tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:08:57 +0000And... we're back.http://www.davidbrunton.com/noreply@blogger.com (David)Blogger118125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-5796396852126837014Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:31:00 +00002010-01-21T07:34:26.863-05:00librarieslanguage designIf you are Ed, and you are reading this post: no it isn't the post I promised (yet).  But it is a precursor, and you should read it before you read the subsequent one in the series.  Not that you have any choice, since I haven't actually written the next post yet. I had a nice conversation with a coworker yesterday, in which she asked me a question I hear a lot in library-land: "Is it an http://www.davidbrunton.com/2010/01/notes-on-pragmatic-language-design.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-1719505488925606371Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:49:00 +00002010-01-11T12:25:03.094-05:00Memory tricks us humans into thinking like empirical beings.  We stumble around, babes in the dark, until we bump into a light switch.  Let There Be Light! and we see it, and it's good, and we remember.  The next time we stumble into it, when there is light, we remember, and we also recall.  We form a hypothesis, good scientists we are, and we test the hypothesis against the light switch. Over http://www.davidbrunton.com/2010/01/memory-persistence-reason.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-5158045635318777273Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:40:00 +00002010-01-06T20:40:18.678-05:00softwareperlperl6One of my favorite writers is a guy who is currently in the midst of writing a specification for a programming language.  He recently made some changes to the first synopsis of Perl 6, and I am replicating some of it here, because I think it's a useful exhortation.  I hope he doesn't mind: The language designer is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and never will be, despite requests for those http://www.davidbrunton.com/2010/01/til-youve-learned-your-lesson.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-3489397493488790324Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:15:00 +00002010-01-03T19:15:51.711-05:00metaMy new year's resolution for 2010 is to share my best ideas.  I noticed a while back that some of my best ideas were inadvertently becoming stuck in my head, which turned out not to be a great place for them to develop.  As such, my first idea: anyone may take anything I do at davidbrunton.com and use it for any purpose, with no promises exchanged. This means, I make no promises to do anything http://www.davidbrunton.com/2010/01/new-year.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-7602246266404632897Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:45:00 +00002009-12-24T10:45:23.593-05:00softwareperlperl6 Been reading through the Perl6 specs again.  I like the way the synopses make "promises of parallelizability" on three families: junctions, hyperops, and feeds.  I also like the way these three promises differ from one another.  This post is a little thought experiment, in which I will act as the interpreter for all three. Junctions Of the three, junctions are the most difficult for me to grokhttp://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/12/promises-of-parallel-in-perl6.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-2723233877924390388Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +00002009-12-21T12:01:08.944-05:00softwareperlchristmasperl6In celebration of the Federal Government having a snow day today, I tweeted this: say <. X>[my@i=0 xx 9,1,0 xx 9];map {say <. X>[@i=map {%([^8]>>.fmt("%03b") Z 0,1,1,1,1,0,0,0){@i[($_-1)%19,$_,($_+1)%19].join}},^19]},^9;It's my geekery for the day.  It is written in Perl 6, and it prints out a Christmas tree, which is also a cellular automaton (Wolfram rule #30).  Thanks to the phenomenal people http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/12/merry-christmas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-6952229828912769361Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:57:00 +00002009-12-15T11:57:32.162-05:00Inspired by Mark Jason Dominus, my short description of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem: No set of rules is both consistent and complete. For favorite long(er) explanations, see the appendix to Rudy Rucker's Infinity and the Mind or Nagel and Newman's Godel's Proof.  If you read the latter, read the one edited by Douglas Hofstadter, who is awesome.http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/12/short-description-of-godels-proof.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-1801383037306368097Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:28:00 +00002009-12-05T09:02:36.202-05:00programmingperlcellular automataperl6Thanks in part to the Perl 6 Advent Calendar, in part to Ed showing me how easy it was to pop a subversion repo into github, and in part to whim, I dusted off some old Perl6 and got it running under Rakudo.  The gang on #perl6 was smart and fun as always, and to top it all off, there's a butterfly now.  Anyone who wants to see the code, it's on Github.http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/12/perl6-advent.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-7392382368573747828Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:13:00 +00002009-12-03T17:13:00.379-05:00Continuing on the riff Brian started, I was reflecting on some stuff I built a while back.  