Scott's Blog

I like the really high life expectancy too. Not sure if I can trust this program though, it's not too sure on how to spell "Expectancy".

Why do we have a line of hair sitting caterpillar-like above each of our eyes? Forget such mundanities as dust protection or ornamentation, a new study suggests our eyebrows serve to control how easily other people can tell where we are looking.

I have this recurring fantasy of programming the perfect calculator. I've found two or three very good ones: Frink , is a Java based calculator that I've become very fond of. It nearly has it all: Pros Runs anywhere, including cell phones and other small devices that have Java. Unit conversion including currencies, and timezones. Unlimited precision, interval arithmetic, complex numbers. Really fun tutorial . Cons Closed source. Java ;-) Qalculate! Pros Open Source Auto complete as you type, pretty cool. Pretty prints results, ex. sqrt(2) => √(2) or 2*3 => 2·3. Notion of exact values and showing fractional values. Weird numbers formats like Roman, Sexagesimal Can create your own functions that has dialog boxes. RPN, plotting, history Cons Too many menus buttons. Not fun, a little dry. Missing Brazilian Real for currency! No timezones. wxMaxima Pros Open source Complete computer algebra system. Plotting Cons No unit conversions No timezone conversions If I were to make a...

Python 3000 will be the first Python version which is free to break backward compatibility, a chance to get rid of old problems and cruft that have accumulated over the years. I like most of the changes and agree with their reasons but I'm sad about one thing. Before you could create a program like this: print "Hello world!" For beginners, this is great, no extra semicolons, parentheses etc. Now you will have to write: print("Hello world!") It's not the end of the world, but it just got a little more difficult for beginners. On the other hand it will introduce them to functions a little earlier. Another difference I'm not so sure about is removing the % operator. I like that formatting operator: print "Your are %d years old" % age now becomes: print("You are {0:d} years old".format(age)) sigh.

I often double click on a filename or folder and then paste it with the middle button (the scroll wheel), in Linux. What annoyed me was that it doesn't get the ~ character so if I'm cutting an pasting my current path as shown on the command line scott@home:~/src/folder/name$ Double click, middle click gives me /src/folder/name and not ~/src/folder/name . How annoying, I have to cursor all the way to the beginning and enter the tilde character. Even worse if there's an error message like: Error in ~/src/folder/name.cc:123 Double click, middle click gives me now /src/folder/name.cc:123 . Now I have to edit both sides. The fix is simple, go to your Gnome Terminal|Profiles... and edit your default profile. The first pane called "General" and has a field called "Select-by-word characters". Add the tilde (~) and remove the colon (:) and you're done. There, I just saved you 2 thousand keystrokes a year.

Our language is changing faster and faster, it's hard to keep up. Even yesterday I used the word w00t !. Thankfully, our technology helps keep us up-to-date. Now I know about LOLCats , L33 speak , And all the Portuguese internet expressions too. If fact there's a whole list of words I've never heard before to describe these things: backcronyms (and anacronyms , apronyms ) , snowclones , image macros , and other forms of patois . kthxbye shortening of "k thx bye". The K is short for OK, which is short for oll korrect, which is a facetious alteration of All Correct. thx is short for thanx which is a facetious alteration of thanks which is short for thank you. Bye is short for goodbye, which is an alteration of alteration of God be with you. "kthxbye" is the pinnacle of English's advancement, shortening "All correct, Thank you, God be with you." into seven lowercase letters. Humanity is doomed. Obviously, it is used to end a conversation *fa...

I played two sets over the weekend and noticed where I used to grunt like Nadal when hitting the ball, now I only grunt when I pick up the ball.