Larry Jaques wrote:
On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:59:06 -0400,
wrote:

Swingman wrote:
On 8/24/2011 9:19 PM, Bill wrote:

There are lots of ways to solve this long standing problem, as this
thread has shown. You only NEED one of them.

"Give me a fish and I eat for a day, Teach me to fish and..."

Teach me to code fractal geometry and ...



I happend to catch part of an interesting show on PBS last night which
provided a lot of evidence to support how *fractals* are related to
nature. If you think about it, the common tree has some fractal-like
aspects for instance. That may just be the tip of the iceberg (another
fractal?)

Of course coding fractals is probably remarkably-easy using recursion,
as long as you can deal with overflow of the run-time stack! : )
It would be analogous to one of the fastest sorting methods, MergeSort,
which takes about 3 lines of code (in some sense).

Maybe you saw the same show?

So the statement, "Teach me to code fractal geometry and ..." --may
merit some surprisingly-strong conclusions. Of course, you probably
already realized this.

In the meantime, I still have my fish. BTW, as was written by one of my
favorite authors of my teens and twenties, Patrick McManus, "Never sniff
a gift fish!". Here is an excerpt taken from his easy to locate website:

"When I was a boy, catching worms was more of a challenge than catching
fish. Some of our worms were bigger than most of our fish. We bragged
about big worms we had dug. We lied about bigger worms we hadn't dug. We
were worm snobs. Artificial flies were for sissies."
~ Patrick F. McManus in The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw

He's the only author who has been successful in making me laugh out
loud, over and over. In junior high school a gal sitting next to me
asked, "Is it really THAT funny", to which I proudly replied, "YES!". : )

You haven't read _The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove_ (or any book by
Christopher Moore) yet, have you?

Gee, "The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" sounds like it might be a bit
"racy" for this forum? I haven't read it, but reading a little about
it sort of reminds me of "Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy". Does it have
pictures? I tend to lean towards non-fiction. I still have your
"Influence:.." book on my Amazon wishlist. I forced myself through
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" 28 years ago too--just to see what it
was about. I can't say I really "got it".

An old author I have to recommend is Paul N. Hasluck. We're talking
vintage 190X. I read most of his book on "woodworking" (largely rustic)
and just started his book on woodcarving this week. These are 700-800
page books (for less than $15) and the words are layed out as
thoughtfully as can be. After reading only up to the 2nd page of
woodcarving, I sighed as to what a treat it was! It's that good. It's
still good up to page 20 and I think it would be interesting even to
someone with no plans to carve any wood at all. It's already started to
help train my eye (to look critically) when I look at sculpture. I
caught myself doing it by accident. And beautiful pictures.. He was a
genius tradesman/scholar of his time and I can't see how anyone alive
now can compete with him on his turf. Enter his name at Amazon.com to
see if he's written on something of interest (glass working, metal
working, ...).




Exceedingly highly recommended.

_Coyote Blue and _Island of the Sequined Love Nun_ are both excellent,
too. Cargo Cults, anyone?

Sequined Love Nun... Woo Hoo!!! That one Must have pictures???



Want another laugh? This hardcover book is on sale for only
$21,963.61

Wow, I missed the comma the first and 2nd time I read that!

+ $3.99shipping
Seller: gb_book
Seller Rating:96% positive over the past 12 months. (1,686 total
ratings)
In Stock. Ships from CA, United States. Expedited shipping available.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy.
New, in perfect condition (It damned well better be for that price!)
_Get Your House Right_

--
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
-- Jimi Hendrix

On 8/25/2011 11:55 AM, Han wrote:
Jack wrote in :

I've been thinking about going with a pay service to get binaries, but
so far, just thinking about it...

Looks like you're doing just fine without the binaries, but your curiosity
has been tweaked.

I'd suggest you pay Astraweb $10 for 25 GB of downloads, like I did in
2008. I'm still owed 24 GB of downloads, but then, I hardly ever look at
anything other than abpw.

Bonus is the great retention and reliability of astraweb.

Thanks Han, that's the one I have been "considering" for a good while now.

--
Jack
Add Life to your Days not Days to your Life.
http://jbstein.com

On 8/25/2011 7:32 PM, FrozenNorth wrote:

I use eternal-september, it is free, but no binary groups, and I can
honestly say I haven't missed them. Sure i miss some stuff, but enough
people post links to websites that I do not feel I am missing that much.

I use eternal-september as well, and it does provide a couple of binary
sites. The ONLY reason I want binaries is for
Alt.Binaries.Photo.Originals. Eternal-september carries this group BUT
it only processes a few of the pictures. Not sure why all pictures are
not sent but it *might* have something to do with size. At any rate,
that is the sight I want, and it has always been active, and remains so
even after the dickheads at Comcast and Verison dropped their service.

ABPW was never active, and certainly after all the free access was
dropped, it is not likely any better. ABPOriginals is an exception and
is a nice group for those that like photography.

