How's yer head?

Today's a "head" day because of the confluence of a number of headings.

Firstly the youngster (who's not any more as young as that page makes him look) allowed to wonder whether my common greeting of "Howya head" originated from Dublin or Wexford.

I opined that it is Dublinese, but I ain't sure so I went online and quickly got side-tracked to the commoner phrase "How's your head", which turns out to have a salaciously subversive secondary semantic:

For me the primary intention of "How's your head" is a concerned solicitation as to the effect last night's few bevvies are having on your noggin. But it also (allegedly) is an insult to your professionalism, as it can be used to ask whether you are keeping the ship on the correct heading, which "can only deconstruct as an impugning of the helmsman's competence"

So the full meaning (when asked in the office of a Monday morning) turns out to be "How are we supposed to meet the deadline when you keep turning up with a hangover?"

But, "Howya head?" is a different contraction, expanding to "How are you, head?", and that's a usage of "head" that I've only ever heard in Dublin.

Secondly, I'm heading out of my mind again

An bhfuil "Hello World" gesagt agat?

[[ Darf ich dul go dtí an little boy's room. Please. Miss! ]]

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I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is

Ok, back again ? The redditors are gone, and that brief drunken fling with ysh is past-ish, so let's refocus on language(s).

• What is it?
• Which is it?
• How are magical and mythical languages related?
• What are it's characters' motivations?
• Which framework should I ... should I use a framework ?
• Why is it so shallow?
• You were expecting answers? In a blog?
  
• Why are there so few free multi-language tools (and why are the commercial ones so, ..., otherwise engaged) ?
• How are magical and mythical languages related?

Languages suggests frameworks like a joker suggests chaos, you'd want to become a symbol to differ.It doesn't have to be that way

• the denizens of Dingle / An Daingean / Uí Chúis
• the burghers of Bozen / Bolzano

know that a language signifies nothing that another one couldn't just as, usually nearly as, easily signify. And any saved geek (noun: "a geek who sees beyond the religions like vi and emacs (and uses vim anyway)") would've noticed the same squandering of significant signification in perl v python v ruby.

• The language that I am using means nothing that any other couldn't usually as easily mean
• If you wish to consider meaning, language is irrelevant

• Let's just consider that for a moment
• Whoa, back up a minute there

"The collection plate is at the
...
END of The Congregational Hall

Hope to
...
See you all next week"

Is the internet back yet ?

The internet came back half an hour after I left for the office but the water was gone by the time I got home again. Got a few hours kip, woke up this "morning" and my wife was gone. Got a slice of toast, the peanut butter was gone. Tried asking you but I don't think you were reddi yet.

But I keep coming back to the same old questions:

When you get right down to it, what've you got, right, down, up a bit, more, There, aaaah, ... ?
Why do my socks have big holes when I always compost them at the first tear ?
Why has my retirement-fund halved the fees today, if banks are in such shit ?
Why does the screen always go black at the start of writing a new program ?
Why am I so much better at sorting this list than most algorithms I know ?
   Wow ! That line was typed in at the best guess place, before I knew ...
How many visitors do you need to see what's going on outside the prison ?
Which of these questions will you take as the subject line of an email ?
Who is converging on The Palace of Culture, panting and slobbering ?
How do you design a brain when all you've got control of is genes ?
How many Ministers for Energy does it take to change a light bulb ?
Why is Natural Language mischaracterized as inherently ambiguous ?
How can you expect to be taken seriously (Extended Danse Mix) ?
Why do men need nipples, is it some kind of memento matris ?
When you get down to the wood today, what will you saw ?
Why is petrol back down to less than 1 euro per litre ?
How many Big Macs does it take to sink an empire ?
How does it work when you program in English ?
How can one live well in a badly-run world ?
When do the floor-cleaning robots arrive ?
Whatever will become of the likely lads ?
How many angels can be fit into a PIN ?
Where have all the children gone ?
Which are the magical languages ?
What were we wanting without W ?
Who would you like to beat (up) ? 
Does my thumb look big in text ?
Who are you talking to, inside ?
How much do you miss the goal ?
Sorry, what were you saying ?
What do you do, in the bath ? 
But I'm mumbling again't I ?
How much do I stink by now ?
Why do crocodiles crawl ?
How to get rich, slowly ?
What was I looking for ?
Have a dream on me !
Onde está o Oisín ?
Where's the craic ?
You want it when ?
Why am I here ?
Why coo ?
WTF ?

Is that a Book of Evidence or are you just glad to see me ?

Craig Duckett takes a swipe at the poor benighted Christians on one of his pages, with the (probably) unconsidered

If all the words in the world were suddenly removed, isn't reality that which remains?

To remove all the words means to remove all the people, so you are now on Unearth. Ask Jim Baggot (En passant, isn't it great how many Gedankenexperimenten start out on Unearth, and then proceed to talk about it ? And thanks Jim, good questions), he was there, on Unearth, which he thought was:

what the world would be like if there had been no accident of evolution leading to human beings capable of conscious thought self-awareness and complex social interaction.

So: No, reality is not what remains. That world is not real any more than it is beautiful. It is no more factual that it is farcical, and is actually no truer than if it were "literally true". You might be rather convinced about how real it is, you may indeed ascend to raptures every time you stub your toe, but with no words comes no evidence for reality.

This is one of the reasons why religious books have become so important to religious believers because without having words to point to they would have no other evidence of the supernatural, and in order for religion to hold sway you must buy into the notion of the supernatural.

Which sounds like it's going somewhere, until you remember that

This is also one of the reasons why scientific books have become so important to scientific thinkers because without having words to point to they would have no other evidence of the natural, and in order for science to hold sway you must buy into the notion of the natural.

Craig had already claimed that

the 'real world', the world outside of language and art [is] the world we live in each day,

so perhaps I shouldn't take him as seriously as he's going to have to take the therapy bills, but he put it up to me by asking me to choose between a "natural world based on evidence" or a "supernatural world based on words in a book" which put me in a bit of an ol' tizzy, because there's no difference - evidence is words in a book (unless there's lawyers involved in which case it's expensive words in a big book).


And if anyone would like to suggest that the world be confined to only my (or Craig's) senses, they should literally stop reading blogs without words

Why rule it all at all?

Some rules for programming

1. If I were you I wouldn't start from 1 at all, at all
   
2. No non-programmers in the environment.
   
3. No less than one failing test to start
4. No more than one change between commits
   
5. No less than one fix per run
   
6. No more than one idea at a time
   
7. Never less than one more bug to be found, ...
   
8. No more than 2 whiskeys for prototyping
   
9. Never drink alcohol before hitting "Send"
   
10. As simple as required. No more, no less.

And one law to rule them all.