All articles (187)
2012-04-02-181044 : Welcome to John McCarthy's new website.
From the website : John was a legendary computer scientist at Stanford University who developed time-sharing, invented LISP, and founded the field of Artificial Intelligence. In March 2011 John launched Project JMC with the objective to make his wor ...
2012-04-02-142839 : Quick Sort in Shen
A Shen type-checked implementation of Quick Sort is even more elegant/terse compared with the CL version posted previously. Pattern-matching and currying make this possible. (tc +) (define filter {(A --> boolean) --> (list A) --> (list A)} _ [] -> [ ...
2012-03-30-170516 : Quick Sort in Common Lisp
After watching some of Tim Roughgarden's videos on sorting algorithms, I thought I'd post an implementation of quick sort in Common Lisp as an example of a sorting algorithm implemented in CL. It's a simple enough example(at The complete code can be ...
2012-03-14-222623 : Happy Pi Day in Shen
Here's a port of the previous Qi II code to Shen. Run with Hakan Raberg's 0.1.4 version of shen.clj (Shen implemented in Clojure !). \* Accurately calculates N digits of Pi using Machin's formula with fixed point arithmetic and variable guards digit ...
2012-02-25-165802 : Robot readable world
How do robots see the world? How do they gather meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us? This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye. ...
2012-02-25-163058 : Smile or Die (AKA Mandatory Optimism)
Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking. ...
2012-02-25-051156 : Rock might not be completely dead
Always been a fan of the 00s shoe-gaze emo crap. "I guess I thought you were the flavor ..." Placebo, it's slightly real, yes ? More substanstial things to follow next month, stay tuned ... ...
2012-01-15-150952 : Hey kids, just say NO to programming !
Cory Doctorow's latest talk 'The Coming War on General Purpose Computing' really puts things in perspective about life in the 21st century. This got me thinking more about functional programming languages and how they could be a future casualty in a ...
2011-11-16-212752 : Debate: The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion
In the words of Blaise Pascal, mathematician and Catholic, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." Does religion breed intolerance, violence, and the promotion of medieval ideas? Or should we ...
2011-11-11-111111 : Clojure/Conj 2011
Sold out attendance marked this being the second premiere conference for Clojure. What I realized is just how great the people are in this community. No, seriously. There's far less ego than with many other communities. This is a great sign for the ...
2011-10-06-101806 : Sam Harris needs to come out of the wardrobe
Harris' work regarding Morality and Philosophy falls far short compared with his work on Religion (The End of Faith). The Moral Landscape was disappointing and so is his recent essay 'Lying'. No surprise as he appears to be a Kantian. While he claim ...
2011-10-02-171602 : Overtone
Overtone is an open source audio environment being created to explore musical ideas from synthesis and sampling to instrument building, live-coding and collaborative jamming. In this video Sam Aaron gives a fast-paced introduction to a number of key ...
2011-09-23-063927 : Shen/Kl arrive
The first publicly available version of Shen/Kl has been released. The Shen mission is to develop an ultra-portable version of Qi that can run under a wide variety of platforms and which incorporates missing features in Qi such as streams. The targe ...
2011-09-11-182125 : 40 Year Old 3D Computer Graphics (Pixar, 1972)
In 1972 Ed Catmull (founder of Pixar) and his colleagues created the world's first 3D rendered movie, an animated version of Ed's left hand. This is the film that they produced. It includes some "making of" footage (around 1:30) and some other early ...
2011-09-05-163013 : If powerful AI goes bad ...
... forget the T100s and T1000s, fembots are the most likely outcome (at least according to 70s TV). Even the 6-million dollar man and the bionic woman had a tough time dealing with them. I'm glad I never saw this bionic woman episode as a kid, it r ...
2011-07-23-101007 : ClojureScript Demo : Convex Hull
*Update* : bug-fix when hull was being incorrectly calculated due to there being duplicate points generated in the random set. ClojureScript looks like a solid approach to building applications that target JavaScript VMs. It's built on top of Google ...
2011-07-06-164206 : Purely Functional Data Structures & Algorithms : Fast Fourier Transform in Qi
In this second post in this series we look at an implementation of the always useful Fast Fourier Transform. (FFT) An algorithm for computing the Fourier transform of a set of discrete data values. Given a finite set of data points, for example a pe ...
2011-06-28-141124 : Purely Functional Data Structures & Algorithms : Red-Black Trees in Qi
*Update* 2011/06/28 : Source has been modified to compile with Shen This is the first in a series of posts that will demonstrate the implementation of many well-known(and less known) data structures and algorithms using a purely functional approach. ...
2011-06-16-152656 : Chaitin Proving Darwin
White paper : To a mathematical theory of evolution and biological creativity We present an information-theoretic analysis of Darwin's theory of evolution, modeled as a hill-climbing algorithm on a fitness landscape. Our space of possible organisms ...
2011-06-15-105658 : Spring/Summer 2011 Books
Marvin Minksy's - The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind Minsky argues that emotions are different ways to think that our mind uses to increase our intelligence. He challenges the distinc ...
2011-05-22-202251 : Ancient Aliens TV Series
There are a number of books on various 'Ancient Aliens' theories. The quality of these books varies greatly in the amount of evidence that they put forward(if any in some cases). As with any controversial topic there is always fantastic speculation ...
