!@Twitter

One of the frequent misconceptions that some may have about me when it comes to blogging is that this is something that I do every day, or maybe even several times a week. Sometimes this is true, but - more often - I find myself with free time during which I can compose several different posts and then save them in draft form; I can then push my drafts to "published" status a few days later, and still be able to contribute something of meaning every day - or at least on a far more frequent schedule than would be possible if I were only posting whenever inspiration struck. I also believe in only posting thoughts that are substantial meaning that a fair bit of time and effort has gone into formulating, polishing, and transcribing them; this,to me, usually requires more than 144 characters ;)

Oh - and about the title -

For those of you who aren't scripters or programmers, I usually lapse into boolean jargon when saying that "something" is equal to (or isn't equal to) "something". In other words, if I wanted to say that "me blogging all the time at work" is equal to "me looking for a new job soon", I'd put it like this:

Me blogging all the time at work == me looking for a job soon.

I use the double-equals sign ("=="), since in most programming languages, "==" is a statement of equivalence, while "=" is assignment. If I wanted to take a placeholder, call it "a", and then assign it a value of "2", I would say this:

a=2

This convention should be familiar to anyone who has taken high-school algebra; "a" would be called an "attribute" while "2" would be the value assigned to attribute "a", just as 3.14 is the value assigned to Pi (Π), which is also a constant, or value that never changes.

I digress. If I wanted to assert that "a" did indeed already equal "2", I would say this:

a==2

the mathematical equivalent:
a ≡ 2

Conversely, if I wanted to assert that "a" does not equal "2", I would say this:

a!=2

the exclamation point ("!") being a sign of negation in many languages. In mathematical terms, it would be the same as:

a ≠ 2

A few more:

"a" is equal to either "2" or "3":

a == 2 || a == 3
a ≡ 2 ∨ a ≡ 3

"a" is greater than "2"
a > 2 (same in both)

"a" is less than "2"
a < 2 (same in both)

"a" is less than or equal to "2"
a <= 2
a ≥ 2

"a" is less than or equal to "2"
a <= 2
a ≤ 2

Okay - I think that I'll stop now... :)