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Problem: Prove that generalized versions of Mario Brothers, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Pokemon, and Legend of Zelda are NP-hard. Solution: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.1895v1 Discussion: Three researchers (including Erik Demaine, a computer science professor at MIT famous for his work with the mathematics of origami) recently finished a paper giving the complexity of a number of classic Nintendo games (the ones I loved to play). All are proven NP-h..
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Problem: Prove that generalized versions of Mario Brothers, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Pokemon, and Legend of Zelda are NP-hard. Solution: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.1895v1 Discussion: Three researchers (including Erik Demaine, a computer science professor at MIT famous for his work with the mathematics of origami) recently finished a paper giving the complexity of a number of classic Nintendo games (the ones I loved to play). All are proven NP-h..
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Problem: Remember results of a function call which requires a lot of computation. Solution: (in Python) def memoize(f): cache = {} def memoizedFunction(*args): if args not in cache: cache[args] = f(*args) return cache[args] memoizedFunction.cache = cache return memoizedFunction @memoize def f(): ... Discussion: You might not use monoids or eigenvectors on a daily basis, but you use caching far more often than you may know. Caching the resul..
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Problem: Remember results of a function call which requires a lot of computation. Solution: (in Python) def memoize(f): cache = {} def memoizedFunction(*args): if args not in cache: cache[args] = f(*args) return cache[args] memoizedFunction.cache = cache return memoizedFunction @memoize def f(): ... Discussion: You might not use monoids or eigenvectors on a daily basis, but you use caching far more often than you may know. Caching the resul..
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Problem: Remember results of a function call which requires a lot of computation. Solution: (in Python) def memoize(f): cache = {} def memoizedFunction(*args): if args not in cache: cache[args] = f(*args) return cache[args] memoizedFunction.cache = cache return memoizedFunction @memoize def f(): ... Discussion: You might not use monoids or eigenvectors on a daily basis, but you use caching far more often than you may know. Caching the resul..
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I woke up last night after a weird dream and wrote this down (I guess falling asleep with your laptop open on the bed comes in handy), editing typos etc out this morning. Rereading it today I can barely remember any of the actual dream. I wish I could make it come back and find out what happened.
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Today we’re officially announcing our JavaScript API for the new HTML5 SoundCloud Widget. To use it, just insert the script tag on a page…
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Today we’re officially announcing our JavaScript API for the new HTML5 SoundCloud Widget. To use it, just insert the script tag on a page…
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As I’ve gotten over my jetlag I’ve been ramping up the JS work again. There are now two projects to work on and I won’t be posting much about the second one specifically, but will still be writing about the general JavaScript learning progress as well as posting Gwen updates.
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I had an annoying problem on Windows 7 x64 with Helios x64 where I had pinned Eclipse to the taskbar but would see two icons whenever Eclipse was running. I found that the following workaround works with the option “Always combine, hide labels” for taskbar buttons. You must specify a -vm argument in your “eclipse.ini” file (in your Eclipse directory). The -vm argument in your “eclipse.ini” must point to the bin directory of your JDK or ..
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If you are interested in node, you know that NodeJS uses an event driven I/O model and it is single threaded, so it is not meant to be working multi-core. However, by using the clustering support, you can bump your applications speed. I will give a a plain hello example, however consider that you will never send just hello world to anyone in the world without any background processing like database connections, cache connections, file opera..
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I hate giving promises for things I can’t control. I can promise that I will attend a party or that I will set aside time to help you with your problem. I cannot promise that the party will be fun or that your problem will be solved. Giving promises on effort is honest, giving promises on outcomes is dishonest. A team that commits to an estimate is promising something they cannot control.
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Over 3 months ago we started the “Hacker Time” initiative (see here) and now it is time for a recap what’s happened so far. From the outset…
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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Over 3 months ago we started the “Hacker Time” initiative (see here) and now it is time for a recap what’s happened so far. From the outset…
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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I seem to have not blogged about this, but Open Advice , our book on Free and Open Source Software: what we wish we had known when we started , was published last month. The book was edited by Lydia Pintscher and includes essays from 42 authors , many of whom you'll recognize if you tend to go to FOSS conferences. The LWN book review concludes: Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, becaus....
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Problem: Write a program that shuffles a list. Do so without using more than a constant amount of extra space and linear time in the size of the list. Solution: (in Python) import random random.seed() def shuffle(myList): n = len(myList) for i in xrange(0, n): j = random.randint(i, n-1) # randint is inclusive myList[i], myList[j] = myList[j], myList[i] Discussion: Using a computer to shuffle a deck of cards is nontrivial at first glance for..
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Problem: Write a program that shuffles a list. Do so without using more than a constant amount of extra space and linear time in the size of the list. Solution: (in Python) import random random.seed() def shuffle(myList): n = len(myList) for i in xrange(0, n): j = random.randint(i, n-1) # randint is inclusive myList[i], myList[j] = myList[j], myList[i] Discussion: Using a computer to shuffle a deck of cards is nontrivial at first glance for..
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Problem: Write a program that shuffles a list. Do so without using more than a constant amount of extra space and linear time in the size of the list. Solution: (in Python) import random random.seed() def shuffle(myList): n = len(myList) for i in xrange(0, n): j = random.randint(i, n-1) # randint is inclusive myList[i], myList[j] = myList[j], myList[i] Discussion: Using a computer to shuffle a deck of cards is nontrivial at first glance for..
