screaming modems

Emacs: lines of code in various languages

2011-10-26T01:22:00.002+05:00

After reading a flippant remark, I wondered what languages (and how much code in them) made up Emacs. Thanks to cloc and a few minutes with a spreadsheet, I now know the answer to that.

w/aw

2011-05-14T22:34:00.000+05:00

Whine: flat tire.
Possible anti-whine: discovered the source of the random noises from the back of the car: the CNG tank is loose. I probably wouldn't have noticed that for a long time if I hadn't had the flat.

baby's evening in

2011-05-14T16:08:00.000+05:00

The other evening, my wife had to take my mom to a doctor's appointment, and then go shopping. She left the kid with me and made me promise not to use the computer in her absence. Fine, I said. I'll just use my phone...

park and ride, liberty

2011-01-29T20:06:00.000+05:00

I parked at the Park & Ride at Liberty this evening. Pros: excellent view from where I was (fourth floor), clean, guards everywhere. Cons: driving to the exit sucks. Also, Block A on every floor is right next to the ramp; if a car is backing out of a parking spot there and you're driving up the ramp, you'll have to stop partway to let it pass. Also also, the drive to the exit uses the same ramp, and the signs are all wrong ("Keep Right" when it should say "Keep Left").

Still, the view is great. Maybe I'll bring a camera next time.

wanted: python to php

2010-11-04T23:52:00.002+05:00

I'd like to see more <something> to PHP compilers. PHP code is easy to deploy, but annoying to write if you've used better languages.

buy spl, dol?

2010-10-27T16:21:00.000+05:00

It has learnt through sources, that NTC has imposed 25 percent anti-dumping duty on import of hydrogen peroxide from Korea and Taiwan and 71 percent on its import from China. — news item

Descon Oxychem Limited:

Sitara Peroxide Limited:

Suture opening monologue

2010-10-24T02:33:00.003+05:00

How is it that we know who we are? We might wake up in the night, disoriented, and wonder where we are. We may have forgotten where the window, or the door, or the bathroom is, or who is sleeping beside us. We may think perhaps that we have lived through what we just dreamed of. Or we may wonder if we are now still dreaming. But we never wonder who we are.

However confused we might be about every other particular of our existence, we always know that it is us. That we are now who we have always been. We never wake up and wonder, who am I? Because our knowledge of who we are is mediated by what we doctors of the mind call our self schemata -- the richest, most stable and most complex memory structures we have. They are the structures which connect us to our pasts, and allow us to imagine our futures. To lose those connections would be a sign of pathology, a pathology called amnesia.

But it makes no sense to begin the story here, without its history, its past. So, let me take you back to a proper beginning. To a time before identity has been confused.

— Suture

thanks, facebook.

2010-10-17T20:48:00.004+05:00

The Imported Stories feature is no longer available. Most of the sites supported by this feature now allow you to publish stories to Facebook directly from the site.

Gee, thanks. I can no longer republish an RSS/Atom feed to my profile. Now I have to figure out how to republish my Blogger posts. Grr.

Update: I have to import as notes. Unfortunately, it only works for one site, and I already import my reddit submissions. Blah.

spendy phones

2010-10-17T20:40:00.001+05:00

I found an HTC sales center in the Park Lane Tower today. The saleslady said they'd have the HTC Desire Z in at the end of the month, and it'll cost at least Rs 70k. 70k! That's about $815. I'll pass.

postcards and encryption

2010-10-11T01:45:00.001+05:00

People used to use the postcards argument when trying to promote email encryption — “You put sensitive or private information in a letter, instead of writing it on a postcard.” Today, more people than ever use unencrypted email, text messages, and instant messaging. The usual case is that their passwords are encrypted (but that's not even true for a lot of POP3 users). Almost no one sends letters, though they do receive bills and such, and identity theft is a larger issue than it was fifteen years ago or so.

Is there a more relevant analogy than postcards for the current age?

stopping at 3.2, it's late

2010-09-16T02:30:00.002+05:00

Today's problem:

Compute the largest element of a list of reals.
Your function need not behave well if the list is empty.

My solution was to define two functions:

fun max (a:real) b =
     if a > b then a else b;
fun maxls L =
    if (tl L) = nil then (hd L)
    else max (hd L) (maxls (tl L));

The solution on the website is

fun maxList(L: real list) =
    if tl(L) = nil                             (* L is a single element *)
        then hd(L)                             (* the single element is the maximum *)
    else                                       (* assume there are at least 2 elements *)
        if hd(L) > hd(tl(L))                   (* the first element exceeds the second *)
            then maxList(hd(L)::tl(tl(L)))     (* eliminate second element *)
            else maxList(tl(L));               (* eliminate first element *)

My way's not as efficient, but it's easier to follow.

going through "elements of ml programming"

2010-09-15T02:43:00.001+05:00

Just finished chapter 2 (“Getting Started in ML”). One question has me stumped. We're given a bunch of type expressions and asked to provide examples of values that have those types. The one that I can't seem to find an example for is:

((int * int) * (bool list) * real) * (real * string)

I can easily construct an example that matches

((int * int) * bool list * real) * (real * string)

but what has the type (bool list)? A tuple with one element is really just a parenthesized expression (consider the equivalent expressions a + (b * (c)) and a + (b * c)).

I'm doing the exercises with Moscow ML.