2011-05-08-110723 : IAMX : Volatile Times
Chris Corner : Philosopher, Poet, Musician, Human Being. ...
2011-03-19-000336 : Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
Based on the monumental 1957 novel by Ayn Rand, this film adaptation of the first part of the novel (production name '2016') is in theaters on April 15th(ofcourse !) after nearly 40 years of being in Hollywood development hell. On the upside, the hi ...
2011-03-14-084257 : Happy PI day ! (in QiII)
Qi is the future of Lisp. It is Lisp with many great features such as pattern-matching, a turing complete static type system (even more powerful than Haskell's type system) and many others. So in the spirit of PI day, here's an implementation that c ...
2011-01-08-140227 : Philosophy and Lisp
Programming language wars don't have to be religious based wars. Programming languages should be rooted in philosophy. The more a programming language is rooted in sound philosophy the more value it has. Over the years, many of the posts on this blo ...
2010-12-19-222902 : Artificial Intuition
Artificial Intuition - A New Possible Path To Artificial Intelligence - by Monica Anderson Artificial Intelligence was born in Computer Science departments, and inherited their value sets including Correctness. This mindset, this necessity to be log ...
2010-12-02-124147 : Debate: Does the Universe have a purpose ?
November 13th, a debate over whether or not the universe has a purpose was debated by two teams. One team (Atheists) included Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and Matt Ridley. The other team (Theists) was composed of William Lane Craig, Douglas Gei ...
2010-11-30-133826 : 64-bit Snow Leopard SDL binaries
I picked up the new 11" macbook air and have been using it for the last couple of weeks as my primary dev machine. It's been great. This was after spending over a year on Linux. Getting SDL with lispbuilder setup and running on OS X these days is qu ...
2010-10-23-173550 : Anaphoric(aka 'Un-hygenic') macros in CL
As an example let's look at an algorithm that's fairly common : breadth first traversal of a binary tree. Also called level-order traversal. Wikipedia: "In graph theory, breadth-first search (BFS) is a graph search algorithm that begins at the root ...
2010-10-07-084756 : Ruby 'compiler' in CL
The implementers of existing Ruby VMs have gone the way of C, C++ and Java. There is another possibility. Why not implement Ruby in Common Lisp ? Ok, let's take the first shot and implement a subset of the Ruby language. Just enough to run some simp ...
2010-09-19-094956 : Facts about STM
These days there just can't be enough said to counter the hype that comes with STM. The following paper is an eye opening read(it measures actual peformance of STM). Hopefully some of the STM faithful will re-consider their fanatic beliefs. Software ...
2010-07-22-092530 : π in assembly (spigot algorithm)
// pi_spigot.s - calculates Pi using a spigot algorithm // as an array of n digits in base 10000. // http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SpigotAlgorithm.html // // x86-64/SSE3 with for Linux, Intel, gnu assembler, gcc // // assemble: as pi_spigot.s -o pi_s ...
2010-06-29-205117 : Google to acquire ITA ?
Update 2010-06-30 : So just over a day after I posted this entry Google announced that they have acquired ITA. Announcement There was buzz back in April about Google possibly acquiring ITA Software. A few days ago Dan posted that these were just rum ...
2010-06-19-141323 : Summer 2010 reading
"Let over Lambda - 50 Years of Lisp" by Doug Hoyte This one had been sitting on my bookshelf for almost a year. "Let Over Lambda is one of the most hardcore computer programming books out there. Starting with the fundamentals, it describes the most ...
2010-06-16-113907 : So you say that programming language choice does not matter ...
One popular interview question that never dies : write some code to reverse a singly linked-list. Now understanding the problem for interviewees is one thing but getting it right in an imperative language seems to be quite a feat based on my experie ...
2010-06-03-124130 : The true force behind Academia's resounding success
From a recent article by one of the most reputable news agencies : "Harvard is proud to honor the tremendous merits of Adderall, without which many of you would not be sitting here today," Faust said in her opening address to the nearly 1,900 unblin ...
2010-06-02-201855 : Convex Hull with Aki-Toussaint heuristics
;; Calculates the convex hull of a set of points using the Graham scan ;; algorithm. (ns i27.geom.convex-hull (:use [i27.geom.misc :only (angle cross-product)])) (defn presort-points [pts] "Presorts the cartesian points in descending order by angle. ...
2010-05-24-214230 : Bucket sort (Clojure)
(defn bucket-sort "Runs in O(n) time." [items] (let [len (count items) mx (apply max items) bucket-size (inc (int (/ mx len))) buckets (reduce (fn [v n] (conj v [])) [] (range (+ bucket-size (/ mx bucket-size))))] (letfn [(distrib-nums [v n] (let [i ...
2010-05-15-093206 : The Dangers of Computer Science Theory
Quotes from Don E. Knuth : "If we make an unbiased examination of the accomplishments made by mathematicians to the real world of computer programming, we are forced to conclude that, so far, the theory has actually done more harm than good. There a ...
2010-05-03-215232 : The dirtiest most comic answer ...
These guys may have saved what's left of hip-hop (at least according to the LA Times). This shit is amazing. Ninja’s flow is on fire on Enter the Ninja and it shows that he’s a killer MC. On that track, Yo-Landi Vi$$er has a high-pitch, vulnerable s ...
