation*

- Everybody likes the new gym at Tech. Everybody. It's lovely, and I'm pleasantly sore :)

- Congrambolations to Tim neuroticmonk on his 100 days of uptime! We're from the band Limozeen!