By
anders pearson
12 Jul 2000
anyone who has discussed programming with me at length has probably heard me rant about the lack of emphasis on reading good source code in most CS programs. this is something that i firmly believe in; reading code written by clever experienced programmers and trying to understand exactly why they did things the way they did is an excellent way to improve your own programming. you’ll gain insight into how an experienced programmer approaches a problem as well as learning a thousand little tricks that they picked up along the way that are so simple and obvious that you’ll be ashamed you didn’t think of them yourself but which you know would probably have just never occurred to you in a million years.
with that in mind, i’d like to point out jamie zawinski’s implementation of message threading for Grendel as well as his thorough explanation of the algorithm and the reasoning behind it.
say what you will about the relative merits and disadvantages of open-source software, but without it, we’d never have the opportunity to read and learn from each others’ code. you may not use linux or emacs or mozilla. god knows 99% of the people that do use them never actually read the source code; i rarely do. but some people do and anyone can. that advances the art of programming. that alone makes the open-source movement entirely worthwhile as far as i’m concerned.
By
anders pearson
12 Jul 2000
brilliant.
when kamden and i were in china together, we discovered that if you looked obviously foreign and could act nonchalant, you could get away with a lot. far from home and you need to go to the bathroom but don’t want to deal with the toxic stench of chinese public bathrooms? no problem. just find the nearest 5 star hotel, walk in like you own the place and use their bathrooms. the doormen will either assume that you are staying there and they just hadn’t seen you before or they are just too afraid of offending a foreigner to tell you to get lost.
By
anders pearson
10 Jul 2000
joe clark haikued steve,
“who will haiku us?”, i ask;
a meta haiku
(it’s the 7/11/2000 entry (no permalinks))
By
anders pearson
09 Jul 2000
well, the rumor is that babelicious swedish metal quartet drain sth has broken up. the singer Maria Sjoholm married Tony Iommi of black sabbath and moved with him to the UK, while bassist Flavia Canel has moved to brooklyn. on the one hand, i’m sad that they broke up and won’t be making music together anymore. on the other hand, Flavia now lives across the river from me! woohoo!
By
anders pearson
09 Jul 2000
back in the winter when i was desperately looking for a job, i threw together a portfolio of my webdesign work but ended up never using it cause i found a job before i ever really got the dHTML working cross-platform. a few days ago, to prove to myself that i still had some javascript chops, i ripped out the old code and finally got it working in netscape 4, IE 5, and… mozilla even. i still haven’t been able to test it out on all combinations of browsers and platforms, so go check it out and let me know if you find any bugs. eventually maybe i’ll add my newer work to it…
By
tuck
08 Jul 2000
day a: i find a cool place for $400/mo, cable modem ready, only 20 minutes by bus from downtown seattle.
day b: her mom’s real estate agent friend “Fanny” takes me to see it.
her mom comes along.
day c: her mom decides to buy the entire building.
a present for her step-son, my gal’s step-brother whom i think is about as neato as a chapped anus.
my new townhouse-mate? of course.
day d: i think: if i move out, her asian family takes offense and thinks i am trying to separate them from their daughter (plus i lose a SWEET place that i can actually AFFORD.)
if i don’t move out, her mom or step-brother becomes my landlord and can enter my space at their own discretion, most likely disapproving of my decorative tastes. if her step bro doesn’t like my music, her mom learns i’m a metal head and i am gone. her step bro doesn’t like my friends? her mom holds it against my character and i am gone. her step bro doesn’t like my decorated monkey skull (etc)? her mom calls the chinese mafia to off me or otherwise ship me as far away from her daughter as possible.
day e: i realize that i am in hell.
day f: i think about how i got to hell…
day g: maybe not hell… found a boxing club, cheap rent, cheap rent, cable modem, cheap rent… hell?
day h: definitely in hell. at least the food is good in hell…
By
anders pearson
08 Jul 2000
the archive is working again, btw. and notice how it clever it is; if you select an entry that is currently up on the front-page, it just sends you to the that spot on the main page rather than giving you a page of just that item (which it does for older items).
By
anders pearson
08 Jul 2000
all right, it was bad enough that kottke.org and schampeo are both the same color, but now they’re starting to post the exact same stuff. judging purely by the dates on the posts, it looks like steve is copying jason. what gives?
By
anders pearson
08 Jul 2000
LHPO: guitars are for wusses.
By
anders pearson
07 Jul 2000
some jackass in my building set off the fire alarm at 8am, robbing me of my most precious hour of sleep. that hour right before you have to get up is truly magical. lying there half-awake, knowing that you’ve still got time to enjoy being able to lounge around in your nice warm bed for a while longer, fading in and out of sleep, before your alarm makes you get up… pure bliss.