Trying to wrap my brain around finite fields. I get how one can construct a finite field with an order of a prime number, but I don't get how it works with powers of primes. Everything I try to read on the subject eventually ends up getting into notation that I don't know how to read.

I think I get that a GF(p^n) has something to do with converting the field into a polynomial where all the coefficients are of GF(p), but that's where my understanding starts to fall apart.

Can anyone point me at something that will help me to better understand this?

Had an optometrist's appointment today. Got confirmation of something I've known for some time: my depth perception sucks.

Sadly, it's not correctable, but it's been like that for as long as I can remember. I've learned to adapt.

Not sure, but I think the cat may have developed an intolerance to his super expensive prescription food.

That's neat.

Katy just got an ad for a "grounding sheet"... It's literally a blanket that plugs into a wall outlet so that you can be grounded while you sleep.

In case you're probe to static buildup in your sleep, I guess? How is this a thing?

So, I learned about Hamming codes a while back. They're pretty neat, but a lot of modern technology uses Reed-Solomon instead. I've wanted to learn about that one, but it involves some pretty heavy math that often goes over my head.

I've found a few different videos on YouTube that try to explain it "simply" but they all tend to gloss certain details over. After watching a few of them, I've noticed that the parts they gloss over are different from each other, and I'm wondering if I can just hunt down enough of them that I can piece the rest together myself.

All things considered, this seems a weirdly fitting way to learn it.

Logged into my online banking to be greeted by a notification about an "unusual transaction". It was today's vet visit.

Yes. It was unusual. It was also entirely legit, but thanks.

Benny (our cat) was under the weather yesterday so we took him to the vet. We went home with some meds and general optimism. He seemed to perk up later in the day.

This morning he's super lethargic and uninterested in his food. Which is super not like him. Have another appointment with the vet in an hour and a half.

Not only am I stressed out about the cat, but I'm also stressed about the added financial burden of two unexpected vet visits (and I feel like an asshole about the latter).

We'll figure it out, but if the universe could cut us some slack for like five minutes, that'd be great.

Edit: typo

I've run into a snag with an sqlite database I've been working on. Below is a simplified example of the problem.

Suppose I have the following table:

CREATE TABLE "prices" (
    "id"    INTEGER NOT NULL UNIQUE,
    "name"  TEXT NOT NULL UNIQUE,
    "list_price"    NUMERIC NOT NULL,
    "sale_price"    NUMERIC,
    "tax_rate"  NUMERIC NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY("id" AUTOINCREMENT)
);

SELECT
    name,
    CASE
        WHEN sale_price IS NULL
            THEN list_price
        ELSE sale_price
    END AS price,
    price * tax_rate AS tax
FROM prices;

Is there a better way to do this?

A text I just sent to my mother (presented with no context):

It's sometimes tricky that my wife and mother have very similar looking names and are alphabetically right next to eachother in my contacts. It's astonishing that that hasn't led to more embarrassing mistakes.

Okay, I'm calling uncle.

I've exported the data from the LibreOffice Base database I've been working on to an SQLite file, and I'm just going to write a proper UI for it.

Katy and I like to watch psychological thrillers from time to time, but I've noticed a recurring trope that confuses me. It goes like this: Psychopath lives in an outwardly normal looking house, but has a secret passage to a secret murder basement.

Who built this? Am I to believe he excavated the earth, poured the concrete, ran the (usually admittedly shoddy) electrical himself? Did no contractor at any point ever think to themselves: "this doesn't seem right. Perhaps I should alert the authorities?"

Edit: typo

Edit: I'm an idiot who confused diameter with circumference for some reason. Embarrassing original post follows.

Was playing around a bit with the OpenWeatherMap API. I wanted to know how precise I needed to be with the latitude & longitude values, so I decided to do some quick calculations.

To get a rough idea, I wanted to determine how much a change of one degree of latitude would move in kilometers. I knew the diameter of the earth was something fairly close to 40,000 km but wanted to verify that factoid. I did a quick duckduckgo search, and the top three results (on seemingly separate web sites) all said 12,756 km. In fact one of them hilariously said 12.756 km.

I assume this is the result of LLMs filling the internet with crap, but it's alarming that if I didn't know any better, I'd have just blindly accepted this as fact.

Fine, I'll watch #wwdc24 to see what everyone's been talking about.

Before a few hours ago, I didn't even realize it was happening.

Today I booked an appointment with my optometrist to get my eyes checked. A few hours later I checked the (postal) mail to find a reminder card from them.

I was shocked at how quick the mail was, only to realize it was just a generic reminder that I was due for an eye exam. It was pure coincidence.

Okay, I'm just going to say it because amazingly enough, some people don't seem to get this.

Just because I'm critical of Israel bombing hospitals in Palestine doesn't mean I'm pro-Hamas. I'm not.

It frustrates me that this is a thing that even needs to be said.

Edit: typo