A Tale From Mineworld, Ch. 2

The sun rose, and the Creepers were outside the prison walls in force, as usual. The guards lined up roughly thirty prisoners for their daily job: clear away the Creepers. Each would receive a stick, which would be collected and inspected should the prisoner return, and they were marched to the second floor where they would jump out to draw the Creepers away from the building.

A few always broke their legs from the fall: a Creeper would descend upon each and explode, taking both out along with a chunk of ground to be repaired by other workers later in the day. The rest rolled on landing, and ran into the open ground. The strategy to defeat a Creeper was simple, but it had to be timed correctly. Wait for them to hiss, hit them with the stick, and back away quickly to get just out of range before they exploded. It was really hard to get just the right range, so it was rare that someone came back with less than a face burn. Occasionally, and on this morning, a hidden Skeleton would appear from the shadows and attack the party with a stream of arrows. Sure it was on fire, sure it would die any moment from direct sunlight, but it was accurate with those arrows and could strike down many prisoners.

The guards opened the doors when the last Creeper had exploded, and they let the prisoners back in. Some were allowed to seek medical attention, but everyone mostly took the day off to rest for the next day. It was the riskiest job in the prison, but if the prisoner was lucky, he could have lots of time to himself.

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NaNoWriMo 2010: A Tale From Mineworld

"Hurry up, inmates!" shouted the prison guard on duty. "We want this swimming pool done before winter comes!"

Hector could have smiled if he were a contracted worker; the middle of spring had just arrived and for the right price a pool could be laid and set within a week. But as a fellow resident of the Blocker Prison and Rehabilitation Facility, Hector's set of tools consisted only of his hands. Outside, he had used his diamond pickaxe and shovel for all sorts of construction tasks. Inside, he didn't even get a stick. As far as he and the other workers were concerned, the guards and the Warden would be lucky if they finished before autumn.

He slapped both his hands against a rough slab of cobblestone, creating a small fissure on the surface, a minuscule puff of dust rising and falling. He hit it again. And again. He continued to hit it, chipping away piece by piece, needing to crush it for its raw material to form a more perfect cube of pure stone that would be the foundation of the pool, as he knew and as he was instructed. His hands began to bleed, but he took no notice; he even thought that this block seemed softer than most.

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Arrogance Labels

I've tried writing about this before, not here, and unsuccessfully, but I think I have a better picture in mind now that I can share. This is about the label "Arrogance", and public perceptions.

On one extreme, you have Christians who believe arrogance is a sin, and they arrogantly confess their humility. They're used as evidence by rational folk for the dangers of religious thinking and hypocrisy.

On the other extreme, you have Objectivists who believe arrogance is a virtue, and they're used as evidence by rational folk for the dangers of arrogance and stupidity.

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Happy Day 42

Yup, it's 10/10/10, which is binary 42. I know some people believe humanity has a sort of "shared consciousness", and expect that one day we'll all undergo some deep insight or enlightenment at once... Wouldn't that be crazy if it happened today, and we learned the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?

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C does support encapsulation!

Relating to my previous post, I'd just like to mention that C supports encapsulation, and in my opinion much better than C++. It's done using Opaque Pointers.

Here's some code:

#######blah.h########

#IFNDEF H_BLAH

#DEFINE H_BLAH

typedef struct Blah* Blah_handle;

Blah_handle create_blah(void);

void destroy_blah(Blah_handle);

void print_blah(Blah_handle);

#ENDIF

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C++ supports encapsulation? Really?

No, it doesn't. For an excellent reference to make you cringe at the thought that C++ exists so abundantly, read the C++ FQA. Anyway, here's a trivial example of violating "private", which is just one way of showing that in C++ there's really no encapsulation at all.

#include <iostream>



using namespace std;




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New Books!

I got a score (okay, not quite that many) new books from Amazon. I'm really looking forward to reading them, but I don't know how I'll find the time. Here they are:

1. How to Read a Book
2. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases
3. Real Time Rendering (A bible)
4. Chuang Tzu: Basic Wrtings
5. Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity
6. Kushiel's Chosen
7. Kushiel's Avatar
8. Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

Yeah. Wish me luck.

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