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I attended a talk at the Toronto Agile Tour on Deliberate Practice that focused on TDD Games and other programming challenges like Kata. Among the challenges were things like solving a problem without using the ‘if’ keyword, or without using primitives. Solving simple problems using these challenges makes us better programmers because they force us to come up with multiple, creative solutions to the same problem. Here’s my solution for..
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I build software for a living. This means creating the new generation of Content Management interfaces in the IKS Project and developing custom client applications at Nemein . As my office is where my laptop is, none of this work is particularly tied to a physical location. And as much of the work is communicating, I end up spending quite a lot of time traveling between meetings and conferences. For this my previous home town....
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I build software for a living. This means creating the new generation of Content Management interfaces in the IKS Project and developing custom client applications at Nemein . As my office is where my laptop is, none of this work is particularly tied to a physical location. And as much of the work is communicating, I end up spending quite a lot of time traveling between meetings and conferences. For this my previous home town....
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By the end, the breadth and depth of our collective knowledge was far beyond what anyone could expect from any high school course in any subject. Education Versus Exploration I’m a lab TA for an introductory Python programming course this semester, and it’s been…depressing. I remember my early days of programming, when the possibilities seemed endless and adding new features to my programs was exciting and gratifying, and I brimmed with pri..
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By the end, the breadth and depth of our collective knowledge was far beyond what anyone could expect from any high school course in any subject. Education Versus Exploration I’m a lab TA for an introductory Python programming course this semester, and it’s been…depressing. I remember my early days of programming, when the possibilities seemed endless and adding new features to my programs was exciting and gratifying, and I brimmed with pri..
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By the end, the breadth and depth of our collective knowledge was far beyond what anyone could expect from any high school course in any subject. Education Versus Exploration I’m a lab TA for an introductory Python programming course this semester, and it’s been…depressing. I remember my early days of programming, when the possibilities seemed endless and adding new features to my programs was exciting and gratifying, and I brimmed with pri..
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Sorry, no news to report on Lemma this week. School is keeping me busy. But I thought I'd share some of the projects I'm working on for school, since they're kind of cool and actually somewhat related to Lemma. First up: a 3D rapid prototype of the original toon-style Parkour Ninja! Here's the model rendered in Cinema 4D: And here it is printed out in 3D:
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Gwen: Streamlining adjacency settings, performance, notifications, allegiance, etc
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liza.io
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14 years ago
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eng
Eh…this started out being a brief update from the past week and turned into an ongoing update stream of notes. I didn’t have an Internet connection available for much of it, meaning this post may be a bit weird as parts of it were written at different times, but it’s mostly just for me to be able to go back and review my progress.
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As a user, I can add social security number, so patient logs have social security numbers As a developer, how would you react if you were given this user story? Would you throw it back in the face of the product owner, or would you try and understand it? How about the following dialogue? Developer: “What are we hoping to achieve with this story?” Customer: “We hope that the patient logs will have social security numbers.
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For the past N months, it seems like there is no new technology stack that is either hotter or more controversial than node.js. node.js is cancer! node.js cures cancer! node.js is bad ass rock star tech!. I myself have given node.js a lot of shit, often involving the phrase “explicit continuation-passing style.” Most of the arguments I’ve seen seem to center around whether node.js is “scalable” or high-performance, and the relative merits o..
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For the past N months, it seems like there is no new technology stack that is either hotter or more controversial than node.js. node.js is cancer! node.js cures cancer! node.js is bad ass rock star tech!. I myself have given node.js a lot of shit, often involving the phrase “explicit continuation-passing style.” Most of the arguments I’ve seen seem to center around whether node.js is “scalable” or high-performance, and the relative merits o..
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Stratus is a jQuery powered SoundCloud player that lives at the bottom (or top) of your website or blog. In version 2, we’ve rebuilt Stratus from the ground up to include many requested features, a nicer aesthetic, and a much easier installation. Pumped? Yeh, me too. Here’s how to participate in the BETA:
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Stratus is a jQuery powered SoundCloud player that lives at the bottom (or top) of your website or blog. In version 2, we’ve rebuilt Stratus from the ground up to include many requested features, a nicer aesthetic, and a much easier installation. Pumped? Yeh, me too. Here’s how to participate in the BETA:
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Friday I was told that I would not be considered for the inaugural class of Venture for America Fellows. I knew the program was a long shot.
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The SoundCloud Developer Community has grown immensely. We have over ten thousand registered applications and over three hundred showcased in our App Gallery. Our goal as the Platform Team is to provide the best API tools possible, while also providing support and inspiration. So far, our primary channels have been this blog, our Twitter account, and our mailing list, hosted on Google Groups. In the coming months, you can expect some change..
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The SoundCloud Developer Community has grown immensely. We have over ten thousand registered applications and over three hundred showcased in our App Gallery. Our goal as the Platform Team is to provide the best API tools possible, while also providing support and inspiration. So far, our primary channels have been this blog, our Twitter account, and our mailing list, hosted on Google Groups. In the coming months, you can expect some change..
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Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. The beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That’s why my public focus is primarily adults. [Source] Neil deGrasse Tyson, answering a question in his AMA on Reddit a few months ago: “Can we inspire more kids to pursue space-related science and research? If so, how?
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