Technology

Nassim Taleb often says crazy things (like saying that mathematics is bad because economists misuse it), but sometimes he says something useful. One such thing is the Antilibrary: the collection of books in your library that you haven’t read. He values these books more than the read books because they are a reminder of how much you don’t know, a form of intellectual humility before the copious amount of knowledge in the world (Taleb 2008). ...

In this tutorial I will go through the ideas that underpin constraint programming, a technique for solving hard algorithmic problems. It is a pretty advanced technique and is an active research area, but despite this the core ideas are actually surprisingly easy to understand. After reading this tutorial hopefully you’ll understand the principles of how a constraint programming solver works. I want this tutorial to be understandable to as many as possible, regardless of how much programming background you have. ...

I have used org-mode for a few years now, primarily for task management, document writing and note taking. It has been very good for keeping track of what I need to do in my studies and volunteer work, but despite this I’m moving away from it for my task management. I find it very hard to think actively, as opposed to reactively, when I’m at a computer. For example writing a new text is harder to do on a computer than with pen and paper, but editing a piece of text works fine. ...

I discovered in high school that I like to write, which came as a surprise because I had always disliked writing assignments. With this newfound knowledge I tried to explore writing as a hobby. The only way I had written anything before was for larger projects, writing assignments, and that was what I tried. My first project was about the movie Spirited away. I had noticed that some side characters, the big baby and the faceless monster, went through their own story arcs parallel to Chihro’s. ...