2010-03-30-184355 : A molecule viewer in Clojure
Here's a molecule viewer using OpenGL in Clojure. Implemented so that I could compare this type of development with Common Lisp (and also with using OpenGL development in C). OpenGL with Clojure can be really fun using Zach Tellman's Penumbra. Comin ...
2010-03-30-100114 : The Post Academic Research Life
From a recent interview with Mark Tarver : "Post-academia life is not simple. For many academics leaving the university, there is no equivalent employment. If you are a medieval historian, there are scant opportunities outside of university for your ...
2010-03-14-072200 : Happy π approximation day/night (in assembly) !
// pi_x64.s - calculates Pi using the Leibniz formula. // Each iteration prints a closer approximation to 50 digits. // This is not an optimal implementation and it runs forever. // // x86-64/SSE3 with for Linux, Intel, gnu assembler, gcc // // asse ...
2010-02-26-100553 : Do you really know Lisp ?
DISCLAIMER : THIS IS A LANGUAGE RANT. DO NOT READ IF YOUR BPF* IS LESS THAN 0.37. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE SEVERE CONFUSION, UNJUSTIFIED ANGER, GASSY DISCHARGE, INCOMPREHENSIBLE DIALOG, ERRATIC DEGRADATION OF CHARACTER AND POSSIBLY A COMPLETE EMOTIO ...
2010-01-14-113641 : All in all you're just a-nother gadget in the web 2.0 wall
You are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier : From a Q & A with the author ... Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse? Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Int ...
2009-12-25-174540 : Palindromes (Clojure)
* Update 2009-12-27 * Using lists instead of vectors brings the Clojure version down from around 20x to 10X slower than the CL version. One reader correctly stated that when doing performance comparisons between languages and implementations you wan ...
2009-12-09-005513 : Winter 2009 reading
Sonoluminescence: A Galaxy of Nanostars Created in a Beaker (NASA) The Idea Factory - Learning to Think at MIT, Pepper White : "This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world's great technological universities. Pepper White ...
2009-11-03-162608 : "V" for the 00s
A remake of the classic 80s show airs tonight : The old one was pretty cool and the new one doesn't look too bad from the trailer. The LA Times gave it a great review. The Chicago Tribune also praised the remake and had an alternative take on the st ...
2009-11-02-193235 : The Church of Academia
From the horse's mouth no less : Since it is the system that ratifies the product—ipso facto, no one outside the community of experts is qualified to rate the value of the work produced within it—the most important function of the system is not the ...
2009-10-29-223937 : The Power of Negative Thinking
"An optimist believes that this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist 'fears' that this may be true." Some possible starting points on your journey back to realism (if you should choose to accept it) : A bibliography of Barbara Ehren ...
2009-10-21-201207 : Liebe ist für alle da
This just out ... Liebe ist für alle da - P***y "You've got a Pussy, I have a dick So what's the problem, life's too short let's do it quick" ...
2009-10-21-192742 : I wish this would be your color ...
Einstürzende Neubauten - Sabrina ...
2009-10-17-212901 : The Half-Life of Knowledge
Even a superficial study of learning theory can have great value : The following article, "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" is a great example. High-lights include : Some significant trends in learning: Many learners will move in ...
2009-10-16-210422 : FR - STK
Stranger Than Kindness - Fever Ray previously, previously and previously. ...
2009-10-16-010437 : feral again
This Must be it - Royksopp ...
2009-10-13-012103 : 'The Two Cultures of Mathematics'
... (i) The point of solving problems is to understand mathematics better. (ii) The point of understanding mathematics is to become better able to solve problems. ... The Two Cultures of Mathematics by W. T. Gowers, article on problem solving vs the ...
2009-09-28-220242 : New Alice in Chains
'All Secrets Known', word ... The full album is only on iTunes :-( ...
2009-09-27-150858 : Can I come over ?
previously and previously. They are playing a US tour currently ... ...
2009-09-18-203946 : Clojure Quine
A Quine is a program that produces its complete source code as its only output. Because Clojure is a Lisp, it is especially well suited to writing Quines. This is a quine implemented in Clojure. ((fn [x] (list x (list (quote quote) x))) (quote (fn [ ...
2009-09-14-124516 : Play Pong!
A few updates and bug fixes from the first version. You can now play it here. ACHTUNG ! : This requires unrestricted perms so you should probably just grab the code and compile it yourself. ...
2009-09-13-011206 : Surrogates
The trailer actually doesn't look so bad. As far as robot movies go (and this one being based on a comic book). ...
2009-09-12-122605 : Pong! (in Clojure)
* UPDATED : 2009-09-17 * - rewritten in a functional style that is more idiomatic of Clojure. A nostalgic attempt to try and learn some GUI programming in Clojure. Inspired by Pong in Haskell. Play online here. The computer seems unbeatable(but it's ...
2009-09-09-090909 : 09-09-09
N-dimensional star tetrahedron. The numbers of each point on a line all add to 27 (3 * 9 or 3 cubed or 9 + 9 + 9). Other connections can also be made by addding 3 other imaginary points. The points on these connections also add up to 27. The center ...
2009-08-31-132739 : The Heretick and the Holie
"Thine holier programmere shoulde withe faithe resiste suche luciferian powers whiche springeth forthe frome thou forbidden language, all withe unquestioning obedience unto thine Moste Holie Churche of Thy Dogmatick Industrie ande Acadamiea whiche d ...
