Okay, that's enough technical jargon for me. But now for the inevitable digression:
This robot reminds me oddly of the sci-fi Danny Dunn series I read as a kid. Danny was the nephew of an eccentric scientist who was always inventing stuff that was deeply cool -- and, what's more, stuff that eerily presaged modern technology by about 20 years. In one book, Dunn commandeered his uncle's ENIAC-style computer to help do his homework. (In another one, he used "antigravity paint" to travel to Saturn ... so, okay, the predictive accuracy of these novels isn't really all that hot.)
Here's an even bigger digression. While surfing around for Danny Dunn resources (I can't believe I just typed that sentence), I happened upon what is surely a literary first: A Danny Dunn poem -- an existential meditation on failed marriages that is written in the voice of the boy genius. And what's even more fucked up is that the poem's actually kind of good. It's crammed full of so many Dunn references that virtually no-one but the geeks who read all those books will understand it, but if you do, it's really kind of chilling. It's called "Danny Dunn and the Heartbreak Machine", and it's written by Chris Tannlund.
And who, you may ask, is Chris Tannlund? Well, to plant the needle on the Surreal-O-Meter here, I should point out that in addition to being a pretty good poet, he's "an independent Missouri-based UFO investigator."
Posted by Clive Thompson at November 19, 2003 02:18 PM
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Okay, the dragonfly robot is cool but the Danny Dunn link is awesome! I *loved* the Danny Dunn books (and, in my imperfect memory at least, his friend Irene was a great role model for a little scientifically-minded girl).
Posted by: debcha at November 19, 2003 9:59 PM
I actually had a vague crush on Irene when I was a kid. I would imagine that most geek boys did!
Posted by: Clive at November 20, 2003 12:02 AM
um...Never heard of Danny Dunn, but I did read all of the Tom Swift, Jr. books I could lay my hands on, does that qualify me for geekdom?
And according to Metro (the crappy free daily paper here in Toronto), that helicopter robot weighs in at a minscule 8.9 grams, and the photo they've printed (from Reuters) shows it tethered with a fine wire (probably the DC power source). Its very cool looking.
Posted by: bud at November 20, 2003 9:54 AM
I loved the Tom Swift books too! Though there was something about the Danny Dunn books that seem more like what you'd identify with as a teenager. Tom Swift was always heading off to exotic locations; Danny Dunn did that too, but in a surprising number of books he's screwing around with weird inventions basically in his neighborhood and school, which nicely suited by child's imagination.
Wow, only 8.9 grams?
Posted by: Clive at November 20, 2003 11:00 AM
Clive, I'm sure I had a crush on Danny Dunn (as I imagine that most geek girls - well, the few of us there were :) - did).
Posted by: debcha at November 20, 2003 11:04 AM
Okay, so now the secret is out: They were essentially erotic novels for pre-teens.
Posted by: Clive at November 20, 2003 12:27 PM
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This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Arnold at January 19, 2004 9:08 PM
This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Adlard at January 19, 2004 9:08 PM
Let's see an example by converting our favoriteNumber variable from a stack variable to a heap variable. The first thing we'll do is find the project we've been working on and open it up in Project Builder. In the file, we'll start right at the top and work our way down. Under the line:
Posted by: Richard at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Let's see an example by converting our favoriteNumber variable from a stack variable to a heap variable. The first thing we'll do is find the project we've been working on and open it up in Project Builder. In the file, we'll start right at the top and work our way down. Under the line:
Posted by: Richard at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Inside each stack frame is a slew of useful information. It tells the computer what code is currently executing, where to go next, where to go in the case a return statement is found, and a whole lot of other things that are incredible useful to the computer, but not very useful to you most of the time. One of the things that is useful to you is the part of the frame that keeps track of all the variables you're using. So the first place for a variable to live is on the Stack. This is a very nice place to live, in that all the creation and destruction of space is handled for you as Stack Frames are created and destroyed. You seldom have to worry about making space for the variables on the stack. The only problem is that the variables here only live as long as the stack frame does, which is to say the length of the function those variables are declared in. This is often a fine situation, but when you need to store information for longer than a single function, you are instantly out of luck.
