Strange Loops RSS Feed https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web An interactive introduction into how computers keep time and synchronize events - For a class called “Design in Educational Technology”, one of the projects was to design an interactive individual blog. I chose to create a blog about clock synchronization. Because this topic had always been a bit elusive to me, I wanted to learn more about it. Here is the link... Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2026-03-30-clock-synchronization/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2026-03-30-clock-synchronization/ Reading notes on "From Third World to First - The Singapore Story" by Lee Kuan Yew - Notes on the development of Singapore I recently finished “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000” by Lee Kuan Yew, the man rightfully known for transforming impoverished, newly independent Singapore from 1965 into the financial, technological, and cultural powerhouse it is today. Yew wrote this book for future... Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2025-08-04-singapore/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2025-08-04-singapore/ some stray notes that are neither here nor there - I had the pleasure of visiting Salt Lake City (SLC) two weekends ago, and took a few notes while roaming about the streets. I was only in the city for two days, but here are a few things that stood out to me. Flying into SLC Public Transportation While traveling... Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2024-04-28-salt-lake-city/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2024-04-28-salt-lake-city/ sudo apt-get install 2024 - intro I originally wrote this post in late December of 2023, but procrastinated in publishing it until well, now, which if all goes correctly should be late Febuary of 2024 (and a leap year excitingly)! re·flect (/rəˈflek(t)/) With four more days in the calendar year, it feels like a good... Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2024-02-29-2023-recap/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2024-02-29-2023-recap/ Or how we can store War and Peace on a device smaller than Tolstoy's pinky toe - What is data compression? Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia, not to be confused for the another Wikipedia) defines data compression as the “process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation.” Data compression tries to maintain as much information with as small of a representation as possible, and that’s... Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2024-02-09-data-compression/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2024-02-09-data-compression/ From seed to paper - seed 🌰 Mersenne’s Twister is unfortunately not a boogie-woogie dance, but fortunately is an interesting pseudo-random number generator (PRNG). I’ve never really looked into how random generators work and when seeing it come up in deck-shuffling code, thought it would be a good opportunity to look into the theory behind... Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-12-16-mersenne/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-12-16-mersenne/ A random walk through Wikipedia - introduction Today, I thought it would be fun to click 5 random links starting from the Wikipedia page on Markov chains and try to learn about or just comprehend what the topic ended up being. In the spirit of Markov, to do this, I generated 4 random numbers from 1... Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-12-05-kangaroo-algo/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-12-05-kangaroo-algo/ hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm hmmmm - introduction At a recent dinner, the dicussion turned to magnetic and electric fields as can happen when more than one electrical engineer is present – a confusing, yet enlighting phenomenan. One said something along the lines of “at fast speeds, the electric field just drops out of the B field”.... Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-12-04-lorentz-contraction/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-12-04-lorentz-contraction/ Reflection on learning, new ideas, and questions to investigate - The November Report While “The November Report” sounds like a government scandal in the 70’s, this blog post is a simple reflection on this past month. There are three main purposes in writing this post: first, to solidify concepts by putting them into writing; two, to organize ideas and goals;... Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-11-27-november-recap/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-11-27-november-recap/ An appreciation of some informative ways to visualize data - Intro Since nobody likes looking at data from a raw csv file, information is usually presented to the public (or researchers) in the form of charts. Depending on how they are structured, charts can give a new meaning to data. People are visual creatures, and how we see information is... Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-11-13-charts/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-11-13-charts/ A datastructure disturbance in the force - Intro My brother was telling me that they were learning about tries in his data structures class. When he first told me this, I was suprised that he was pronouncing “trees” in such an odd way, but learned in fact that tries are actually a subcategory of trees. B ->... Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0700 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-11-09-data-structures/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-11-09-data-structures/ Defeat appears to me preferable to total inaction -- J.A. - Intro David McCullough’s John Adams was a wonderful read. Chronologically presented, it follows Adams from an ambitious youngster living in Braintree through his time as the second President of the United States to his death on July 4, 1826. Not only did John Adams live through major turning points in... Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-27-john-adams/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-27-john-adams/ Alexis de Tocqueville's take on the new kid in town - intro In 1831 a young man named Alexis de Toqueville set out to answer a fundamental question of the times: Was American democracy working? The nation, under 50 years old at this point, was a lab rat for Europe. In France, Toqueville’s home country, the desire for a stable democracy... Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-27-democracy/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-27-democracy/ A sketch - Autumn 🍂 It is the first eve of fall. Not the autumn equinox, but the unspoken start when rabbits and sparrows and those who do not live by our calendars mark the beginning of a new season. Everything on earth suggests the end of summer: the warm breeze has been... Wed, 25 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-25-seasons/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-25-seasons/ Happy International Gibbon Day! - Intro It is always “international” one thing or another day, but today, October 24th, holds a special place in my heart: International Gibbon Day. But what are gibbons, one might and indeed should ask. Gibbons are primates in the family Hylobatidae (derived from a word in Ancient Greek meaning “one... Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-24-gibbons/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-24-gibbons/ A little learning - Metcalfe’s Law Some notes Number of unique possible connections in a network of $n$ nodes is $n(n-1)/2$ which is also caled the triangular number. notes & stuff & things Links number of connections with “usefulness” Limitations Assumes all connections are equally useful Unbounded growth Conclusions It’s interesting to think about... Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-09-metcalfes-law/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-09-metcalfes-law/ The East India Company - Mahatma Gandhi - Intro My mom is constantly discovering new podcasts. She gets intrigued by many things, but was so exuberant about the Empire podcast that I gave it a listen and quickly became captivated. To better remember some of the extraordinary stories and lessons from the podcast, I’ve written up a few... Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-06-empires/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-10-06-empires/ Fractals are the covergirl of mathematics - How it started I was browsing Twitter (or X to be trendy…now that Twitter = X, we might as well rebrand “tweet”. My vote would be for “zap”) and came across this tweet: Oho, this looks cool Like seeing an image of a salamandar for the first time, I decided... Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-09-27-apollonian-gasket/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-09-27-apollonian-gasket/ A glimpse into the intriguing world of garbage disposal - Inspiration My mind has been in the gutter…thoughts about the garbage and recycling system have been swirling around in there for a few months now, and so I thought it would be nice to clean up my mind by dumping these thoughts out. I started thinking about garbage disposal after... Tue, 12 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-09-12-trash/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-09-12-trash/ Rabbits and compounding interest and the natural log oh my! - Logarithms rabbit population dynamics are commonly modeled with logarithms From chipping away slowly at Richard Hamming’s book, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, one motif is the importance of understanding the fundamentals of math. Choosing the base function for a modeling task is fundamental to understanding the nature of... Sun, 27 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0600 https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-08-27-logarithms/ https://aloha-churchill.github.io/strange-loops-web/posts/2023-08-27-logarithms/