When Geometry Is ****

I like Geometry and this (and karma) led to me to a career in CAD/CAM and then Computer Graphics.

I remember those early days, when one used to feel vaguely uncomfortable about a certain usage (very) current in the graphics community: "FLUSH out the Geometry!". A senior explained: "Look at the context! In graphics, the reality is that geometry often is indeed something to be cleaned up and gotten rid of - and then of course, to be recreated and put all over the place, all over again." We understood. And we bought into the phrase.

A few days back, I faced a weird problem with my machine. A certain program I was running kept crashing and taking everything else down with it ... even logging me out! I went and cribbed to someone more knowledgeable: "Bad scene! I just launch the damn thing and it bombs and just wipes out everything, ... treats everything like ... geometry you know, including self!"

The Sagely Colleague spoke thus: "Hey, you had run an automated test suite yesterday! Did you reboot the machine afterwards?"

Self: "No".

T S C: "Actually that could be the problem. These test suites, they launch some daemons and stuff and you know, leave a lot of ... geometry here and there in the system. Either you go and clean it everywhere or simply reboot. Else ..."

Self: "It will just lie around and keep raising a major stink, I guess"

T S C: Spot on!

And by the way, it is said Plato kept this warning message atop the gates of his Academy: "Those ignorant of Geometry may not enter!"