Blog Posts

Seen about town today… An elderly couple: Wife: We need to move the truck, but I don’t know how we’ll find a parking spot. Where will we find a parking spot? We have to move the truck or we’ll get a ticket. Husband: Honey, we don’t have a truck. A young woman wearing a sweatshirt. There’s a picture of a golden trophy cup, with shining rays. In big bold letters, the caption: ... Read more …

Seen about town today… A couple in City Hall Park, dancing without any music. (I don’t know how to identify it, but there was a skip and a spin and holding of hands. Hank Dearden III would know.) A man with matted hair wearing bright yellow pants that might have been painted on. An old fellow, with a cane and about six teeth. He was bent over so far his beard was pressed against his sternum. ... Read more …

Programming as if the Correct Data Structure (and Performance) Mattered Tom Ellis, H2 Wiki Simple and to the point. I wonder how many opportunities like this are lurking in my own code. :/ Dijkstra was right: recursion should not be difficult Maxim Koretskyi, Medium Interesting, with some good examples, including some examples from functional programming. I suspect if folks learning to write software were introduced to functional programming earlier, then recursion might not seem so difficult. ... Read more …

Seen about town today…

Cook is coming down!

For any Pythonistas out there. Found in someone else’s code: except UnicodeEncodeError: logging.error(u"Please god kill me now. {}".format(s))

Seen about town today (well, OK, Essex)… A fellow driving a grey Nissan with the windows rolled down. He hangs his left arm out the window. On his forearm a prominent tattoo in large ornate letters… V O L K S W A G E N

I’m working my way through this and will spend more time on it this weekend. Certainly I’m not qualified to judge, but there are some interesting bits to ponder. A Solution of the P versus NP Problem Fortnow, Lipton, Aaronson have all given a preliminary thumbs down without providing specifics. The next few days should be interesting. Chances are, of course, that it’ll get shot down. For others not hip to the significance of this, here’s the tl;dr: Hard unsolved problem in computer science with important implications. ... Read more …

Seen about town today… Oh, my. An embarrassment of riches. Where to begin? Clothing… A tee-shirt emblazoned in the Facebook logo typeface with the word “Farcebook”. A bikini top with cups made of stitched-together cowrie shells. Another tee-shirt reading “I think you want some cake.” Sleeping people… A young man, sitting on a park bench, asleep, head thrown back, mouth agape, drooling. On his chest he wears a baby in a Snugli, asleep, head thrown back, mouth agape, drooling. ... Read more …

Seen about town today… Progress on the “mobile home” (see photos; and yes, those are solar panels on top). The owner was nowhere in sight today. An old lady pushing her very old pup in a baby carriage. A fellow on a long, elaborate motor-trike, with Elmo bungeed to the back seat.