2009-08-21-131739 : Calculating π in Clojure (Salamin-Brent)
Took a shot at implementing a PI digit generator in Clojure using a 'fast' algorithm. It seemed like a decent enough excercise to try and understand something about performance in Clojure. MacBook Pro - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz - 4GB RAM Java(TM) S ...
2009-08-19-011225 : Clojure : The zombie-reanimated corpse of Lisp
* updated 2009-08-21 * * updated 2009-08-20 * !!! DISCLAIMER !!! Nowadays it's frowned upon to criticize anything in society. It's quite pervasive. That is unless you happen to also be criticizing the same thing that a group of other people are also ...
2009-08-10-104159 : Another slice of π ?
The previous Common Lisp and Haskell functions to generate the digits of PI where only accurate between 10000 and 20000 digits. The algorithm uses an approximation where we discard a certain number of 'guard' digits to get an accurate result. Some b ...
2009-08-05-223808 : The stupid, the proud ...
... they blow our houses down. IAMX - The Stupid, The Proud (Live @ Loreley / Berlin / 2009) ...
2009-07-26-145025 : How DNA copies itself
Video behind the link. ...
2009-07-23-131250 : Anthropomorphic shower
Video behind the link. Now for horrific, and yet contemporary 'piss your pants' comedy, apply the same formula to Religion, Politics, Economics etc. ...
2009-07-23-094212 : Generating π in Haskell
Haskell beats CL quite comfortably using the same algorithm : module Main( main ) where import System( getArgs ) arccot :: Integer -> Integer -> Integer arccot x unity = arccot' x unity 0 start 1 1 where start = unity `div` x arccot' x unity sum xpo ...
2009-07-23-093726 : Generating π in CL (faster)
Thanks to metacircular for pointing out that (floor (/ x y)) can be written as (floor x y) while avoiding the intermediate rational. (defun machin-pi (digits) "Calculates PI digits using fixed point arithmetic and Machin's formula with double recurs ...
2009-07-22-134405 : Generating π in CL
Update 2009-07-23 : Faster version in CL and a Haskell version. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A trivial approximation using the Leibniz formula. (defun leibniz-pi() (labels ((local-pi(sum n) (if (< ...
2009-07-10-231243 : A fast MAPCONCAT implementation in Common Lisp
Here's an implementation of Emacs Lisp's MAPCONCAT function for Common Lisp. (defun mapconcat (fun list sep) (when list (let ((~sep (with-output-to-string (*standard-output*) (map nil (lambda (ch) (princ (if (char= #\~ ch) "~~" ch))) sep)))) (format ...
2009-07-04-143655 : The counter balances of society and government
"No nation however powerful, any more than an individual, can be unjust with impunity. Sooner or later, public opinion, an instrument merely moral in the beginning, will find occasion physically to inflict its sentences on the unjust... The lesson i ...
2009-05-30-093822 : Chain and the Gang
So as usual I'm late to the party but better late than never right ? Even if left-field indie rock is not your thing, Ian Svenonius' new band's debut is pretty groovy and anything but weak. Possibly some of his best work to date. Sarah Pedal's contr ...
2009-05-25-171737 : Stop making college students sit through commencement speeches
From Bill Maher's 'New Rules' (2009-05-15) : You've just gone years into debt for a worthless diploma, and now here's a reward: 20 minutes of motivational bullshit from Coach Bobby Knight. Now, maybe I'm just upset because I've never given a commenc ...
2009-05-23-173621 : Beautiful sounds
'God is an Astronaut' has made some of the most beautiful and telling music this millenium. From 2003s 'The Beginning of the End' : ...
2009-05-06-113423 : It's good to be wrong about Lisp performance
The last article ended with a challenge hoping that someone would come up with an improved version of the boggle solver that beats my version. Well someone did, they also proved that with this particular algorithm the Lisp version can match C within ...
2009-05-04-185802 : IWTB (in Lisp performance) - a followup
The previous article had some serious traffic yesterday and today. Due to abuse of the moderation system on some sites I've been forced to present my response here separately. To the SBCL contributor : Relax, SBCL is still a great Lisp compiler. It ...
2009-05-03-195227 : I want to believe (in Lisp performance)
* Update 2009-05-06 : The challenge has been met ! See the new graphs of performance. * http://iam.elbenshira.com/archives/151_integral-calculus-in-haskell/ ********** For those that are unhappy about this not being a Symbolic Integration example then please read Norvig's "Paradigms of A ...
2009-04-09-020511 : Visualization of SBCL development history since 2000
My curiousity got the better of me tonight. Video behind the link. ...
2009-04-09-010147 : Live Lisp coding as art.
Andrew Sorenson is doing some beautiful live "Lisp coding as art" with synthesized sound and OpenGL. Give the video some time to start up or skip ahead (at least 3 minutes). ...
2009-04-07-135246 : Problems with optimizing Common Lisp code
Before I go any further : let me state upfront that knowing Lisp has changed me as a programmer for the best. It's been an invaluable experience that I've carried into every corner of my career and every other language that I've coded with. Now that ...
2009-04-06-131523 : Where the action is (not here)
Stockholm : June 12 - 13 2009 * Neil Young * Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds * Pixies * The Pretenders * Fever Ray * Duffy * Seasick Steve * Jenny Wilson * Markus Krunegård More artists are expected to be announced. Thanks to the music industry it doesn ...
