upside down: on remembering how to differentiate stalactite from stalagmite

i knew one is on top and the other is at the bottom of a cave but i keep forgetting. unless you’re into spelunking, you’ll probably not remember as you don’t use it in your everyday life. i learned of a “nifty trick” today: the ‘c’ in stalactite is for ceiling, while the ‘g’ in stalagmite is for ground.

“how long is a piece of string?”: on string conversion from integers in Python

i’m not a theoretical physicist so i don’t know much about (super) string theory except that it’s supposed to be a unified “theory of everything” (bridging Einstein’s general relativity and the field of Quantum Mechanics: in short, making the “physics of big things” consistent with the “physics of small things” and that there are n-dimensions in reality. i say n because , for some reason, i thought there were 17 and when i consulted the web: some said 10, 11, or 26 (proving you can’t rely on it for accurate information and that my main take away is some things don’t have to seen in order for their existence to be believed). but i digress…

here are samples of “simple” conversions from integer to string in Python:

https://github.com/LinsAbadia/Python/blob/master/Transformations/BI_String_Integer.ipynb

“transmogrification”: on (data) type conversion and Python

transmogrify is my favourite word i learned from the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. i like it because there are sometimes muliple “layers”.

Python has some built-in functions to do some “basic” type conversion. however, i’ve learned “recently” that sometimes additional conversion is required to “prove mastery” (aside from logic) so my next discussions should involve these to be more pragmatic.

wrong “empha-sis”: on diacritics and pronunciation

i previously knew about the tilde (as i speak Filipino (and can slightly understand a little of two other dialects) which has some words influenced by Spanish) and the umlaut (because of an individual in an organisation i used to work for). i recently found out the general term for it is a diacritic mark in a text mining course.

i’m a computer guy (and not a linguist) that mainly used ASCII – apparently EDCDIC supposedly addresses this “diversity” of letters but have to take this fact “at face value” since i don’t speak other languages.

i can’t help but be reminded of an anecdote of one of my batch mates that matter-of-factly corrected another that chocolate “mouse” isn’t the right way of saying it but since it’s a French word, it should be pronounced as “mouse-say” 😉