--
Jack
Add Life to your Days not Days to your Life.
http://jbstein.com

On 8/25/2011 9:31 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:

I wish people would use publicly accessible sites instead of some
funky binary. ABPW is a PITA.

Only because you have to pay to access it, otherwise it is no more a
PITA than any other group. If you ask me, it's a PITA to not be able to
attach pictures to this group.

Several _dozen_ picture hosting sites are free for the asking.

Picture hosting sites are nothing like a newsgroup. If you think Plaxo
or Flickr etc are the same as participating in something like ABPO your
officially out to lunch.

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

--
Jack
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a
fruit salad.
http://jbstein.com

On Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:07:58 -0400, Jack Stein
wrote:

On 8/25/2011 9:31 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:

I wish people would use publicly accessible sites instead of some
funky binary. ABPW is a PITA.

Only because you have to pay to access it, otherwise it is no more a
PITA than any other group. If you ask me, it's a PITA to not be able to
attach pictures to this group.

With nearly everyone on DSL or better now, I often think that, too.


Several _dozen_ picture hosting sites are free for the asking.

Picture hosting sites are nothing like a newsgroup. If you think Plaxo
or Flickr etc are the same as participating in something like ABPO your
officially out to lunch.

No, dialog is here, pics are there. ABPW is for ego strokers and
strokees.

--
Life is an escalator:
You can move forward or backward;
you can not remain still.
-- Patricia Russell-McCloud

On 28/08/2011 12:07 AM, Jack Stein wrote:
On 8/25/2011 9:31 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:

I wish people would use publicly accessible sites instead of some
funky binary. ABPW is a PITA.

Only because you have to pay to access it, otherwise it is no more a
PITA than any other group. If you ask me, it's a PITA to not be able to
attach pictures to this group.

Several _dozen_ picture hosting sites are free for the asking.

Picture hosting sites are nothing like a newsgroup.

That's not so. Flickr for instance is very like a newsgroup with a lot
of social chat along with image hosting. You could easily move a group
like this onto Flickr.

If you think Plaxo
or Flickr etc are the same as participating in something like ABPO your
officially out to lunch.

Enjoy your lunch. (And it's you're, not your.)

No only 60% of those using the Internet have a DSL or high speed
connection. The other 40% are still using dial up.

(snip)
With nearly everyone on DSL or better now, I often think that, too.
snip

On Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:48:03 -0400, Michael Kenefick
wrote:

I wrote:
With nearly everyone on DSL or better now, I often think that, too.

No only 60% of those using the Internet have a DSL or high speed
connection. The other 40% are still using dial up.

I wonder if the people keeping those stats consider the new cell phone
internet connections to be dialup. That might explain the high number.

But I think those here hae a higher percentage of fast connections.

Will everyone on dialup please raise your hands for us? Danke.

--
Life is an escalator:
You can move forward or backward;
you can not remain still.
-- Patricia Russell-McCloud

Many on dial-up reading Usenet can't see bottom posting if no length control
is done. Length clipping readers to prevent over length posts prevent bottom
posting from being read in these cases.

I doubt you will get any answers and cannot consider your results accurate.

-------------------
"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...

I wonder if the people keeping those stats consider the new cell phone
internet connections to be dialup. That might explain the high number.

But I think those here hae a higher percentage of fast connections.

Will everyone on dialup please raise your hands for us? Danke.

if you are just trying to "do it", then here is a very easy way...

mark your left starting edge and right starting edge, then lay a ruler
diagonal from the left edge to the right edge in such a way that the
whole numbers (1,2,3.. ) line up perfectly and divisible by whatever
spacing you want.

for example -- say you have a board that is 9.939 (the point being, it
does not matter) and you want to come in .5" from the left and .5"
from the right -- mark those left and right margins on the board. now
say you want to divide that space by 5. so you have 9.939 -1 or
8.939 of material to divide. take a ruler and place the "0" on the
left margin that you marked and just let the right side of the ruler
come down diagonally to align the 10" measurement on the ruler to the
right side margin. the ruler will now be at some angle -- does not
matter what. simple mark the 2", 4", 6", and 8" markings of the ruler
onto the material. you have just equally spaced the material between
your left and right margin into 5 equal parts. If you wanted to make
it 6 equal parts then bring the 12" ruler marking down to the right
margin line. now mark the material at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 -- giving
you 6 equal parts. hopefully you get the idea. you can use
whatever ruler markings you want -- 1,2,3,4 or 2,4,6,8, etc or 1.5,
3, 4.5, 6, etc so long as you use the same increment and the ruler is
on some (any) diagonal (must be diagonal -- straight across does not
work). now center up a hole on those lines and they will be
perfectly aligned. the key with circles is to work off of the center
points whenever possible.

good luck -- credit for this goes to some article i've read in the
last few months -- dont recall where -- absolutely brilliant though.