2009-04-05-014219 : A language analogy for the decade
Ron Garret puts it's perfectly : "Whatever problems I may have, an unwillingness to learn new things is not one of them. I love to learn new things. That's one of the reasons I hate Java, because learning Java didn't teach me anything except how tru ...
2009-03-21-133911 : Books for Spring 2009
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley : Re-reading but not from any paradise-engineering paranoia perspective. Simply insightful, focused and a great style. First covered this in high school decades ago. It's ironic and deviously cool that this was actual ...
2009-03-09-001542 : 'Transcendent Man' film trailer
Transcendent Man introduces the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, the renowned futurist who journeys the world offering his vision of a future in which we will merge with our machines, can live forever, and are billions of times more intelligent...all ...
2009-03-05-143729 : Mouse stem cells
Mouse embryonic stem cells move, grow, and divide in culture. ...
2009-03-03-115829 : Lynch & King ?
Fever Ray - When I Grow Up (newest video) ...
2009-02-24-014246 : Transition complete
The site content has finally been moved into the new system. It's all in Common Lisp now. It took longer than expected(not for any technical reasons) but mostly because the content had to be exported from the old Typo(Ruby/Rails) and then scrubbed a ...
2009-02-07-132700 : This will never end because I want more...
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2008-10-20-140700 : Lisp50 update
More info here with pictures. See lispy's insightful coverage on the talks if you couldn't make it. One of the highlights was getting to sign a copy of Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual that was then gifted to John McCarthy after the event ! (Richard Gab ...
2008-09-07-211035 : File under 'CREEPY YET SEVERELY HOT'
Cute levitating Nordic android gynoid that bleeds white synthetic 'milk' blood and really knows how to rock out ... ...What else is there ? (in spite of listening to 'The Last Resort' and '...The Chronicles' for years they still maintain incredibly ...
2008-08-03-151423 : The state of non-commerical CL implementations
Dan Weinreib's Common Lisp Implementations: A SurveyALU's Common Lisp ImplementationsBuilding stable and scalable high-volume network servers on open-source common CL implementations ...
2008-05-01-000046 : 'Work ethic' vs. Relaxation in startups
welcome back mr. sun (beltaine is here) This collection of paragraphs is about * BIG SIGH *...working in startups however much of it might apply elsewhere. (Like there isn't enough to read about this over-hyped topic on the web already).Actually t ...
2008-04-24-001241 : Phibiophillia
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2008-02-18-194948 : Some 2007 Reading / Listening
ReadingRobert Cialdini's "Influence" - Plenty of social psychology observations that should be common sense if you're paying attention to the world around you. Read it on recommendation thanks to Scott Adams. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" - Yea yea ...
2008-01-05-160921 : Firefox 3.0 BETA 2 on FreeBSD 6
UPDATE (2008-01-06) : Here's a 64-bit build for amd :firefox-3.0b2-en-US.freebsd62-x86_64-static.tar.bz2 (md5 21bfa5c75d9b3df11f939a07a9bb94bc) If anyone wants to test Firefox 3.0 BETA 2 on FreeBSD then then here's a static build. (I've only tried i ...
2008-01-02-181603 : True Stories About the Future
A movie with a cast including Ray Kurzweil(as himself), Marvin Minsky, self-help guru Anthony Robbins, Alvin Toffler, Mitch Kapor, Bill Joy, Aubrey de Gray and more.This is a joke right ? Wrong. It's near, apparently some time in 2008.Plot outline : ...
2007-12-17-232154 : What is the original promise of the World Wide Web ?
(watch the complete interview) ' Restoring the Promise of the World Wide Web "Commercial aspects of the web have diverted its potential. Firmage wants to untangle the web and inspire young minds," concludes Doug Fabrizio about his interview with Joe ...
2007-12-06-225008 : Commercial Software Development & Scarcity
Zyzyxx Rd., Mojave Desert, California"... the commercial software community has developed one particular response to resource limitation: a fevered, workaholic approach to software development—error prone, hectic, family-destroying, health-degradin ...
2007-11-30-172600 : Haskell vs. Lisp (tail-recursion)
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2007-11-06-145425 : All those giga-monkeys can't be wrong (or can they ?)
On Oct. 9, 1903, the New York Times wrote: "The flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years."On the same day, on Kill Devil ...
2007-09-13-000152 : Bottle that can filter viruses out of water
According to this telegraph article : "an Ipswich-based businessman invented a £190 bottle that makes foul-smelling water drinkable in seconds."That's about US$380 over here. Each bottle can filter 4000 or 6000 liters without changing the filter. A ...
2007-08-30-224121 : Reverse superclass envy and bad mental pointers
I've ranted previously about Python and made promises of future posts about why Ruby is so much cooler. It really is and the topic of this article covers one of the common idioms used by most Ruby folks who may have taken a shot at their own domain s ...
2007-08-18-131643 : worthy recycled bitpop/bitrock
press play on tape... "ghosts 'n goblins" "monty on the run" (yes that's a violin) also bubble bobble monkey island great giana sisters commando outrun etc etc. ...
2007-07-25-235940 : flecked
Flektor is really cool. It's amazing(and really fun) what you can do with 40 minutes and some images: 'Video game development approach to web app developmentFlektor was acquired by Fox Interactive primarily for the great product that they built for ...
