Category ArchiveSoftware
Hardware &Miscellaneous &Software 21 Jul 2008 10:20 pm
Tilted Twister – a Lego Mindstorms robot that solves Rubik%u2019s cube
Humor &Math &Science &Software &Words 01 Jun 2008 09:38 pm
Harry Potter vs David Mackay David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms: Humour
David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms: Humour
: “Comparison of Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms with Harry Potter”
The site for those who are debating buying a Harry Potter book or buying a machine leaerning book by David Mackay and need a little help in comparing the two.
Philosophy &Politics &Software &Words 23 Feb 2008 05:50 pm
The Future of Reputation
The Future of Reputation full text online.
Humor &Programming Languages &Science &Software 16 Jan 2008 05:22 pm
Problems Worthy of Attack
I found a great quote in the comments of Diomidis Spinellis’ blog entry Rational Metaprogramming:’Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back’ — Piet Hein
That’s a great way to put it!
Programming Languages &Software 16 Jan 2008 05:19 am
Vis a tergo: Baseball cards as objects
Rob’s discussing object models for baseball cards. He is evolving a design bit-by-bit.
My first question is what use cases do you want for your database of baseball cards? Searching real stats for the season? Or just searching for cards? To me, that changes the way I’d lay it out.
To play along, here is a primitive set of plain old Ruby objects to model what he has so far. I thought it might be interesting to contrast the two.
OK, well, I lied, it is a little different, because I went ahead and subclassed for the variant card type.
class Card attr_reader :year, :number def initialize(number, year) @number = number @year = year end end class PlayerCard < Card attr_reader :player def initialize(number, year, player) super(number, year) @player = player end end class BattingLeadersCard < Card attr_reader :top_50_batting_players # this is a list of players def initialize(number, year, top_50_batting_players) super(number, year) @top_50_batting_players = top_50_batting_players end def top_3 top_50_batting_players[0..2] end end class Player attr_reader :name, :team def initialize(name, team) @name = name @team = team end end
History &Language &Philosophy &Politics &Programming Languages &Science &Software 02 Jan 2008 08:23 pm
Reading List that Inspired Smalltalk
Squeakland has a list put together by Alan Kay for his students that gives background on the ideas behind Smalltalk.
It looks like quite an interesting list.
Programming Languages &Science &Software 29 Nov 2007 04:32 pm
Comments on “A Program is an Idea”
Eugene Wallingford comments on comments received on his recent entry, ‘A Program is an Idea.’
This is timely given recent conversations I’ve had about getting kids interested in programming. Mark Guzdial’s recent discussion of introducing programming is relevant as well.
(Via Knowing and Doing.)
Software 23 Nov 2007 07:06 pm
Using Google to Crack Hashed Passwords
Using Google to Crack Hashed Passwords is very clever, but only works if software developers are dumb enough to store raw password hashes anywhere, and if people choose passwords made out of real words.
(Via Crypto-Gram.)
Apple &Software 20 Nov 2007 05:59 pm
10.5.1 Kills Safari
I updated to 10.5.1 and Safari wouldn’t launch. Instead, it told me I could not use this app with this version of OS X.
This article on the Apple support discussion board has a fix for the problem.
Broken permissions. So, the quick solution. Drag the app (Safari) to the desktop, and then back to Applications. That essentially fixes the permissions. WTF Apple?