In 2001 and 2002, I was one of the people who worked on Democrats.org.  There were a whole mess of people involved in that project, from a whole mess of different organizations, and it was fun.  I even married one of the people on the project. One of the parts I was responsible for was the contribution http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/12/on-old-being-new.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-2616937864772744996Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:45:00 +00002009-12-02T21:11:44.319-05:00Brian mentions a conversation we've been having on his blague.  In conversations, Brian and I generally take opposite positions, then swap halfway through, then swap back at the end, with some modifications.  In our last conversation, I made a lot more modifications than he. My previous post, written from Chrome OS, made the assertion that Google didn't rethink the operating system, they just http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/12/ongoing-conversation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-6076757937737103896Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:06:00 +00002009-11-20T14:06:37.704-05:00If I am anything, I am a software fanboy.  I love the hot new shit, whether it be programming languages or frameworks or operating systems or mathematical proofs.  I'm always running the bleeding edge Ubuntu, it's always breaking, and Lina is always razzing me about it.  When youall got your Google Wave accounts, I was crying into my pillow wishing I had one, not realizing that there's really http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/11/written-from-chrome-os.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-6319329551917896030Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:12:00 +00002009-11-19T02:12:00.436-05:00A while back, I wrote this code in Python: def myfunc(n):     cur = [True] + [False for i in range(n-1)]     hist = list()     while cur not in hist:         hist.append(cur)         cur = [cur[i-1] ^ cur[i] for i in range(len(cur))]     return (len(hist)-hist.index(cur)) It's kind of a long story how I came to be writing that particular snippet of code, but I did, and it outputs a sequence if http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/11/ducci-sequence-in-python.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-6171096687515171378Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:00:00 +00002009-11-18T08:03:56.544-05:00softwarelibrariesFollowing a long conversation with a coworker, I wrote down some thoughts about persistent identification schemes (including ARK, DOI, Handle, PURL).  I had the post in the can, ready to go, when it was rudely interrupted by a really interesting presentation, which completely changed my thinking.  I should recap that ill-fated blog post in one sentence before moving on: adding a layer of http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/11/memento-and-persistence.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-9027388934359522913Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:29:00 +00002009-11-17T07:20:01.976-05:00computerssoftware[note: edited to fix Blogger.com's stupid formatting] Ze Frank has this episode of The Show where he talks about "brain crack." It's the stuff your brain gets addicted to because it could be good. Watch the episode: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html This, Internet, is my brain crack. Been thinking about this for a long time, hoping to write something long. Well, here's http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/11/brief-history-of-computing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-4548033897805439694Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:31:00 +00002009-11-10T16:32:29.757-05:00patentssoftwareThe Supreme Court of the US just heard oral arguments in an interesting case about business process.  Bilski v. Kappos (warning, it's a PDF) was argued in such a way as to exclude patentability of software, though it has been described as relevant to that conversation.  I read the oral arguments this morning.  I'm not a follower of the court, in general, but I care about this topic, and I had a http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/11/hope-for-america-justice-breyer.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-4499699926502953814Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:22:00 +00002009-11-03T21:26:47.553-05:00Possibly the most useful lesson to be taken from evolution is natural selection itself: inheritance, variation, competition for scarce resources. In terms of software development, this is a design pattern not used often enough.  After all, software already has plenty of variation.  There are scarce physical resources (e.g. cpu, memory, bandwidth), and strong selection pressures (e.g. human http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/11/design-patterns-from-evolution.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-2219622902412726434Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:49:00 +00002009-10-30T07:10:16.885-05:00I have a new phone.  It runs that new Google juice called Android, and for the most part I think it's pretty neat.  It is, among other things, the first time I have owned a computer that I talk to, instead of just through: I press that little microphone on the right, I say "DC like a local" and it gives me a link to Tim's blog.  