2007-07-23-002520 : Recursive reduction
The previous post was pretty grumpy about Python/Django and I was going to write a follow-up about why Ruby is a better language (unfortunately not the platform's performance just yet but that is soon to change with YARV).For this post to appear more ...
2007-07-12-163820 : Red vs. Blue (or don't be so blue man)
Pointing out the cons of a language like Java can be risky. The responses sometimes are that such attempts are based on highly subjective opinions. Let's take byte code manipulation for example. Many Java coders find this invaluable for doing anythin ...
2007-06-25-145904 : Making class methods re-usable from modules (in Ruby)
module TestMod enddef TestMod.append_features(klass) def klass.method puts "#{self}: in method" end endclass Class1 include TestMod endclass Class2 include TestMod endClass1.method() Class2.method() This should work even without the autho ...
2007-06-18-171406 : FEISTY AND NON-COMPLIANT
The last 2 weeks running Ubuntu on my macbook have been great. Feisty was almost a flawless install detecting all hardware. Setting up X was a little tedious but not that bad.Things that work:Trackpad (with some tweaking for 2 finger scroll).Wireless ...
2007-06-10-142803 : "Oh, what a tangled web we weave..."
The Arnolfini Portrait - Jan van Eyck, 1434 Oil on oak panel of 3 vertical boards 82.2 (panel 84.5) × 60 (panel 62.5) cm, 32.4 × 23.6 in National Gallery, London The following quote usually comes to mind when thinking of this famous work "Who d ...
2007-05-24-142331 : RIA/D
Thanks John for bringing this one up.The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) is a coding scheme for text analysis that is designed to measure 'primordial' and conceptual content. Primordial thought is the kind of free-form, associative thinking invol ...
2007-05-24-004158 : Blackmore's "The Meme Machine"
The book presents a fairly good intro to the topic of memetics. I agree with Dawkin's indirect reference that the theory of memetics deserves a shot. I'd say that Blackmore's theory on memetics deserves a shot too, at least up to chapter 13. These ch ...
2007-05-12-104257 : Chord Recognition - modern music is so diluted
According to Rob Paravonian, much of pop music chord progression is based on classical pieces. Just take a listen. Not to mention that this guy's Four Chords song is even more detailed. There's more over at wikipedia under... ...Popular songs based o ...
2007-05-09-114224 : The burning happy one...
more... ...
2007-05-09-101327 : Los Feliz Fire (5/8/2007)
Yesterday a fire started in griffith park consumed 200 acres and by this morning is up to 600 acres. The video clip below is shot from Hollywood Blvd and Vermont Ave in Los Feliz. I lived on Los Feliz Blvd and Hillhurst a few years ago which is a few ...
2007-05-04-235724 : Memetic Malkovich
'Being John Malkovich' is a 1999 film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonez. The movie stars John Cusack, John Malkovich, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Charlie Sheen, Orson Bean and Mary K. Place.warning - mini spoiler below *The ...
2007-04-24-191809 : SW exceeding NE for venture funding ?
At least according to VentureBeat ."Several times over the years, venture capitalists have pumped more money into Southern California than New England companies, but these blips never lasted more than a quarter. This latest quarter (Q1, 2007) was the ...
2007-03-30-101420 : Ace Hotel, Portland Ore.
"Part of the Ace philosophy is to create an egalitarian atmosphere by bringing together creative types with tight budgets and more affluent travelers willing to trade down, as it were, in exchange for cool. (The hotel’s name is inspired by the card: ...
2007-03-28-114422 : Saturn's Hex
An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.more hereAccording to some sources historically and symbolically Saturn is about limitation and b ...
2007-03-25-152513 : One hot star
"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011." Intense auroras to follow... ...
2007-01-12-025718 : Idiocracy
"Welcome to Costco, I love you." :http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Idiocracy/70028899Idiocracy, the second live film by Mike Judge (the 1st was 'Office Space') is a Science Fiction, Action Comedy set 500 years in the future. The world is inhabited(and ru ...
2007-01-10-215500 : Videodrome
Is Cronenberg brilliant or insane or are those the same thing ?I am a fan of Cronenberg but have never seen this film. When I heard that Videodrome stars Debby Harry I decided to watch it out of sheer curiosity.It has a similar feel to the 90s 'Naked ...
2006-12-17-170800 : The Future of Computing is Dynamic...
The codist keeps putting out the good stuff:"The future of computing is going to go belong to the nimble mammals that are dynamic, interpreted, virtual machine-based instead of the dinosaurs that are compiled, linked and mostly static." ...
2006-11-30-211100 : SBCL 1.0
SBCL 1.0 is out !Thank you and congratulations to the team. ...
2006-11-30-124400 : Metamaterials
In nature, all materials appear to obey the "right-hand rule." But oddly, a new category of materials called metamaterials exhibit an unusual "left-hand rule" and by doing so seem to turn everything on its head. If such a "left-hand rule" were the no ...
2006-11-27-010300 : Reading
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. This didn't feel much at all like a sci-fi(his first book set in present day). More a melancolic post 911 look at the internet culture wrapped up as a thriller. Nonetheless it's a great read. Richard Dawkin's The ...
