January 2012
2 posts
2 tags
“As I learned more about how these early role-playing games worked, I realized...”
– Ernest Cline, READY PLAYER ONE (2011)
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Dungeons & Dragons - The Way Forward →
I stopped playing D&D during the transition from the 3.5 Edition to the 4th1. I was somewhat burned out after playing the former for a long period of time without meaningful interruptions, and the new mechanics introduced by the latter did not grip me at all.
To see news of Wizards (or should I say, Hasbro) planning a new major edition a mere three years after the debut of the Fourth Edition...
December 2011
1 post
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November 2011
7 posts
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The Codebits Experience
If I wanted to surmise the Codebits experience into one simple word, it would be this: more.
One goes to Codebits looking for knowledge, and leaves it craving more. One enters Codebits with a set amount of friends, and surely leaves it with even more. One reaches Codebits expecting to have fun, and ends up having more. In short, every time a Codebits edition ends, it leaves everyone waiting...
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Errors when Installing DBD::mysql on Mac OS X
For some reason, installing DBD::mysql on Mac OS X is the source of much grief. There are countless blog entries, forum posts, and Stack Overflow questions floating around about this very same issue.
Obviously, it was only a matter of time until I was afflicted by this and end up losing hours of valuable time trying to puzzle out the proper solution. But fortunately I got it working, so...
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List of Freely Available Programming Books →
Incredibly comprehensive list of readily available books related with programming.
I find lists like these to be a double-edged sword. They are very useful, but one can harm himself with too much information, by quickly losing focus and the realization that actually doing something is as important (if not more) than just endlessly reading about how it is done.
Still, this one is a keeper, and...
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Codebits::API
Codebits, the massive hackathon extravaganza organized by Portuguese tech company SAPO, has its fifth edition happening in only a few days and I couldn’t be more excited about it. This will be my third consecutive year attending, and given that it has been improving by leaps and bounds with each edition, I have high expectations for this year.
API Preamble
Since the machine began...
October 2011
6 posts
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Perl Weekly Newsletter →
You are busy churning out code or managing the developers. You care about Perl but don’t have time to go through tens and hundreds of articles and blog posts every day. You want to keep an eye on the development of Perl without drowning in a sea of blog posts. You need someone to point out the most important news and articles in the Perl World. Let me be your guide.
One could make a...
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Moose Delegation and References Currying
Storage abstraction in object-oriented programming is an interesting problem, approachable from several directions. While using Moose to build a set of self-storable objects, to tackle that particular issue, I came across a particular implementation detail that puzzled me for a while.
My approach involves Roles, insofar as the objects in question consume the ability to be “storable”, with the...
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Alternative to Google Code Search →
As of late, Google has been increasing the rate in which it brings the broom out of the closet to sweep its portfolio of products, in an effort towards shoving the weakest links under the rug of deprecation.
In its recent “fall sweep”, the broom hit squarely in the face of Code Search, a tool I find most useful. As such, the announcement of its untimely death annoys me, and prompted...
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“C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.”
– Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011), a giant in whose shoulders most our technology stands on
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September 2011
12 posts
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Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? →
A reasonably known paper that was on my reading list for far too long.
It did not disappoint.
I really enjoy these sort of speculative exercises, and this one in particular is very interesting. For those still on the fence about this being worth their time or not, I can provide no argument more compelling than the reasoning already present in the paper’s introduction:
Apart from the...
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“Your nerd lives in a monospaced typeface world. Whereas everyone else is...”
– Michael Lopp, Being Geek, “The Nerd Handbook”
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Watch
An infographic dissecting the nature and ramifications of Stuxnet, the first weapon made entirely out of code.
A clear glimpse of what’s to come in the next decades.
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Most Pressed Keys and Programming Syntaxes →
The Dusty Programmer explores the most pressed keys of some of the more popular programming languages, mapping the results in a very interesting set of keyboard heat maps.
As is usual for me, the results about Perl were those that interested me the most. To that regard he had this to say:
As far as I can tell languages with a wider focused spread across the keyboard are usually syntaxes we...
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“A higher probability exists that every member of your programming team will be...”
– Scott Chacon, Pro Git, on the probability of a SHA1 hash collision
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“Java is a high level programming language. It’s unproductive to have an opinion...”
– Nick Farina, while giving his take on the Android SDK
August 2011
8 posts
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“Lexical closure means that an anonymous function carries its native environment...”
– Mark Jason Dominus, Higher-Order Perl
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Apple's success as a powerful beacon →
Regarding the news of Steve Jobs resigning as CEO of Apple, Horace Dediu writes what’s become my favorite piece on the subject, so far.
Of Jobs, he says:
Steve Jobs’ legacy in product development has been clearly established and celebrated. What remains now is to determine his legacy in company development. If indeed Apple has the “right architecture in the organization” to...
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On Experiencing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
I had the opportunity to play around with a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 for a few hours and frankly, as an iPad 2 user, I was underwhelmed.
Allow me to elaborate on this.
Hardware
The tablet itself is fine. It’s not as sturdy as an iPad (it’s plastic versus aluminium after all) but it feels solid enough in your hands. It’s also lighter than the iPad. Not a big difference, but after...
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The Noun Project →
“sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language”
The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world’s visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way.
Awesome project. Incredibly useful.
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July 2011
9 posts
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1st Lisbon Machine Learning School
Between the past few days of July 20th, to the 25th, I was fortunate enough to be one of the roughly 130 attendees of the first Lisbon Machine Learning School. With the topic of Learning for the Web, this Summer school took place at Instituto Superior Técnico, and covered a wide range of machine learning topics, with a strong bias towards Natural Language Processing.
Despite it being geared more...
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“As a former philosophy major, it disturbs me to think that things disappear when...”
– Dive Into Python, on the subject of Garbage Collection
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“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
– William Gibson
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June 2011
6 posts
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The Coming Technological Singularity →
The original 1993 paper by Vernor Vinge in which the term (if not the concept) of the Technological Singularity was coined.
Extremely interesting read, very thought-provoking, and still highly relevant.
(via Instapaper)
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Enhanced Autodidactism for the Chronically Lazy... →
A recurring problem:
If you find it difficult to concentrate: you might think it is difficult to finish projects or learn new things. This requires protracted effort, not something you are able or willing to give. Maybe you’ll give up: why bother forcing yourself to continue when you have no natural inclinations.
But don’t.
Useful tips on how to deal with the issue. Some are...