Tale of the Tesla coil, or learned idiocy [by Julian Assange, June 26, 2006]

2010-08-31T15:44:00.000+05:00

Tiki Swain, is Science Works demonstrator. Science Works has a lightning generator, a 2 million volt Tesla coil, a very noisy and impressive machine. She writes:

So I've asked the question "What is lightning?". Usually I get the older kids (who've learnt a few things at school) saying "Electricity", "static electricity", "electric current", "a flow of electric charges". And younger kids say things like "It's a bright light", "a bolt from the sky", "it happens in a storm", "it's a light that comes with a big bang". This time, I got emotive/experiential words - very unusual. I'd ask what lightning was, and they'd say "It's scary". "It's loud". "It's exciting". "It's noisy".

The younger children's descriptions are powerful, communicatable phenominological descriptions of nature. The older children's descriptions are useless, unexperienced rules that they've learnt to regurgitate. One may as well say 'God makes it go'. And that is preceicely the point, authority makes it go.

By being an adult asking for a question to which she obviously already knew the answer, she had given them some kind of regurgitation context. The older children give answers that fit social expections not answers that are meaningful --- because the social expectation is to produce meaningless answers! The younger children are not yet sophisticated enough at understanding social context so reveal what they really think i.e something with predictive and descriptive power.

Why do things fall to earth? Answering 'gravity' only tells you about a rule human beings have agreed on. The rule is, when asked why stuff falls one should reply with the word 'gravity' and not, say 'love' or 'God'. But it is a pleasure to say that apples 'love' planets just as much as planets 'love' apples and that 'love' fades with inverse square distance. Ah huh! There is your true content, it's the predictive description of behavior in the last part of the sentence, which we may call anything we wish. The younger children describe the behavior of the natural world. The older children describe the behavior of society alone. They're not stupid. They know their survival depends on saying the right thing, at all possible times to people in power

did the baby fall off the bed on his birthday?!

2010-08-27T17:58:00.000+05:00

2010-06-23T15:10:00.000+05:00

These work well enough for me to be comfortable with them:

Problems: twittering-mode doesn't give me a threaded display. That might be a lot of work. It takes care of OAuth issues, though. Weblogger.el doesn't post labels on blogger posts. That might be easy to fix.

clone of my own

2010-06-23T00:16:00.002+05:00

I was just finishing up on some commits at work when I lost power. The UPS my DSL modem is on isn't working properly, so I couldn't push the commits to the server.

When I got home I realized I could've simply cloned the work repo, put a copy of it on my USB stick, and done a git push from my home box. Blah.

well, that didn't work as expected

2009-12-12T00:01:00.002+05:00

% units
586 units, 56 prefixes
You have: 1 year
You want: dogyear
unknown unit 'dogyear'

amen

2009-10-11T23:11:00.001+06:00


The only true unbelievers are those who shun the electronic media, and 
seek to speak to one another only through pen and paper.  Yea, for those 
have no conception of the power they refuse.  Let us pray, friends, that 
they all shall one day learn the joy, the wonder, and the comradeship that 
flows through the electronic media.

— Priemacst Morgan Schweers

rules

2009-09-14T19:33:00.001+06:00

"i have a rule about, you know, not wearing eyeliner under my eye because it makes me look like an albino goth whore."

twitter: what is it?

2009-08-23T17:42:00.000+06:00

I’m puzzled by the criticism that Twitter has become a place for celebrities. While I’m certainly aware that we have celebrities on our service, I’m not forced to follow them. I think I follow maybe 5, and they’re fairly minor celebrities at that. If you find the communication with a celebrity (or any other user) on Twitter “empty”, simply unfollow them. Just as the mainstream media may be tasteful, nobody is prying your eyes open and forcing you to watch or read or listen; if anything, undesirable content is easier to avoid on Twitter than on most forms of communication.

New media are not a threat to some more innately authenticate, measurably human way of being and interacting. People’s credulity and willingness to be manipulated by other people - whether those people are shouting from a mountaintop, talking into a radio station microphone, or texting into a mobile phone - is a perpetual function of education, circumstance, and opportunity.

— Alex Payne

so, i bought this book...

2009-04-13T22:31:00.000+05:00

so, i bought this book...

hey, what's this?

er...

in case you need it: finding postgresql tables with a specific column

2009-02-27T16:05:00.004+05:00

I have a database with a bunch of tables that all have "username" columns (actual varchars, not foreign keys). Two or three times a year, I end up having to change that for a user (usernames are email addresses, and users change their email accounts, or switch jobs or whatever). Previously I'd relied on a bunch of update statements that blindly attempted to change that field in all tables, but I finally decided today to write a script to automate that task.

Finding all the tables with username as a column:


select c.relname from pg_class c
    join pg_attribute a on (c.oid = a.attrelid)
    join pg_roles r2 on (c.relowner = r2.oid)
where a.attname = 'username' and c.relkind = 'r' and r2.rolname = 'pkf';

Time to write the script (with error checking, tests, etc): about an hour. Time I usually spend changing usernames without the script: about 10 minutes a year. So, a net win, or net loss?

I, Nezahualcoyotl, ask this:

2009-02-11T00:12:00.001+05:00

Is it true one really lives on the earth? Not forever on earth, only a little while here. Though it be jade it falls apart, though it be gold it wears away, though it be quetzal plumage it is torn asunder. Not forever on earth, only a little while here. I comprehend the secret, the hidden: O my lords! Thus we are, we are mortal, men through and through, we all will have to go away, we all will have to die on earth. Like a painting, we will be erased. Like a flower, we will dry up here on earth. Like plumed vestments of the precious bird, that precious bird with the agile neck, we will come to an end... Think on this, my lords, eagles and ocelots, though you be of jade, though you be of gold, you also will go there, to the place of the fleshless. We will have to disappear, no one can remain.

qotd

2009-02-11T00:10:00.000+05:00

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy.

— Pablo Picasso

the coming anarchy

2009-02-04T18:54:00.000+05:00