2006-11-25-135500 : Perception of Corruption
From wikipedia, the 'World Map Index of perception of corruption': ...
2006-11-18-123400 : Strongly typed software disasters
the.codist seems to have these down accurately so far.The Train Wreck'A train wreck is a project where everyone assumes things are going well, progress is being made, and it appears that everything will turn out well. In reality, the train is barrel ...
2006-10-15-191000 : Ruby Metaprograming
Ola Bini's Ruby Metaprogramming techniques is a great summary of the meta-programming techniques in common use today by many of the interesting Ruby libraries.Namely: Use the singleton-class Write DSL's using class-methods that rewrite subclasses Cre ...
2006-10-14-191400 : UN slaps sanctions on North Korea
Resolution 1718 imposes weapons and financial sanctions but is not backed by the threat of military force. North Korea's UN envoy said he totally rejected the resolution and walked out.BBC article ...
2006-10-14-190700 : Military Commissions Bill (S. 3930)
In the Senate, only 34 Senators voted against the White House-crafted Military Commissions bill that * re-establishes President Bush's military tribunals, which were rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, * legalizes U.S. war crimes comm ...
2006-10-14-185900 : Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Interesting fact from this video: The incarceration rate of Black Males - South Africa - 1993 (Under Apartheid) 851 United States - 2004 (Under Prohibition) 4,919more on the LEAP website. ...
2006-10-10-154200 : Ruby and Lisp
Eric Kidd wrote a great article comparing Ruby and Lisp last year called Why Ruby is an acceptable LISP. Besides the annoyance that he calls it LISP there were many great points and counter-points from the comments. Reading everything behind the lin ...
2006-10-10-152000 : Hollywood Laws of Computing
1. People never have to look at the screen or use the space-bar when typing long sentences. 2. Super-computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. 3. All computer panels (e.g. Star Trek) have thousands of Kilovolts running ...
2006-10-07-140300 : Simulacra
More at the Pink Tentacle ...
2006-10-04-140900 : Eben Moglen on the GUI
'What I saw in the Xerox PARC technology was the caveman interface, you point and you grunt. A massive winding down, regressing away from language, in order to address the technological nervousness of the user. Users wanted to be infantilized, to ret ...
2006-09-30-124800 : Healing with Sexual Relationships
Recently 'came' across this website (pardon the pun) which has insightful perspectives on human sexuality today.Quotes from the introduction page: Ever wonder why intimate relationships are so fragile? Ever wish someone would just hand you a reliabl ...
2006-09-25-121300 : Current books
Some thoughts on a few books that I've read recently.'Virus of the Mind' by Richard Brodie The title being as cheesy as it is almost stopped me from reading this book. Eventually got around to reading this. Guess this meme finally got it's way with m ...
2006-09-16-222317 : Free Society
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. Adlai Stevenson ...
2006-09-16-184100 : Finite vs Infinite existence
A 'finite' existence has boundaries...an 'infinite' existence 'plays with' boundaries. People in a 'finite' existence are caught up and swept along almost like slaves to those boundaries, ruled by prescribed restraints and expectations on the par ...
2006-09-11-013900 : Inanna-Metis-Ereshkigal
"... Ime did indeed pass through the outer gate of the Underworld, remaking her connection to heaven, even as she maintained her connection to the earth and waters and to the Underworld. And thereby she taught us that each of us must figure it out fo ...
2006-08-25-134300 : Library Thing
"...it's an easy, library-quality catalog. Because everyone else is doing it too, LibraryThing connects you with people who read the same things." ...
2006-08-24-141700 : Pluto demoted ?
From this article"PRAGUE, Czech Republic — Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight."...and all over the news Does this mean that G ...
2006-08-06-121200 : Arms into Art
During the past few years, the artists' collective Nucleo de Arte got involved in an extraordinary project. In workshops, members made works of art out of AK 47 machine guns, landmines and hand weapons. 'Chair of the African King' ...
2006-07-31-213200 : Complaints of the eminent
From Paul Graham's essay titled 'The Power of the Marginal'The eminent, on the other hand, are weighed down by their eminence. Eminence is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people, and it constrains the wearer.AND...You're on the right track when p ...
2006-07-24-124200 : FOSCON 2
It's coming up this week alongside OSCON for the second consecutive year here in beautiful Portland, OR. Last year was a blast getting to meet and learn / share with some great coders. ...
2006-07-24-122050 : macbook
So I caved and picked up a macbook a few weeks ago before heading to L.A. It is a big enough jump in performance to justify the $1300 spend. Runs a little hot but acceptable for a laptop with intel inside.Threw in 2GB ram and a bigger drive (easies ...
2006-06-26-135500 : 100 degrees...
Today it's really hot. Not so long ago it was 27 degrees The last couple years after living in Portland, OR (from Los Angeles) it's actually great to have some defined seasons even if the scale seems to "bottom out" in both directions. The peak of th ...
2006-06-14-141500 : There goes the neighborhood...
...thanks to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft."THE DALLES, Ore., June 8 — On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secre ...
2006-06-08-215000 : A quote about fragance and other memorable things
"Perfuming is most unlike manufacture. And perfumers should be proud to assume our historic roles as enchanters, soul feeders, sacred pimps, and alchemists. 'Marketing people' are fine enough when it comes to peddling wares but let us remember always ...
