mpk | Reading

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3127/

Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.

https://xkcd.com/3127/

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3126/

You say no human would reply to a forum thread about Tom Bombadil by writing and editing hundreds of words of text, complete with formatting, fancy punctuation, and two separate uses of the word 'delve'. Unfortunately for both of us, you are wrong.

https://xkcd.com/3126/

rmc28

Work's "Active Staff" programme through the university sports centre is mostly dormant in August, but has just acquired a regular "give it a go" session for women's football on Thursday afternoons. (Hmm, I wonder what recent event might have prompted such a thing ...) Unfortunately this session clashes exactly with my favourite free exercise class, which has just rebranded from "yogalates" to "stretch and relax".

One of these activities will help my knee mobility and one of them is highly likely to mess up my knees further. Much as I want to be as tough as Lucy Bronze, I regretfully skipped the football and stuck with the stretches.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3125/

Chemistry grad students have been spotted trying to lure campus squirrels into laundry hampers in the hope that it sparks inspiration.

https://xkcd.com/3125/

rmc28

Books on pre-order:

Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)

Books acquired in July:

and read:
1. Moonlighter by Sarina Bowen
2. Grown Wise (Liminal Mysteries) by Celia Lake
and unread:
1. Death by Candlelight (Adam and Eve Mysteries 1) by Emma Davies
2. The Little Cottage on the Hill (Little Cottage 1) by Emma Davies

Books acquired previously and read in July:

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine [2][Sep 2024]

Borrowed books read in July:

Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky
You Had Me At Happy Hour by Timothy Janovsky
Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane
One-Touch Pass (SCU Hockey 4) by J.J. Mulder [8]
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
Fourth Wing (Empyrean 1) by Rebecca Yarros [2]

Rereads in July:

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine [2]

I continue to enjoy all of Celia Lake's books, and I still adore the Teixcalaan books by Arkady Martine, whether reading or listening to them. Stuart Turton wrote the entirely gripping groundhog-day country house murder mystery, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and I found The Last Murder at the End of the World another very gripping science-fictional murder mystery, this time in weird post-apocalyptic flavour.

Fourth Wing is a massive fantasy tome (21 hours of audiobook!) about a lethal military college for aspiring dragonriders, which piles a great many tropes onto some rather wonky worldbuilding. It is very entertaining and I can see why it is hugely popular. I am part way through the even more massive sequel and I regret nothing.

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

fanf

https://dotat.at/@/2025-08-06-p-fast-trie.html

Previously, I wrote some sketchy ideas for what I call a p-fast trie, which is basically a wide fan-out variant of an x-fast trie. It allows you to find the longest matching prefix or nearest predecessor or successor of a query string in a set of names in O(log k) time, where k is the key length.

My initial sketch was more complicated and greedy for space than necessary, so here's a simplified revision.

( Read more... )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3124/

We should have you at the gate in just under two hours--two and a half if we get pulled over.

https://xkcd.com/3124/

fanf

https://dotat.at/@/2025-08-04-p-fast-trie.html

Here's a sketch of an idea that might or might not be a good idea. Dunno if it's similar to something already described in the literature -- if you know of something, please let me know via the links in the footer!

The gist is to throw away the tree and interior pointers from a qp-trie. Instead, the p-fast trie is stored using a hash map organized into stratified levels, where each level corresponds to a prefix of the key.

Exact-match lookups are normal O(1) hash map lookups. Predecessor / successor searches use binary chop on the length of the key. Where a qp-trie search is O(k), where k is the length of the key, a p-fast trie search is O(log k).

This smaller O(log k) bound is why I call it a "p-fast trie" by analogy with the x-fast trie, which has O(log log N) query time. (The "p" is for popcount.) I'm not sure if this asymptotic improvement is likely to be effective in practice; see my thoughts towards the end of this note.

( Read more... )