tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68407072011-07-30T19:52:51.309-04:00Yet another blog, by yet another person. <br><br> Random stuff about Python, Java, Scala, and other random stuff.FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-50293127855997968932010-07-11T11:05:00.004-04:002010-07-11T11:37:15.946-04:00

Yet another case of re-inventing the wheel, poorly. This is a small script to find words that are longer than a supposed longest word that can be made from a set of letters (letters in the set may be repeated): #!/usr/bin/env python3 from contextlib import contextmanager @contextmanager def words_made_from(letters): letters = frozenset(letters) words_file = open('/usr/share/dict/words')

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-30603360861646130072009-07-13T21:00:00.003-04:002009-07-13T22:25:08.734-04:00

Introduction I was looking for a book on JavaScript that was not one of those "xyz bible" book or "dummies" book, and not about DOM. I wanted something that was about the language, and best practices. Along came “JavaScript: The Good Parts” by Douglas Crockford. Exactly what I was looking for. JavaScript always looked too ugly and consequently never got the extra attention that I pays to other

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-12802479709686845542008-10-06T01:59:00.007-04:002009-07-18T13:32:46.672-04:00

The Path to “Keys” My first practical experience of more involved sorting (more than just invoking xs.sort()) was probably in Java, which was the Comparable††/Comparator††† metaphor, something that I had also seen in C/C++ (qsort). Then I had my first real-world use for such sorting, and it was in Perl, and I happily employed the familiar comparator metaphor. Stupid me had missed the most

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-60078839274316712332008-09-28T12:54:00.005-04:002008-09-28T13:10:52.745-04:00

This is the second installment in the series that examines features that a beginner to intermediate level Pythonista would use, and their Scala equivalents. I am not an expert-level Pythonista, so I won't cover any advanced features. For-loops We have already seen the for-comprehensions (see part 1) in Scala. The for-loop construct is similar, but without the yield bit. # Python acc = 0 for

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-34166622141283272092008-09-13T10:24:00.003-04:002008-09-28T13:08:48.661-04:00

This examines features that a beginner to intermediate level Pythonista would use, and their Scala equivalents. I am not an expert-level Pythonista, so I won't cover any advanced features. This is the first installment. Tuples Scala has tuples, and supports some of the tuple unpacking tricks familiar to Pythonistas. -- tuple literals # Python resp = (42, "The Answer") // Scala val resp = (42,

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-90823149812718991012008-07-20T23:30:00.014-04:002008-07-22T23:56:16.684-04:00

This post is a moron's attempt to understand something that most others take for granted, a recipe given in the itertools documentation. This is not a solution to any real problem. Groups of n Groups of n is a function that takes an iterable and returns n consecutive elements from that iterable. I needed something like this, while I was trying to convert a rather silly ID-generation function

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-32652549598848348112008-07-06T11:21:00.017-04:002008-07-14T00:24:34.378-04:00

This entry follows the evolution of a somewhat naïve implementation of a dictionary which normalizes its keys or values, or both. The main requirement is that the implementation should preserve the standard Python dict interface (including those for constructors and factories) and avoid re-implementing anything that is already provided by the standard dict. First Version The first version was a

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-22004915799534080322008-06-22T20:03:00.004-04:002010-07-11T11:40:39.269-04:00

If you were asked whether you preferred case-sensitive or non-case-sensitive behaviour, what would be your reply? In a programming language, I would prefer case-sensitive behavior. It makes the code a lot easier to read. I had the misfortune of reading some VBScript code, and one of the miseries (apart from the horrible Hungarian notation) was having to identify the same variables that were in

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-70234256360030728452008-03-01T11:55:00.004-05:002008-04-06T23:33:59.209-04:00

apply() is Going Away Python 3.0 will remove apply() from built-ins. What follows is a farewell party for apply(). Python Functions Consider the following Python example: def eat(staple, *sides, **drinks): pass def find(thing, tool="camera", bait=None): pass # Now we can call eat as follows: eat("omelette", "fries", "crisps", start="soda", end="wine") # And find as follows: find("rat",

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-55677546897744562582007-12-29T17:03:00.000-05:002007-12-29T18:02:00.647-05:00

I love my fun-fiction shows (I don't like to call them "science fiction" because there is rarely any science and not necessarily great in terms of fiction, but that's an entirely different rant), but I do have point out something really weird about aliens, especially those "advanced" civilizations. Where are the bloody cameras? Take one of my favorite shows, Stargate SG-1. The Stargate team is

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-80871615792535343242007-04-16T22:53:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:07:25.052-05:00

