|
|
Tuesday, July 5th, 2005
|
12:24p - finding stuff
One thing where I've always been "different" from very early on, is my inability to find stuff.
Especially if what I'm looking for isn't where it's supposed to be: I'll keep looking for it in the same place again and again, getting very frustrated.
Even today, in supermarkets and shops, I am extremely bad at finding what I want, so I tend to ask to avoid frustration. There's simply way too much to look through, and I have no algorithm to get to what I want. Doing a brute-force search seems a bit strange in a supermarket.
This is probably the reason why I don't let anyone touch stuff in my office. I have a strong need for my information to be organized... which may be where my encyclopedic tendencies come from.
On the other hand, when there is an algorithm, I can be quite good at search. When I was 14, I lived in São Paulo, and my mom was going to pick me up at a very large mall. For some reason, one of us missed the appointment, so I decided to go look for her car in the ~5000 car parking lot. It wasn't very hard to find it, but my mom was really surprised that I did.
---
Another thing that took me a long time to get was understanding films with jumps in time, like Highlander. I just took it literally, and thought it made no sense. Our maid had to explain it to me, and I still found it hard to believe her that they made the film in such an illogical way.
I am still extremely bad at:
* following directions (I need either a map or a very formalized procedure)
* filling out forms
(comment on this) 
|
1:32p - I'd like to know who looks at my website, but logging their IP isn't enough
I'd like to know who looks at my website, but logging their IP isn't enough. I could create a password system, but this would discourage casual visitors.
Basically, my site has a very low contact-yield: out of the people who visit it, a good proportion probably find my stuff interesting, but very few initiate contact with me.
I could make a JavaScript on the first screen of the site that asks your name/website or a link to an online profile... and tell them that if they insist on not identifying themselves, their IP will be banned from visiting me.
Another idea would be to use ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) patrissimo's SOCS commenting system (used in his Seasteading book, as well as in his dad's "Future Imperfect") to encourage casual readers to leave comments on my writings, but patrissimo never got back to me on this.
(5 comments |comment on this)
|
7:56p - Pirahã: no grammatical recursion and much more; whistled languages
Pirahã is quite a remarkable language
* no grammatical recursion
* one of the smallest known phonological system: between 10 and 13 phonemes
* the simplest known kinship system (the only family words are "parent" and "sibling")
* 3 numbers: "a few", "some", and "many", and an inability to distinguish 4 from 5, and apparent inability to learn numeracy skills.
* it can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music
* it has grammatical "evidentiality" (indicates whether the speaker saw the event happening), which English lacks.
* their culture has no history beyond living memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language
As the expressivity of whistled speech is limited compared to spoken speech, whistled messages typically consist of stereotyped or otherwise standardized or set expressions, are elaborately descriptive, and often have to be repeated. However, in languages which are heavily tonal, and therefore convey much of their information through pitch even when spoken, such as Mazatec and Yoruba, extensive conversations may be whistled.
(6 comments |comment on this)
|
|
|
|
