Author Archives: Egg Syntax

A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

[An important reminder for older programmers; we grew up in a different world. -egg]

A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible:

Let’s say you’ve just bought a MacBook Air, and your goal is to become master of the machine, to understand how it works on every level.

Amit Singh’s Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach is a good place to start. It’s not about programming so much as an in-depth discussion of how all the parts of the operating system fit together: what the firmware does, the sequence of events during boot-up, what device drivers do, and so on. At 1680 pages, it’s not light summer reading.

To truly understand the hardware, Intel has kindly provided a free seven volume set of documentation. I’ll keep things simple by recommending Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual Volume 1: Basic Architecture (550 pages) and the two volumes describing the instruction set (684 pages and 704 pages respectively).

Objective-C is the language of OS X. We’ll go with Apple’s thankfully concise The Objective-C Programming Language (137 pages).

Of course Objective-C is a superset of C, so also work through the second edition of The C Programming Language (274 pages).

Now we’re getting to the core APIs of OS X. Cocoa Fundamentals Guide is 239 pages. Application Kit Framework Reference is a monster at 5069 pages. That’s help a file-like description of every API call. To be fair I’ll stop there with the Cocoa documentation, even though there are also more usable guides for drawing and Core Audio and Core Animation and a dozen other things.

Ah, wait, OpenGL isn’t part of Cocoa, so throw in the 784 page OpenGL Reference Manual. And another 800 pages for OpenGL Shading Language, Second Edition.

The total of all of this is 79 pages shy of eleven thousand. I neglected to include man pages for hundreds of system utilities and the Xcode documentation. And I didn’t even touch upon the graphics knowhow needed to do anything interesting with OpenGL, or how to write good C and Objective-C or anything about object-oriented design, and…

(If you liked this, you might enjoy Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than.)

Winged, kinetic rings that flap

Winged, kinetic rings that flap:

Jeweler/metalworker Dukno Yoon makes beautiful, animated kinetic winged rings, sculptures and towers that flap when you flex your finger.


The contrast between metal structural form and natural feather, together with the repetitive and whimsical movements of fragile wings, provokes the imagination and evolves the intimate relationship between work and viewer/wearer.

Although the recent series, segmented wings have been focused on the formal challenge to engineer an intricate movement that simulates bird wings,

these works are intended to be a series of poems in which I develope my own formal language, interpret the nature of wings, create various structural forms with movements, and share the metaphor, imagination, humor, with viewer/wearer.

Wings)

(via Craft)


Ten stone baby teased with chocolate

[Odd. -egg]

Ten stone baby teased with chocolate:

Entertainment in 1935. “The trouble is nowadays he refuses to be weighed at all so we don’t really know if he’s solid or hollow.”

[Video Link]

Ten Stone Baby, a British Pathe newsreel from 1935.

Despite the newsreel’s original title “Ten Stone Baby”, the boy Leslie Downes is actually 3-years-old. Seen with his parents in a kind of pen, Leslie is sat in an armchair. Somebody then dangles a bar of chocolate into the pen and he immediately sets to work at fetching it.

We also see Leslie playing with bricks.


Bizarre TV interview with Senate candidate and his 5-year-son

[Creeporama -egg]

Bizarre TV interview with Senate candidate and his 5-year-son:

Watch the father’s lips when his kid talks. I don’t know what is going on here, but Mediaite offers three explanations:

1. That the boy has a earphone in and his dad is telling what to say and, for some reason, thinks he’s a much better ventriloquist than he actually is.

2. That Hudson’s responses were all scripted and Hinckley can’t help but mouth his brilliant dialogue.

3. Hudson is actually some kind of AI-style android that is being controlled by its “father.”
Either way, this video is absolutely insane

A fourth possibility is that the dad is nervous about what his son is going to say, and he is echoing the kid’s replies, in a sort of Clever Hans kind way. Please offer up other possibilities in the comments.

Interview With Senate Candidate And 5 Year-Old Son From Ad Is Creepiest Thing Ever


Suit made from a drop-cloth

Suit made from a drop-cloth:

This “drop cloth suit” was made by Sarah Bahr and Hugh O’Rourke by cutting a pattern out of a well-used, well-loved drop cloth and tailoring appropriately.


I had the great pleasure of collaborating with fellow artist and friend Hugh O’Rourke on a super fun project. Hugh is a painter and sculptor here in NYC, you can view more of his work here. We met during my thesis art exhibit at NYU, as he works at the 80WSE gallery where I exhibited my installation. He knew my passion for sewing clothing and asked me to collaborate with him in making a suit out of his drop cloths from his studio. The idea of the suit came from famous artist Joseph Beuys’ own sculpture Felt Suit.

Drop Cloth Suit

(via Craft)