The first web-log entry I made was about my wish that the automobile industry would take more interest in serial hybrids. I expressed the wish again in a subsequent web-log entry, almost a year later. Two years later, is there hope for this wish? Chevrolet Volt concept car is a serial hybrid, and in fact GM claims to be building a serial-hybrid platform. However, GM is also the company that came

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-30947048261629090732007-03-04T20:42:00.000-05:002007-03-11T10:42:08.182-04:00

After listening to podcasts for a while, I have noticed that independent podcasts tend to be more fun and less irritating than vendor-run ones. Vendor-run Podcasts: Irritating Aspects Vendor podcasts are marketing and propaganda machines, with a charter to promote the vendor's products and services. This is the value that investing in podcasting provides to vendors. However, it is also the same

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-18824595219020607322007-02-25T14:47:00.000-05:002007-03-09T00:50:45.916-05:00

Woohoo! Finally! I am a certified code monkey. Certifiable code monkey. At least, the certifiable and monkey parts are right. Apart from the day wasted trying to find the test center, it was mostly a painless affair. It was fortunate that I tried to make a trip to the test center a week before, just to make sure I could find my way. Maps and Directions The knee-jerk reaction to getting an address

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1161536832664399162006-10-22T12:23:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:08:28.762-05:00

I am torn between Rendezvous with Rama (by Sir Arthur C. Clarke) and Nightfall (by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg) when it comes to deciding which is the best science fiction novel that I have read so far. The characters are more real in Nightfall, when compared to those of Rendezvous with Rama, some of whom behave more like characters from fairy tales. On this ground, I could pick Nightfall,

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1160584083777365712006-10-11T12:05:00.007-04:002009-07-23T10:45:32.766-04:00

Happiness is about Satisfaction. When do we achieve Happiness? When we cross the minimal target satisfaction level (Sm). Satisfaction level is cumulative, therefore, the cumulative minimum target satisfaction (∑Sm) will form the basis of finding when we have achieved satisfaction. Say, the actual level of satisfaction is Sr, and the cumulative level, ∑Sr. Now, we can say that we reach Happiness

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1129266380823587622005-10-14T00:50:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:09:03.340-05:00

I had heard of the film Dr. Strangelove quite often, but I had refused to read even a review, thinking it was either some mushy story or some “artsy” nonsense. Then I started hearing more and more about it. Finally, I just could not resist it when I saw two copies of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb at the local public library. I started watching the film,

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1118631199329371372005-06-12T22:43:00.000-04:002006-02-08T22:31:44.690-05:00

GNOME's "object" view in Nautilus (Spatial) is very interesting. Object Properties It is possible to make the object metaphor more interesting by providing a way to open up a view that lists all the changes made to that object, and the ability to view customizations inherited from its parent objects. The ability to alter these properties will make it more useful. For more advanced users, the

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1116134730771918922005-05-02T01:04:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:09:03.341-05:00

After reading people moan about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie being late and not being funny, I was not really expecting it to be funny. I have read the books and was wondering how they are going to put that on screen. Well, they did manage to put that on screen and managed to be funny. That was quite a feat. Of course, I have only read the book; never listened to the radio shows nor

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1114740735028797382005-04-28T21:53:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:07:25.052-05:00

Reading about the topic of hybrid cars brings up the question again? Why is it that the big three automobile manufacturers are not coming up with up-market serial-hybrids, that focuses on performance and convenience, rather than the environment? Should they not be starting from the top, rather than from the bottom or the middle? Usually, the path taken by the application of a new technology (

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1101514762551082832004-11-26T19:14:00.000-05:002004-11-26T19:21:57.076-05:00

I came across this joke on Slashdot recently, from among the comments to the story about "Smart Car" being introduced to the United States by number11: Just wait until someone gets in a head on collision with an SUV (most of them are nearly 3 times the weight of these cars -- The driver of the SUV feels almost nothing Just wait until that crappy SUV gets in a head on collision with a

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1087075527337021202004-06-12T17:08:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:08:28.763-05:00

Douglas Adams' Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in the hitchhiker ‘Trilogy’ is packed with even more humor. When I took the book I had a slight misgiving that it might be just repetitive, but surprisingly, it was packed with even more fun. Of particular note is chapter 13, in which Douglas Adams describes a primitive planet in which Arthur (one of the principal characters) was shipwrecked. You

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6840707.post-1083946659231560702004-05-07T13:57:00.000-04:002007-12-29T20:07:25.052-05:00

After reading about it somewhere, I have always wondered why we were not hearing much about the possibility of having diesel-electric hybrid cars (where the car is powered by electric motor(s) with electricity derived from a diesel engine)? Wouldn't this put many more cars etc. with electric power-trains on the road and give much better real-life test data, which could help make the electric

FiniteState42ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945263662731074371noreply@blogger.com