Experimental, impressionistic sub-paragraph tumblin' (think obstsalat)
17jan2007
The Pinocchio Problem, by Steve Yegge. “See, it seems like there’s a good way to design software. A best way, even. And nobody does it. Well, a few people do, but even in those rare instances, I think it’s accidental half the time.” Very good points, must read. (A NACK on Haskell, though…)
Hindus oppose swastika ban in EU, “Hindus in Europe are opposing a German call for an European Union ban on the display of swastikas, the 5,000-year-old Hindu religious symbol that became the insignia of the Nazi Party, saying it was ‘sacred’ to the community.” Banning has never helped anything.
Positive Swastikas on Flickr.
more sometime but, the best shortest Lawrence Lessig post. Must read.
A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra, by Victor Shoup. A CC’ed PDF is available.
A snake when he is sleeping
A drunkard when he prays
I don’t believe you go to heaven when you’re good
Everything goes to hell, anyway…
— Tom Waits, Everything Goes To Hell
Das Göttinger Manifest der 18 Atomwissenschaftler vom 12. April 1957, “Die Pläne einer atomaren Bewaffnung der Bundeswehr erfüllen die unterzeichnenden Atomforscher mit tiefer Sorge. […] Die Unterzeichnenden fühlen sich daher verpflichtet, öffentlich auf einige Tatsachen hinzuweisen, die alle Fachleute wissen, die aber der Öffentlichkeit noch nicht hinreichend bekannt zu sein scheinen.”
reLEAF is a folded aluminium sheet that is shaped like a leaf and is used for collecting rain water directly into flower pots.
Geoff Berner “an accordion aficionado from Canada’s west coast, plays a unique blend of klezmer, folk, and punk music”. Some wunderfull stuff.
NestedVM (PDF), slides by Brian Alliet and Adam Megacz. They run C inside Java by compiling to MIPS and emulating that code. WJW.
The Droste effect is a Dutch term for a specific kind of recursive picture. A picture exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on.
Quick and dirty code folding, “Emacs has several modes providing this functionality with various degrees of sophistication: outline-mode, allout, hide-show or folding-mode come to mind. Over the years, i’ve used several of these packages (and perhaps i’ll share some tips on them in future postings). But i’ve noticed that, at the end of the day, i have usually little use for folding.”
I take this chance and I jump up on her
Damned if I don’t land right on top of her
Well she takes off, runnin’ up on to that ridge
Higher than I’ve ever been before.
— The Byrds, Chestnut Mare
Dream Cartridge No. 4, “So, yeah, what’s going on in the dream world these days?”
PHP vs. Ruby on Rails. An evolutionary story of a Web Developer and his tools, by Nathaniel S. H. Brown. “Rails has and will continue to be imitated as it has already been in nearly every language.” The really sad thing IMO is that some people only realize PHP sucks when they see Rails.
To eavesdrop on breaking glaciers from within, and new islands turn up. Surprise.