January 2012
2 posts
“There are a lot of Egyptians whose freedom now depends upon on their ability to...”
– Eben Moglen’s “Why Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More Than Ever”
“Computing pioneer Edsger Dijkstra pointed out that computing is the only...”
– Code Complete 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell
December 2011
3 posts
1 tag
New Year's Resolutions for 2012
As we all know, 2012 is going to be the end of the world. In light of that I’m actually making some solid resolutions:
Write and publish 24 professional blog entries.
Write at least 24 answers on StackExchange websites.
Choose 5 projects on GitHub, each with 50 or more followers. For each, offer a pull request that gets merged into the most widely followed branch.
Read 48 books.
Join...
I Work For The Internet →
staff:
We work for the Internet. And we’re guessing many of you do too. Whether it’s researching, selling, coding, supporting, designing — so many of our careers depend on the Internet.
One argument that’s been made to Congress is that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is needed to protect American jobs. In truth, the new liabilities this bill would impose on startups could stop American...
November 2011
3 posts
Disable the enablers of police brutality
Have you seen the pictures and footage of Lt. John Pike pepper spraying students peacefully protesting at UC Davis? In response a professor there wrote an open letter calling for Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi’s resignation.
You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to...
10 tags
Count on it
I want to write books that teach kids how computers work at their most fundamental level.
Perhaps the most fundamental concept in computing is how integers are represented and used as a code for the processor. Before somebody can understand that they need to be familiar with the concept of numerical place value in binary. Generally K-12 curricula don’t convey enough about why binary (and...
September 2011
5 posts
perhapsthisisabitmuch asked: thanks for commenting on my post!! i understand completely what you are saying - i know some people who speak acknowledging their own lack of understanding about the topic. of course this is understandable and acceptable - how can you expect a person to be 100% politically correct/aware when they know themselves they aren't? however, what bothered me about my Stats professor was his obvious...
8 tags
Girl + Computer = ?: Gender Neutrality in... →
girlpluscomputer:
The only thing that was kindof wacky about the example was it used the term “gender” to mean “sex.”
…
It wasn’t a big deal, except then my professor went on a small rant about how in a previous semester a student of his had a big blow-up to him about it saying “sex is biological, gender is a choice!” He said all of it so mockingly, and even went on to say...
7 tags
How does biology explain the low numbers of women... →
It comes up a lot in discussions of women in computer science, women who write code, women in open source. Eventually, someone brings up the fact that women score slightly lower on math tests. Clearly, they claim, this biological inferiority must explain why there are fewer women in math heavy fields.
It sounds like a compelling reason, and it gets a lot of play. Except, you know what? ...
3 tags
UNIX' Russian Roulette
fooyeahcode:
sudo [ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo “You live”
3 tags
Rick Santorum, bigot or hypocrite? →
I so wish I could have been there to point out the irony in his stance. Here’s what I would say.
“Mr. Santorum, you claim it’s unfair for people call you a bigot when you’re simply representing the views of the Catholic church. Did you realize your inability to consider that the American Psychological Association could have scientifically sound studies demonstrating...
August 2011
2 posts
9 tags
Source code repository server
My new Mac Mini has been useful as a workstation, but sometimes I need a server dedicated to distributing media files or storing the source code for my programming projects. I’ve set out to address latter issue first, and this post documents my progress.
Here are the requirements for the source code repository server:
Long term persistance
VM still works when copied to another...
July 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Improving bus schedule accessibility →
Can’t help but smile when people spend time and money making innovative improvements to the world around them.
Introducing Tumblr's New API →
staff:
Along with a sharp new Engineering Blog and a beautifully organized new Developer Center. Enjoy!
5 tags
June 2011
6 posts
6 tags
Type-safe mathematical vectors
The Challenge
Program an implementation of vectors for all dimensions with the following in mind.
Binary operations on vectors like addition don’t make sense when the vectors have different dimensions.
People using your implementation shouldn’t have to write boilerplate code to accommodate how you choose to handle dimension mismatches.
Rather than failing silently by handling...
6 tags
Organizing these techy obsessions (part 1)
Anybody who knows me well is aware that I cycle through short-lived technical obsessions. Maybe I’ll dabble with some software for a few hours or a programming language for a few weeks. Sometimes I latch onto something and keep with it for a long time, but for the most part it’s about the thrill of learning and exploration.
Negative side-effects may include…
Each of these...
5 tags
Tinkering with POV-Ray
Ray tracers make it easy to generate an image by simulating how light bounces around in three dimensional space. POV-Ray is a particularly sophisticated ray tracer that can be used for the low, low price of $0.00. Go ahead, take a look. The rest can wait.
Cool, isn’t it?! You may have noticed that POV-Ray translates special text files into images. There’s no visual editor for...
1 tag
4 tags
The Implementation of Functional Programming... →
While I was running with my coworker today he got me interested in the implementation details of functional languages. In particular, he described how functional programs can be thought of as a graph of nodes and edges. The program is executed by taking this graph through several reductions until only a single node remains.
Might as well take a look at Simon Peyton Jones’ explanation of...
