Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Linear B

I gave my advisor an early draft of my thesis early in May; he returned the marked up version to me a couple weeks ago. There was a section in my draft which I cut from previous documentation of one of my codes in which I described the mixed-language structure of the code as a combination of C++, Fortran, Lua, MATLAB, and Minoan linear B script. I forgot to cut the last one from the list before giving the draft to Jim. If this is too obscure: linear B was one of the written forms of the language used by the ancient Minoan culture, and is now mostly of interest to archaeologists -- something which cannot, alas, be said of Fortran 77.

In the marked up version, Jim simply scribbled ref? beside that last language. I'm unsure whether this means he was asserting his own sense of humor, or just didn't recognize the reference. I'm also unsure whether I should remove that bit, or if I should put in the reference as suggested and see whether anyone notices...