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I recently got interested in singular perturbation theory , and to get help with the algebra, I turned to SymPy. I had tried to use Mathematica in graduate school in the early 90s, but the experience had been sufficiently frustrating that I had steered clear of computer algebra systems since.

SymPy presents itself as a “friendly”, less intimidating alternative, with a more familiar and conventional language and operating model.

It turns out, Caltech has made the Feynman Lectures available online on their website.

Occasionally, I like to drink hot chocolate — that is, real hot chocolate, from pure cocoa powder and whole milk; not some (sugared, flavored) drink mix.

So, I was somewhat devastated when I learned that the venerable, time-honored Droste (those of the Droste Effect) seems to have gone tragically out of business.

Some replacement was required: at least as good as the original, and satisfying my various purist predilections.

I always thought that the “types” that are created using Go’s type keyword were, in some vague sense, new, unique, original; but in any case separate and distinct types. It turns out, this is a misunderstanding.

Der alte Dubslav von Stechlin wird gerne als Selbstportrait Fontane’s betrachtet. Liegt ja auch nahe: beides ältere Manner, Sympathieträger, und beides ausgesprochen “fontanesche Figuren”. Was denn sonst?

How does one actually read a plain text file in Go? Some searching through the standard library revealed the bufio.Scanner utility, which seems to be the most convenient way to accomplish this task.

I am currently working (again) on a larger writing project in Latex. Doing so made me revisit the Latex ecosystem, and I discovered several useful packages that I had not known before.

Erich Kästners Mutterkomplex ist bekannt, hinreichend dokumentiert, und sowieso nicht zu übersehen. Daher ist es interessant, dass es in seinen Kinder- und Jugendbüchern noch zumindest ein anderes durchgehendes Thema gibt, das aber nicht in der gleichen Weise erkannt zu werden scheint: in allen von Kästners Kinderbüchern treten Kinder auf, die von ihren Eltern verlassen worden sind.

The Token Bucket (or Leaking Bucket) algorithm is a mechanism to rate-limit the average traffic in a stream, while allowing for a certain amount of burstiness as well.

The functional equation of the logarithm is well-known:

\[ \log(xy) = \log(x) + \log(y) \]

But why is this so?