https://halfyak.org/ Recent content on Halfyak - half code, half talk Hugo -- 0.152.2 en-us Mon, 05 May 2025 11:30:00 +1000 https://halfyak.org/pages/two-parlour-games/ Mon, 05 May 2025 11:30:00 +1000 https://halfyak.org/pages/two-parlour-games/ <p>At a party the other night, I got talking to some of my wife&rsquo;s work colleagues, one of whom mentioned that they were getting into board games. I mentioned two parlour games &ndash; by which I mean games that need no special equipment &ndash; just pen and paper &ndash; or no equipment all. For example Charades, which my family played to excess on childhood ski trips.</p> <p>Since they hadn&rsquo;t heard of either of these games, and I dug out a write up of these games I made for a another friend some time ago. As an experiment, I figured I&rsquo;d publish them here.</p> https://halfyak.org/posts/three-ways-to-help/ Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/three-ways-to-help/ Three ways that you, a more experienced practitioner, can help others around you, with varying experience, to get more done. https://halfyak.org/posts/pi-day/ Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/pi-day/ Why 22/7 is such a good approximation to pi &ndash; a quick glimpse at continued fractions https://halfyak.org/posts/a-minus-vs-b-plus/ Mon, 15 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/a-minus-vs-b-plus/ An observation about a particular failure mode which leads engineering projects to occupy isolated local maxima. https://halfyak.org/posts/the-meaning-of-median/ Thu, 20 Jun 2024 21:48:18 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/the-meaning-of-median/ A description of an abstraction which illustrates a connection between the mean and the median. https://halfyak.org/posts/usyd-address-2024-05-17/ Fri, 17 May 2024 09:30:00 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/usyd-address-2024-05-17/ The text of an occasional address I had the opportunity to deliver to a group of graduating students at the University of Sydney, 17th May 2024, 9:30am https://halfyak.org/posts/the-fashion-theory-of-code/ Thu, 25 Apr 2024 08:01:14 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/the-fashion-theory-of-code/ An exploration of an analogy between code and fashion, presenting the idea that thinking about code in context is like thinking about fashion in context. https://halfyak.org/posts/zero-to-the-zero/ Mon, 15 Apr 2024 16:10:38 +1000 https://halfyak.org/posts/zero-to-the-zero/ A school level maths discussion of the mathematical background needed to give a precise meaning to &ldquo;zero to the power of zero&rdquo;. https://halfyak.org/about/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://halfyak.org/about/ <p>Halfyak is a place for me to collect together things that I am working on, or interested in talking about.</p> <h2 id="who-am-i">Who am I?</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m Robbie Gates, and I&rsquo;m a cofounder at <a href="http://twomuffins.com">Two Muffins</a>.</p> <p>Previously, I&rsquo;ve worked on enterprise collaboration software, cloud systems infrastructure, augmented reality phone apps, embedded software for consumer electronics, application delivery systems for mobile phones, transactional memory virtual machines, software for telephone switch administration, and teaching and research in mathematics and computer science. If you really want that side of me, it&rsquo;s on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbieg8s/">LinkedIn</a>.</p>