reification:

1. The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
2. The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
3. (programming) Process that makes out of a non-computable/addressable object a computable/addressable one.

(see also the Wikipedia disambiguation page ( Read more... )

I write software for a living ( Read more... )

So much I want to write about! Not sure where to start. So, here, in random order:

* s00j (plus her boy) and stealthcello visited last week! Oh my god, it was so great to see them. I only caught a brief glimpse of them during Boskone, so it was really nice to have them over our house for several days ( Read more... )

Other stuff on my mind (aside from the move* Nathaniel and Krista (Nathaniel was the first friend I ever made in America, in 5th grade, and we've managed to keep in touch all these years) came to visit this past Sunday the 3rd, and stayed for a night. (Incidentally, it is at their wedding that I met other people that became important in my life ( Read more... )

Do you know how to win?

I always hear that one has to lose gracefully. And that's probably true, probably makes you easier to be around. I don't know if I do. I expect to lose, in any case (in any sort of meaningful context of competition, eg sports, card games etc). I have practice with that. I don't notice it. I don't mean that to sound harsh or ( Read more... )

I started out telling a story, of what I've been searching for and moving towards, and how I came to these numbers, and why I think they're important.
But that post got too long. So I'll talk about the numbers first, and then post an explanation/backstory. (Bad sign, huh? - skipping the foreplay ( Read more... )

Last night, yuki_onna have me a beautiful leather-bound sketchbook with a wood-burned type map of Russia on its cover:


( Read more... )

Back from Cleveland and my grandmother Yelena's funeral. (Hopefully we're done with the crazy ~13 hr drives to Cleveland for a while. And will fly next time, to visit family (unless there's another emergency like this one and we can't afford plane tickets ( Read more... )

A glimpse into the inside of my mind ( Read more... )

Background Item 1:

The plot of Palimpsest, which is one of my favorite novels ever, goes something like this. Four diverse misfits (and they really are broken people, and each is heavily obsessed with something, whether it's bees and making lists, or medieval literature, or trains, or their dead sister) discover a crazy beautiful (sexually ( Read more... )