Merovingian Neckwear
Somehow, I feel that I betray my cyberpunk heritage because I’ve recently found it entertaining to don extravagant neckwear. But, my recently conducted anthropological expedition has revealed evidence that I am in fact upholding a veritably geek tradition.
KernCUE
This past weekend, I made the trip up to Bakersfield. It took far longer than necessary to drive there because, even at midnight, the 5 is clogged with traffic. I went to attend the KernCue conference. Although, it focused exclusively…
The Progress Phallus
My friend Ray runs numerical simulations and wanted to have a decent progress bar for his code. A bit of web searching revealed some code, that takes care of this automatically. However, we thought that an ordinary progress bar is…
Cool stuff to look at
Steve Yegge gave a nice talk at OSCON, What would you do with your own Google?, compelling us all to focus on math, stats, machine learning, and the understanding the core fundamentals. We should be working to make the world…
Higher-Order Functions in Java
This Summer I’ve been teaching Intro to Computer Languages. It’s a really awesome class, with alot of good material in it. Last week, my students got back the results of their midterms, and were disappointed in their scores. Immediately, I…
Arrow’s voting theorem of Economics
I was in the dining hall, and the TV there had some talking heads babbling about the stock market. I couldn’t really make out what they were saying, but it set the stage in my mind for some other thoughts….
Type-dispatch with Exceptions
I’m one of those Object Oriented programmers that consider type-inspection to be a design flaw. Much to my chagrin, I’ve found myself making occasional use of the Java instanceof keyword. In my most recent class lecture, we discussed Exceptions, and…
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,…
High-Tech Life
There are many things associated with a high-tech lifestyle. Most of these things are electronic: cellphone, kindle, PDA, laptop, video-conferencing, etc. I think it’s the more subtle things that actually matter more. The things that aren’t visible, that are often…
Icons for Government
It occured to me that if I’m to create a new country I also have to create symbols for that country to rally behind. For a flag I’d want to have something that incorporates Freedom and Chaos. But there are…