More often than not, this is quite a bit faster than typing a http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/10/is-there-flickr-for-audio.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-5864815686552745644Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:55:00 +00002009-10-27T07:04:45.099-05:00New Scientist had a fun article last week, Seven questions that keep physicists up at night. I'm not sure why they didn't send them to me first, but better late than never. Here are my seven answers. Now the physicists can all go back to sleep (yes, Maggie, that means you). Without further ado...Why this universe? A good first question. You think about the universe the way you do because http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/10/seven-answers-to-help-physicists-sleep.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-2334714567046550677Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:42:00 +00002009-10-09T09:47:26.509-05:00This morning, I had the bad fortune to be sitting next to someone who got a Google Wave invite before I did. I was really jealous, watching all those bits fly across his screen. Keeping up with these kinds of technologies is an important part of the work we do, as is integrating new technologies with our content, and vice versa.I went back over to my desk to update our RSS feed to reflect some http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/10/google-wave-is-new-emacs.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-8195794756018713533Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +00002009-09-28T18:00:00.792-05:00fictionOkay, here's a go at fiction. This one sprung fully-formed, not exactly sure what made me think of it. Maybe Yom Kippur?Stan shook his head at the sign behind Lin Wei's desk: "Quality is Job I." He'd gotten a kick out of reading the "I" as a first-person pronoun instead of the number one. Now Lin Wei had neatly printed underneath it, "...and the Siegels are Job II."Strictly speaking, Lin Wei http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/09/job-ii.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-2385278673772488442Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:02:00 +00002009-09-09T08:26:23.593-05:00Edit: I opened this post up for comments, by request. After five or so years with five or so comments, I turned them off site-wide, but perhaps it's time to revisit. Without further ado...Baseball can be played with three people. Dan and Doug and I did it when we were kids, on Spring Creek Farm. One person pitches for everyone, also fields. The other two take turns hitting and fielding. Thehttp://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/09/ghost-runner-on-second.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-665756065110117907Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:47:00 +00002009-09-02T09:08:15.221-05:00Last night brought a profound sense of deja vu. Our newest addition was not-sleeping in an outfit our oldest wore to not-sleep four years ago. My, how things have(n't) changed. Meanwhile, there's a new farm, a sleepy mama, and two rambunctious kiddos. Took them to the new place to see what fun we could have yesterday.Started out on the new lawn tractor, mowing a path. Couldn't get a picture http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/09/meanwhile-back-at-farm.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-475817483540037655Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:24:00 +00002009-08-31T08:35:03.218-05:00Our world was turned over again yesterday. I have stopped keeping track of whether that makes it right-side-up or up-side-down now, but whichever way it is, it feels right. Our oldest daughter named the baby Happy Wednesday some months back. It won't be on her birth certificate, but it's what her brother and sister are still calling her, and I'm guessing it's a nick that will stick, at least http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/08/happy-wednesday.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-1656230135235784871Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:56:00 +00002009-08-23T16:49:18.632-05:00We bought a farm.I meant for the announcement to be a bit more poetic, but there it is. We bought a farm, which was our methodically planned and executed first step. The second step in our plan is to be farmers. Step two has benefited from considerably less method and planning.We bought the place on Thursday. A partial list of things that have broken: the air conditioner (luckily it's only 94 http://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/08/partial-list-of-things-broken.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3294480729270581711.post-5683002463183373555Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:29:00 +00002009-08-25T05:08:05.145-05:00Fossil fuels are not so bad. I know, it's a heretical thing for a liberal liberal to say, but has the benefit of being true: there are far worse ways to store and transport energy.For instance, killing whales and rendering the whale blubber into whale oil, subsequently burning the whale oil for heat and light... Not only is it worse in terms of efficiency, it's more distasteful than even striphttp://www.davidbrunton.com/2009/08/city-of-billion-batteries.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)2