My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-5-2) -
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
After a flurry or work today, my latest bike is done and ready for a test ride. Wish me luck!
“Pushing is just pulling in reverse!” — James Kruth (while attempting to explain Git to a friend.)
How to Keep Crappy Programmers -
No comment.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-4-25) -
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” — H. P. Lovecraft (from The Call of Cthulhu)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-4-18) -
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
After reading Are you one of the 10% of programmers who can write a binary search?, I decided to find out if I was. Here’s my submission (written in about 30 minutes in python):
# the list to be searched
data = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
# what we're searching for
search = 7
# we could do this recursively, but without tail
# call optimization we'd just reach a stack overflow
# shortly - lame - so we'll go iterative
found = False
while not found:
# did we run out of data?
if len(data) == 0: break
# partition the list (take advantage of default
# integer division in 2.6)
p = len(data) / 2
# proceed based on data at partition
if data[p] == search:
found = True
break
elif data[p] > search:
data = data[:p]
else:
data = data[p+1:]
if found:
print "Found it!"
else:
print "Not found."
I had a bit of an easier time thanks to python’s arbitrary length integers, and list splicing notation. This algorithm would have been a lot more error prone in C/Java style language.
[video]
“The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.” — John Carmack (via reddit)
Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either) -
Thank goodness for Cory Doctorow and his frank discussion of our increasingly restricted technology platforms. I am almost finished reading Makers and I too am frustrated with a world with more iPads and less Apple IIs.
Moon8 -
Dark Side of the Moon + NES = Pure Awesome.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-3-21) -
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-3-14) -
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Thursday March 18th at 7:30 I’ll be playing transition pieces for a science themed poetry reading at the Creole Gallery in Old Town. I’ll be doing my best to add a nice old school Sci-Fi vibe. $3 donation. Open Mic readings after the show ends. Hope to see you there!