Posted by: Jeremy at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Aaron at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Let's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
Posted by: Clement at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
To address this issue, we turn to the second place to put variables, which is called the Heap. If you think of the Stack as a high-rise apartment building somewhere, variables as tenets and each level building atop the one before it, then the Heap is the suburban sprawl, every citizen finding a space for herself, each lot a different size and locations that can't be readily predictable. For all the simplicity offered by the Stack, the Heap seems positively chaotic, but the reality is that each just obeys its own rules.
Posted by: Annanias at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Earlier I mentioned that variables can live in two different places. We're going to examine these two places one at a time, and we're going to start on the more familiar ground, which is called the Stack. Understanding the stack helps us understand the way programs run, and also helps us understand scope a little better.
Posted by: Emanuel at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Let's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
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Okay, the dragonfly robot is cool but the Danny Dunn link is awesome! I *loved* the Danny Dunn books (and, in my imperfect memory at least, his friend Irene was a great role model for a little scientifically-minded girl).
Posted by: debcha at November 19, 2003 9:59 PM
I actually had a vague crush on Irene when I was a kid. I would imagine that most geek boys did!
Posted by: Clive at November 20, 2003 12:02 AM
um...Never heard of Danny Dunn, but I did read all of the Tom Swift, Jr. books I could lay my hands on, does that qualify me for geekdom?
And according to Metro (the crappy free daily paper here in Toronto), that helicopter robot weighs in at a minscule 8.9 grams, and the photo they've printed (from Reuters) shows it tethered with a fine wire (probably the DC power source). Its very cool looking.
Posted by: bud at November 20, 2003 9:54 AM
I loved the Tom Swift books too! Though there was something about the Danny Dunn books that seem more like what you'd identify with as a teenager. Tom Swift was always heading off to exotic locations; Danny Dunn did that too, but in a surprising number of books he's screwing around with weird inventions basically in his neighborhood and school, which nicely suited by child's imagination.
Wow, only 8.9 grams?
Posted by: Clive at November 20, 2003 11:00 AM
Clive, I'm sure I had a crush on Danny Dunn (as I imagine that most geek girls - well, the few of us there were :) - did).
Posted by: debcha at November 20, 2003 11:04 AM
Okay, so now the secret is out: They were essentially erotic novels for pre-teens.
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Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 8:20 PM
This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Arnold at January 19, 2004 9:08 PM
This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Adlard at January 19, 2004 9:08 PM
Let's see an example by converting our favoriteNumber variable from a stack variable to a heap variable. The first thing we'll do is find the project we've been working on and open it up in Project Builder. In the file, we'll start right at the top and work our way down. Under the line:
Posted by: Richard at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Let's see an example by converting our favoriteNumber variable from a stack variable to a heap variable. The first thing we'll do is find the project we've been working on and open it up in Project Builder. In the file, we'll start right at the top and work our way down. Under the line:
Posted by: Richard at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Inside each stack frame is a slew of useful information. It tells the computer what code is currently executing, where to go next, where to go in the case a return statement is found, and a whole lot of other things that are incredible useful to the computer, but not very useful to you most of the time. One of the things that is useful to you is the part of the frame that keeps track of all the variables you're using. So the first place for a variable to live is on the Stack. This is a very nice place to live, in that all the creation and destruction of space is handled for you as Stack Frames are created and destroyed. You seldom have to worry about making space for the variables on the stack. The only problem is that the variables here only live as long as the stack frame does, which is to say the length of the function those variables are declared in. This is often a fine situation, but when you need to store information for longer than a single function, you are instantly out of luck.
Posted by: Jeremy at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Aaron at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Let's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
Posted by: Clement at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
To address this issue, we turn to the second place to put variables, which is called the Heap. If you think of the Stack as a high-rise apartment building somewhere, variables as tenets and each level building atop the one before it, then the Heap is the suburban sprawl, every citizen finding a space for herself, each lot a different size and locations that can't be readily predictable. For all the simplicity offered by the Stack, the Heap seems positively chaotic, but the reality is that each just obeys its own rules.
Posted by: Annanias at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Earlier I mentioned that variables can live in two different places. We're going to examine these two places one at a time, and we're going to start on the more familiar ground, which is called the Stack. Understanding the stack helps us understand the way programs run, and also helps us understand scope a little better.
Posted by: Emanuel at January 19, 2004 9:09 PM
Let's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
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