2006-06-06-130800 : 666
It's no wonder that Pythagoras was so fascinated with this number. ...
2006-05-26-153700 : Casting SPELs in Lisp (A comic book intro)
(This has been around for a while now but it still deserves more linkage.) Anyone who has ever learned to program in Lisp will tell you it is very different from any other programming language. It is different in lots of surprising ways- This comic ...
2006-04-21-010400 : The Fountain
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2006-04-10-153700 : beautiful...
(defun flatten-list (exp) (if (consp exp) (append (flatten-list (car exp)) (flatten-list (cdr exp))) (list exp))) ...
2006-04-10-153600 : From the archives...
Artificial Intelligence An early look at artificial Intelligence. Guests includes Edward Feigenbaum of Stanford University, Nils Nilsson of the AI Center at SRI International, Tom Kehler of Intellegenetics, Herb Lechner of SRI, and John McCarthy of ...
2006-04-04-114500 : A Total Solar Eclipse over Turkey
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2006-03-17-171400 : Follow up pics from Stardust press conference
more... ...
2006-03-14-144700 : Happy π day and birthday (to Albert Einstein) !
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2006-03-08-133300 : NASA ANNOUNCES FIRST STARDUST COMET SAMPLE RESULTS
Results from the first studies of cometary samples returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust spacecraft is the subject of a news conference at 3 p.m. EST, Monday, March 13, from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston more ... ...
2006-03-03-182300 : The Page Museum
While in Los Angeles last week, visited the Page museum. Took this picture of a mammoth skeleton. more here... ...
2006-02-21-165900 : Buckminster Fuller Quotes
"Don't fight forces, use them.""I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.""God is a verb, not a noun.""When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but ...
2006-02-20-162300 : Song of Lisp
I was taught assembler in my second year of school. It’s kinda like construction work — with a toothpick for a tool. So when I made my senior year, I threw my code away, And learned the way to program that I still prefer today.Now, some folks on ...
2006-02-20-161900 : Golden
more here ... ...
2006-02-17-145500 : 27 degrees...
...Farenheit in Portland today :-) The sun is shining brightly but the wind has been blowing most of the day. The electricity on our block just went dead around noon. It still hasn't come back on. ...
2006-02-13-002600 : Immortel (movie)
Saw this a few days ago. Not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure but the mix of human with cgi characters is something worth seeing. more here ...
2006-01-29-111200 : 2.9 Quake in Portland, OR
Sitting at home around 6:14pm when I felt a sizable shockwave in my apartment. Last night when it happened the Geophysics dept. of Univ. of Washington reported the center to be just under the Morrison bridge on the east side of the river where there ...
2006-01-21-102300 : Scientists confirm comet samples
Scientists have confirmed that particles from a comet and interstellar dust have been returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission. "The collection of cometary particles has exceeded our expectations," said Dr. Donald Brownlee, Stardust principal inv ...
2006-01-19-114300 : Lisp and game development
Regarding the role of Lisp and game development (specifically on the PS2), Andy Gavin has this to say..."Lisp was just the best solution for this job," comments Gavin. "With leading edge game systems like ours, you have to deal with complicated behav ...
2006-01-13-101300 : Friday 13th
These are my most favorite days of the year after April 1st. Probably because I like the number 13 so much.Some facts about the number 13: The ASCII and Unicode value for carriage return. The number of Plutonium slugs in Fat Man, the atomic bomb dro ...
2006-01-12-102800 : Paul Graham on the traditional office
"To me the most demoralizing aspect of the traditional office is that you're supposed to be there at certain times. There are usually a few people in a company who really have to, but the reason most employees work fixed hours is that the company can ...
2006-01-10-180700 : An interesting site
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2005-12-30-151100 : Student unearths Einstein paper
Netherlands: Student unearths Einstein paper BBC - August 21, 2005 The handwritten manuscript titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas" was dated December 1924. Here's the story ...
2005-12-28-162100 : Spiral Galaxy M74
The Spiral Galaxy M74 - also known as Messier Object 74 or NGC 628 , is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pisces. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780, who related his discovery to Charles Messier to be categorized. The galaxy is also liste ...
2005-12-25-133000 : star - An OS X screensaver
Seasons greetz.Here is my first attempt at an OS X screensaver. It's called 'star'.Requires OS X 10.4 or higher. Copy the .qtz file to your user folder under '/Library/Screen Savers/'. This folder may need to be created if it does not exist.Enjoy t ...
2005-12-21-144000 : Invention
"Every thing at first seems ridiculous, is then attacked and finally is accepted as a matter of course" Artur Schopenhauer (22.2.1788 - 21.9.1860), German philosopher ...
2005-12-14-132100 : Back in the Emerald City
It's as if I have never been here and been here all along... ...
2005-12-09-074000 : San Francisco
I'm here for the weekend ! ...
2005-12-04-125700 : More Kissedmist gift ideas
A very personal piece of DNA art...:http://www.dna11.com/ecom_portrait.asp A USB microscope :-):http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/77aa/ ...
2005-11-23-115700 : Resistance is futile ?
"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul."p>. - Mah ...
2005-11-15-121500 : aqui-ali's eye
An old friend of mine takes pictures of things that I don't often notice ...
2005-11-12-142500 : a new home
This is my new blog. I like it a lot better compared with where my old blog is hosted ...
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