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Kerouac [was: Groundhog Day]


From: Clive Tovero
Subject: Kerouac [was: Groundhog Day]
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2022 23:25:32 +0000
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.11.0

HIC SVNT LEONES (ET MARMOTAE)

Happy belated Groundhog Day, or around Skema Subterra, Jack Kerouac Day.  What ever happened to Jack Kerouac? (The person, not the software audio library and books gathering dust in the book library).

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Please help me find a home for Clive Tovero (the libraries, not the man).

My wife and trustworthy in-house logician said yesterday, "Why don't you just ask the MIT Scheme group where in GNU would be good place for your libraries that you are porting back to MIT Scheme?"  We have been married 20 years, but she still really doesn't understand me.  "That would be way too simple," I said, "Besides, after that cowboy-code-poetry, Kerouac on the road in Wyoming stunt last year they probably have me blocked at the router."  She has a degree in first order logic, so I have to carefully arrange my axioms and theorems to make any progress in an argument. [M. Python, "Argument Clinic", 1975]  As in any good marriage, we compromised.

I just found out big-mega-corps are patenting up my previously ignored academic field.  After reading their Siren of a paper, I went to 'Hub and they offered an MIT licensed implementation, then a "HIC SVNT LEONES" disclaimer that it may or may not be under patent.  Read Knuth's "friend of the court" brief on software patents if you want to stay awake all night in horror, not "The X Files".  Apologies, people, I just cannot exist without humor. If you don't read any further, these are my main comments.

.IGNORE

I was listening to a song from the rock group System of a Down, they said "Science has failed our mother earth.".  Pffft...anyone that has seen a Godzilla movie understands that "the folly of man" is the problem.  Anyone that has used Scmutils would never say that.  When I was reading SICM and FDG, I kept thinking "Why do stars sometimes collapse to points, and vice-versa?"  Why? Why? Why?  I kept thinking what if only I could "see" what the authors were talking about. [Blinn et al. ?]  What if I personally could look at the effects of a black hole on a space ship without a team from Pixar to help.  What about mother earth in 2050?

While waiting for a new home for Clive/Tovero, I have been working my own Scheme for CNC machining and R-function exploration, called Machinate:

    sam-l-clemens@the-CT-manse:~$ mash
    ; __*\*____________
    ; ___/\/\achinate__
    ; -----------------
    ; "The Scheme with Machiavellian airs" (now with keywords!)
    mash> (take-over-the-CNC-milling-market :economic-strategy 'victor-hugo :courtesy-level 'full-chipmunk :courtesy-message 'please)     Reading "les-miserables.scm"...done. Elapsed time 2.14159 years. [TODO: fix one-off error and increase accuracy of *pi*, Rocky looks a bit, er, non-isometric.]     [PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE] Wait up to 3 hours for your request to process...
    0% ... 10% ...

It is inspired by McCarthy (the Schrodinger one), Kissinger, Python (the Monty, not the language), Julia (the fractal, not the language), and Logo.  I'd like to say that it is MIT Scheme running on a custom Scheme processor using the '79 design ported to vacuum junction transistors.  The truth is, I heisted Femtolisp from Julia and slapped my own proprietary license on it, after that measure-of-power guy dared me (I call it the private hoarding license, PHL).  Carefully read and understand the following license before running this $3000 per seat per OS per bitness (8 big-endian, 16, 32, 64 middle-endian) copy of Machinate:

"Copyright (c) 2022, The Ponzi Scheme Company.  All rights reserved.  No copying.  How did you get past the Faraday cage?"

Last year I unplugged the Internet and formed Skemo Subterra --a one-person-strong project which currently is on an air gapped 2007 Dell (2 whole cores!) inside a Faraday cage.  I'm planning on uploading a few rendering images to my *non-GNU* Savannah projects, if I can develop a security protocol for transferring files from the cage.  I have a rendering test article called the Columbia Horse (Rocky), sort of an ersatz Stanford bunny or dilettante Utah teapot.  I first rendered it with MIT Scheme, 5 years ago.  Full disclosure, my Columbia professors considered my work, "weak to the point of pallid." [Columbia Jester, Vol. 123, p. 5, 1988]

"No, Huck Finn, I am not renaming it the MIT Horse--I have this here fence to paint.  Don't you already have a mascot, a groundhog or something?"  We (Skemo Subterra, unincorporated) also have an icosohedron turtle model, but having spent so much time on Redidit (10 minutes) I no longer think MIT had anything to do with Logo or turtle graphics--so I'm calling it the Berkeley Turtle (after Fateman).

(True story: I was born in Missouri and lived in Connecticut. There is some "X Files" conspiracy on Redidit about my identity, "X Windows", anyone? Conspiracy or not?)

POST SCRIPTVM

This has been a "proof of life" for those on Redidit who asked "Where is Clive Tovero?  I miss Clive. [No mention of our old friend Edwin.]"  They meant my software--not me.  Ego-deflating but not unexpected.  But, that's what you get for naming yourself after your libraries, instead of vice-versa [Torvalds, 1992].  To them I say, "Common Lisp is beat, beat, beat.  Long live Common Lisp!" They probably don't remember, "Rocky's dead, they say... long live rock!.", much less Kerouac or Tom Scholz.

"Oops, I Redidit again". I truly hope people with advanced MIT degrees don't understand this cultural reference, I would lose faith in the value of a higher education and mankind in general.  Reboot to Groundhog Day.

POST PARTVM ET POST MORTEM ET HABEAS CORPVS (Latin for "disclaimer", or "Why do they wait until I have closed shop and sold off the 4-axis milling machines, to...to...to inquire about my product?")

This has actually been an organic, stealth announcement for my upcoming book, "Structure and Interpretation of R-Functions, or SIRF (as in serfdom, not riding the waves):  An exploration of the ideas of Rvachev." [V. Shapiro, 2007] I am borrowing my marketing technique from big social and the "AIM Files".

My wife just passed by my home office and said, "Why are you whistling the theme of the 'X-Files' like a song-bird?".  Who knows?  I'm off to the Dos Equis files (a great brand of beer in my kitchen hoarding pantry, for the humor or zymurgy impaired). Yes, keep in mind I am drinking beer after writing this, not before.  As always, replies to this message are optional, and probably not recommended.

Regards, and "PAX VOBISCVM" to Re-did-it.  That is all I know about what happened to Clive Tovero, the man and the libraries. If all goes well (from your perspective), I will escape the time loop, and NOT see you next year.



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