A quick post about coding

 

What coding really is.

It's been called "pure thought stuff". Indeed. Everything that is coded into a machine and executed is made out of fairy dust. You may ask: What do you mean by that? Fairy dust here means that there's nothing definite about any of it. It's not made of anything material, it cannot be held or touched. Only its effects can be observed.

A thought doesn't exist in the material world. If you were to make something in the material world, then your thoughts brought it about. But the thoughts themselves are not material things. Consequently, something like a computer program, does not exist in the material world. Only what it does to affect the world can be made observable. It is utterly intangible.

It is indeed a strange thing to contemplate. So many things that can be observed, in which humans have affected, have come about by somebody's thoughts. Those thoughts cannot be seen, measured, nor observed. Only the effects on the world can be seen, measured, or observed.

Coding is made of human thoughts. It's existence can never make it into the material world, but it sure can have an effect upon the material world. Indeed, human thought has done a lot to shape the modern world, and these effects are becoming more and more in evidence. But the thoughts that made by these effects can not be observed.  Perhaps a machine can be made that can read somebody's thoughts.  But that isn't really reading one's thoughts.  It is can only observe what happens inside a human's brain, which is a material object.

Funny how people cannot believe in an unseen God, but have no choice but to believe in things that cannot be seen nor observed--such as ones thoughts. You believe in what you cannot see, and you do it every day.

Anyway, coding is a virtual world in itself. The effects of coding can be thought of as a virtual machine. You can tinker with this code until the code "works". Unless this code is put into position so that it can effect the outside material world, it is harmless. But it could indeed become quite dangerous. It may already be dangerous.

So why do any coding? Well, a person has to eat. Good code is worth something. But it doesn't know morality. Only people who use it, can use it in good ways--or evil. And so it goes.

Call a "fizzy-kee-a-trist"!

 

Lucy goes "coo-coo"....

 

 

Eureka! I found another use for the new widget

It is a pleasure to report that embeds will work within this scrollable paragraph widget-thingie that I concocted. I will continue to experiment with it, while seeing where the limits are with respect to its potential.

Busy as a bee

 Yep, there's a lot of good ideas that I've written about.   Here's one from the other blog, but it might be here in this one too.   In case it isn't, here's the link.   Actually, there are already wild bees out there on the property.  I saw a swarm of them on one of my trips.  Glad I wasn't outside when those went by.  I've actually drove through a swarm of bees once.  Imagine all the bug splats on the windshield.

What's up post

 

HTML--hyper text markup language

 

It can be a pretty unpredictable thing, at least for the moment and for me. Even this blog is acting in an unusual manner.

 

It seems that I cannot access a post for some reason. It just ignores my click.

 

Anyway, the links to the web page developmental project are now broken. There's a reason for that, as I am going to start up another project. The other page still exists, but seems to be unavailable at this time. If possible, I may bring it back. I see no reason why it couldn't, if I so choose.

 

Quick update:

 

Demons?

 

As the late comic Flip Wilson liked to say, the Devil made me do it.

 

 

Odd thing about this post, too.  The link on that post doesn't work properly.  That's a bit strange.  A possible explanation is that the post was taken down.  However, the link is not at fault.  It is pointing to an explicit referenced link, but when it goes to the link, the page doesn't show---something else does.

Rapid iteration is like what you do in coding

11/19/25:

 

Rapid iteration doesn't seem very rapid at times. After a good deal of trial, and mostly error, I got the video player going the way I'd like. It cycles through the videos that I have on the list. I can add more to the list, and make a small addition to the code, and the video player will accomodate it. It had two videos for awhile, now it has three. If I add another, it will take minimal programming to do it.

 

It sure took a lot of effort.

 

11/18/25:

 

Brief observation here... While learning to code again, I note that I have to keep correcting errors. There's a bunch of those. Well, as you may know, SpaceX uses the rapid iteration technique to improve their rockets. It seems that Elon Musk's first big commercial success may have been a programming project--it may have been PayPal.

But it is better to not to make so many mistakes. Blowing up rockets is an expensive undertaking. Blowing them up in virtual reality may be a lot cheaper...

Incidentally, there's been talk about landing the heavy booster out in the Gulf. Why would Musk want to do that? Could it be that he wants to land them out in the Gulf in order to improve performance. Bringing the booster back to the launch site costs a lot of fuel, which hampers performance. If the booster could land in the Gulf, and then transport back to the launch site, it would enable better performance.

 

An idea that he may have, or may not have, is to re-fly the booster back to the launch site after a launch. The boost back to launch site from the Gulf would involve adding fuel to it again, and then launching a booster alone from the Gulf for the short trip back to the launch site. Why do this? It would save time. It may take a day or two to get it back to the launch site by sea, you see.

 

After all, the whole idea is to have short turnaround time. A booster that can be re-used several times a day could reduce launch costs even further. Also, landing out in the Gulf could increase useful payload to orbit up to maybe 75 tons--instead of 200 tons to orbit, it may go up to 275 tons to orbit. All that while maintaining rapid launch cadence.

 

So now's there's a plan

There's a saying out there in the world that goes something like this: "Make your plans, and God will smile." That means, whatever you make plans for, there's likely to be a few things that you haven't allowed for. Incidentally, I may have mangled that quote up pretty badly, and adapted it to what I'm thinking.

Which allows me to segue into another quote that might get mangled. All war plans do not survive contact with the enemy. The enemy of any plan, including war or any other endeavor, is the radnomness of existence. Now that I've bored you with philosophical nonsense, the plan is in effect. It is to use the results of my learning to code in order to make money. Or to sell the land in order to obtain money for some other plan that I've not concocted yet. The plan is underway, and things appear to be going okay. But the reality hasn't hit yet. No money may be made, no sales may get transacted. That's the way things may go, but there's enough optimism to try.

 

Does SpaceX know how they're going to land on the moon?

 

With so little said about the details of how they're going to fulfill the mission requirements, it seems like the scene in a Dirty Harry movie, thusly:

One could legitimately ask if SpaceX really knows what they're doing here. Of course SpaceX knows rockets, but they've never done this kind of thing before, which is something that they've got to master before they can be successful.

Why not copy what worked before? What worked before was basically the solution for the tyranny of the rocket equation. NASA's solution was shed mass as you go along. The Saturn V's first two stages did the heavy work of getting to the edge of space, then the IVB third stage finished off the orbit phase, and served as the translunar injection phase. After its job was complete, the mass was discarded, as were the first two stages of the Saturn V. At this point, there is about 100k lbs that has to finish the mission. That's just 50 tons.

No need for complex operations like refueling in space. The last part required only a relatively small amount of thrust and fuel. Even that obeyed the same strategy. The lunar module had two sub-modules. The lander part got the lunar module on the surface, and the ascent module got the astronauts back to the command module. Let's say the lunar module massed out at 16 tons. That left 34 tons to get back to Earth. To get from the lunar surface required only 10k lbs or 5 tons total mass. These are approximate numbers, but that's not the point. The point is that in landing such a large spacecraft on the lunar surface requires a very complex set of maneuvers.

Refueling may work, but the shedding of mass has been proven to work. So SpaceX is basically re-inventing the wheel here. With the heavy lift capability of the superheavy, it should be well within its capabilities of landing a spacecraft on the moon. Just not the Starship. If Musk insists on the Starship, then he is incurring far more mission risk on something that hasn't been proven in action before. Just sayin'.