Method Extensions
I’ve come across another programming language feature that I would like to have. The last one was a bit outlandish, and I’d really like to refine it a bit. Dress it up a little. Supposing you were asked to perform…
The Future of the Web should be Lisp
I was reading Steve Yegge’s drunken rant on The Emacs Problem. It wasn’t able to convince me that Lisp was a great language for text processing, but it did convince me that Lisp is a fantastic language for data interchange….
Meaningless is Meaningful
Today I had a long and philosophical discussion with one of my friends. He started the conversation with a baited question: “Have you ever met a Solipsist?”. How could I avoid that one? Of course the conversation delved into the…
Interface Extension
I’ve been programming an alpha-beta AI to play variants of connect-k games. For example, connect-3 on a 3×3 board with gravity off is tic-tac-toe, connect-5 on a 19×19 board with gravity off is the basis of go-moku, while connect-4 on…
Designer Graphics
I have the misfortune of owning all of Ed Tufte’s books. Reading and enjoying these books has given me a sensitivity to data display that now makes me cringe whenever I see a terrible chart. Even in academic papers, benchmark…
Mormon Resignation
Today, I met with the Bishop of my local ward. He’s a really nice guy, and has some personal reasons for disagreeing with some of the teachings of official church leadership (he’s got a gay family member). This made my…
Minds from Agents
Recently, I came across this SEED article, Divide Midns, Specious Souls; which has this deliciously anti-religious, pro-science quote: Within the wide range of works arranged along the axis of soulism, from Life After Death: The Evidence, by Dinesh D’Souza, to…
Trip to Austria
Recently, I made a trip to Austria, visiting my good friend and partner in crimelab, Christoph. On my first day, I walked around Graz. I saw the alien, though I wasn’t impressed with the art inside. I saw the Armory,…
Typestate and SSA
Since Rust was announced, I looked into the underlying idea of Typestate[1]. The most striking aspect about this paper is its age. The authors consider an extension to ordinary type checking to also verify that the state of a variable…
A small TraceMonkey Contribution
I’ve been working on Mozilla’s Tracemonkey source code for quite awhile now as part of my research. The basic goal is to apply a labeling mechanism to JavaScript objects that will help in tracking information flow. Along the way though,…