M Easter

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since Feb 11, 2007
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Recent posts by M Easter

Thanks, Lasse... duly-noted. We thought about breaking out the first part as a separate 'trailer' as in film -- probably should have done so
16 years ago
A friend is a big Ruby fan... He and I made a video giving the current state of Ruby. I was surprised to find out that there are so many books coming out on Ruby and RoR.

It is definitely absurd but it is in earnest (with a stylistic nod to Giles B and the Archaeoptyrex presentation):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2VXUQwGHZg

Just wondering: what do you think? useful? silly? both?

Mike

ps. FWIW, I am not 'Future Man' in the video ;-)
16 years ago
My employer has posted this article on WAX, an open-source tool for writing large XML files.

Be sure to check out the introduction video!

http://ociweb.com/jnb/jnbSep2008.html

Michael Easter
[ September 04, 2008: Message edited by: M Easter ]
16 years ago
Just curious... Does Java Ranch have any North Americans working in Europe? If so, which country? What is the market like? Was it difficult to deal with visa restrictions?
17 years ago
In theory, yes, it's doable. Grails plays well with Spring & Hibernate.

I don't have a lot of experience with Grails, and I certainly haven't augmented an existing, so I don't know how _quick_ it would be. In the vein of Rails, Grails prefers convention over configuration, but definitely _allows_ configuration for legacy/non-standard situations.

I don't know of any tutorials in this aspect. If you have specific questions, you might try the main site and look for mailing lists and/or blogs.

http://grails.codehaus.org/

HTH,
Mike
17 years ago
the last one was a joke, in the vein of Stephen Wright
17 years ago
It seems pretty crazy to me...

An employee for Ferrari gives MacLaren top-secret Ferrari documents. Before MacLaren can manifest any exploitations in their car, someone from within MacLaren tells F1.

So then F1 ultimately strips MacLaren of all constructor points and fines them -- wait for it -- $100 million. Ferrari receives no penalty.

Then, because it is an excellent contest, F1 allows the MacLaren drivers to compete in the driver's championship. (Because the F1 top brass know that they would be killed if they messed with that.)

Unless I have some facts wrong (and I might), it seems pretty ridiculous to me.

On the Speed channel (in the US), the commentators said that Ferrari was asked how they feel about being vaulted into the lead now that MacLaren was finished. Also BMW-Sauber was asked about being 2nd.

The Ferrari spokesperson said they were delighted and earned it.

The BMW-Sauber rep said it was sad and that they wanted no part of it.

The whole thing stinks.
17 years ago
Great thread, Fred

re: locking doors. When going to bed, I check the lock and say "it's locked on [Monday|Tuesday|etc]" out loud so that I remember later when I'm in bed and dozing off

re: 2 feet under sheets. That's not irrational ;-P There's no way my feet are sticking out

My main fear is of losing my sight. (really)

My main habit is writing out the letters "O", "C", and "D" exactly 100 times after I shower. I would do it "e x 100" times but I'm scared of irrational numbers too.
17 years ago
re: Iversion? Yep, that's it... He won a Turing award for his work, btw.

APL has always had, and continues to have, a small rabid community. Kinda like Smalltalk only even smaller. From my recent reading there is in fact some development being done (but certainly not much).

There was an article in DDJ recently about an APL version of Conway's Game of Life that is a one-liner. One can easily Google for an explanation that takes pages.

I wouldn't say it is like Kleenex but it is certainly true that the main appeal (IMHO) is for puzzle fans and for solving problems in a way that truly stretches one's neural network.

I'd like to get back into it but I just can't tell what people are using for an IDE. I may blog a "shout out" and see if I get any takers.

Mike
17 years ago
hi gang,

I'm not sure if this is the best forum, but...

Does anyone use APL for programming (as a hobby or -- can it be? -- professionally?)

I'd like to get back into it and am looking for an APL environment on Windows. My understanding is that there is a "Visual APL" but recently it seemed like the website wasn't allowing logins or something.

Any tips?

For newbies, if you want to learn a truly weird and terse language, APL is the King. It is the only language I know that uses non-ASCII characters regularly (Greek) and it is so terse that it makes Perl look like English.

thanks
Mike
17 years ago
The tire swing/tree post is awesome!

Is there a place I can link my blog to it... is there a permalink for a specific post on here? or is it on the web?

It seems wrong to save it and then upload it to my blog.

thanks,
Mike
17 years ago
Great thread....

I have spent 30 minutes looking for a GIF of this (which I do every 6 months or so).... I can't find it online, but here is the gist. I dearly wish I could find it online. I have it on paper but am nervous of the copyright issues of hosting it.

From Calvin & Hobbes...

Hobbes pushing Calvin in a small wagon down a steep, rocky hill.

Calvin: It's true Hobbes, ignorance is bliss!
Once you know things you start seeing problems everywhere...
and once you see problems you feel like you ought to try to fix them...
and fixing problems always seems to require personal change...
and change means doing things that aren't fun! I say phooey to that!

Ultimately they both crash over a cliff, with Hobbes lamenting that he can't handle so much bliss. In a disheveled heap, Calvin raises a hand in warning and says:

Careful, we don't want to learn anything from this!

I love Dilbert, but this one is sublime for IT.
17 years ago
Intro to Algorithms (known as CLR) is the gold standard but note that it is an intense read. The mathematical rigor is high. (It isn't clear if that is what you are looking for).

Another option is to look for Robert Sedgewick. He has a series of algo books in C++ and Java. Probably a lot more code than CLR.

Mike
I drove a red Mazda Miata for 11 years. Great car, though it was thoroughly shot at the end...

Just got a black '05 Honda Civic Si which is really fun and yet practical... a lil' hot hatchback

fun thread
Mike

ps. I wasn't a Honda fan from an aesthetic standpoint and never thought I would own one, but I took a chance and the quality & design just blows me away.
[ August 19, 2007: Message edited by: M Easter ]
17 years ago
In Dr Dobb's Journal, I saw a blurb on a company based in my home of eastern Canada. As it turns out, I took undergrad classes from a prof who is a founder.

I haven't used the software and have no other affiliation, but couldn't resist a plug:

For a hex editor to manipulate binary files, check out http://www.sweetscape.com
17 years ago