Silly news update:
It’s not really news, but altering cows to have them produce human breast milk…
Sorry, but if I can’t drink straight from the tap, why mix up a box of powdered? No comparison, and as a matter of personal choice I wouldn’t bother.
(I hope to cause a shudder with that one.)
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Mercury polar pics… better than pr0n.
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Speaking of pr0n…
Paul Ryan looking at a particularly obscene congressional budget centerfold spread. Wah-heyyyyy, lookit them bodacious subtotals…
Until they FIX the budget mess, no one in Congress will escape my disdainful/baleful gaze, not even Ryan, who I agree with, at least in the spirit of “We’re speeding towards something… bad”. Spending 8x more than the tax receipts? Granted, it is “refund” time, but “refund” for Congress has come to mean “giving money back to the people” when it was ours to begin with.
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A few days ago I promised a strangely familiar visitor who went by the name ooGcM taobmaetS a very interesting paper. I can’t remember why I promised it but I did.
Kumar – Time-Series Bitmaps – SDM05
What is absolutely geek-schwinging about it is that you can graphically represent very complex data sets using relatively small graphics and quickly sort items by similarity. And it’s not that hard, either.
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Here’s a not-new XKCD but still one I love because it captured how I felt when I was first exposed to Python (exposed like “exposed to H1N1” kind of exposed). Of course I have grown to loathe the non-explicit typecasting nature of it but I still love Python. Python has that quick-n-dirty Hugh Grant naughty-boy feel to it but it feels so good.
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Aimed at clarification of an obscure joke for Mitchell or anyone else who doesn’t dabble in the world of a code-warrior…
The joke is that the guy wrote the C code on a piece of paper in what may or may not have been in crayon, scanned it in, and had his C compiler try to interpret the image as if it were the source code file.
The later comments joked about how his code editor didn’t highlight keywords, and still later ones addressed how if it had been done in colored crayon it would by implication be identified as Visual Basic code – C/C++ coders sneer at VB. But then again, hardcore fishbelly white Mt. Dew snorfling C-coders sneer at everything, especially if it isn’t under Linux.
Linux, what is this thing called Linux? If you aren’t writing your FORTRAN77 code with EVE on VMS, you just ain’t livin’ life.
Naw, I don’t have those mad skillz, either. Just sounds good. Though I loves my UNIX keyboard vs. Windows keyboard.
Crayon? I used crayons to write the pilot’s Takeoff and Landing Data (TOLD) cards for the C-5, instead of the normal write-on/wipe-off markers. Pilots either loved it or accused me of being a smarta$$. Usually both.
Love the xkcd comic, especially the part about “taking everything in the medicine cabinet”. Reminds me of Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke, when he was a hostage (long time ago). Uncle Duke faked illnesses, saved the meds, and once a month took a “long trip”.
Nice photo of Mercury! Any news on your toys?
Duke… Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Nuh-uh. Not my toys!
But no, so far no data, but I’d expect it to be a bit while they demogulate the signals.
Yeah, not “your” toys, but you’ve made a big mark on them.
BTW, have you found the transmogrifier to demogulate the signals? It’s pretty critical for that purpose.
I love Linux….
This post reeks of super geekdom. Well done!!
Could I be said to reek of masculine geekdom as well?
It would be the most awesome reeking I’ve ever done, if so.
Yes, indeed, very masculine geekdom 😉
Oh good. But was it masculine reekdom as well?
Definitely….
*sprays Febreeze*
Thank goodness.
It’s so much better than the scent of “Wildflowers and Shame”.
Oh, I see. I didn’t get it that he was trying to compile a picture of code – I thought it was some C thing. I do actually do stuff in VB and I like it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a staunch supporter of VB. Under Winders it’s a huge time-saver for GUI’s. But for processing huge sets of data, I have found C/C++ to be the better way to go. Their handling of large arrays left something to be desired years ago. Maybe that has changed…?
I guess I ought to be specific – I use VBA which is for customization of Office apps and automation. Manipulating data sets we use Access or Oracle / SQL and for statistical analysis we use Statistica. We sometimes do stuff with data sets in the 500,000 record range. That’s pretty big, but not perhaps ‘huge’.