RSS MAD

Cool project

Today I came across a really cool java product called Jackcess. It is a pure java access library. Means you can write Access 2000 mdb files in Java... no ODBC crap.

Nice article on tagging

Has tagging hit a tipping point? Or has it jumped the shark?
It is really hard to say. I am a hardcore user of del.icio.us so I am biased about the usefullness of tags. I think they are great. And like statistics, they allow some great information to be bubbled up from a chaotic mess. Useful tags become more used and lesser known tags begin to pale, though are still visible. You can track how things enter the world of the internet and then slowing die in the long tail.
And the most amazing things is that it is soooo simple. Is it the ultimate solution? I do not think so. But del.icio.us has done something not even google can do: give you a context for a page. And as more people tag, there will be more pages brought into the space.

I would buy this

This is a prank, but man I would buy it.
Though if you really want to know about scheme then SICP is where you need to go!

Shadow Warrior source code

I love it when companies release old game source code. And this was a good game in it's time.
The one I am still waiting for is Quake3, which is hopefully coming soon.

April fools

I am always reluctant to post anything on April fools that I have found on the internet. You just cannot tell if it is real.
I am sure this was already posted... but John from ID (you should know who that is by the way) is talking about Java on cell phones. It was a good read. Even if I am behind. No foolin.

Tom DeLay and how his father and Terri are related

Not too long ago, Tom DeLay the holier-than-thou republican cock, let his own father die. There wasn't a feeding tube but to be sure, he was a medical terrorist that killed him.

I swore that I would try to stick to programming stuff on this blog when I started posting again. Sadly this is not about programming and you can ignore it if you want. I would not ignore it. It will let you know the true nature and moral character of the losers running this country currently. And should give you a good idea about how far down in hell they will be for all this.

I am sorry for her family. Let her die in peace. If it were me, I would have wanted to die a long time ago. And not on TV with some pseudo-religous republican spouting crap about me. Tom DeLay and the republicans are just wrong on this one.

Good discussion on next version of IE

This is a good discussion of what is happening on the next version of IE. Even better are all the comments to the real post. Good stuff. Even though I admire MS for opening up blogs for this type of stuff, it would be hard working on a team that most all sane web developers would like kill. The IE team has a tough job. Their company illegally promoted their product to the front line and now they really seem to be struggling with catching up to firefox. It is funny how a free browser without a corporation supporting it can sneak up on a giant like IE. Good stuff.

Interesting post about SQL vs other languages

This is an interesting post.
First the topic is interesting, then the comment at the end.

Look how much fun it is to program SQL. Three lines of code and you get an interesting answer (and those three lines would have been much cleaner and simpler if we hadn't been forced to use the CLOB datatype, which has its own strange accessor functions). Compare to Java and C where typing until your fingers fall off usually doesn't result in much of anything. SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.

The thing to note is that SQL preloads your memory or knowledge with table structures and indexes and all kinds of other good stuff about the data. So a three line SQL query, while small in the textual sense, may require a LOT of other data in your head.
But it is true that in SQL you do more but it just a different model. In SQL you ask for something with little care of how you get it, in Java you ask for something and you better know how you get it.
Interesting thought though, could Java or other languages ever become declarative like SQL... probably not.

Give me back my crappy VB

This is just funny. Please oh please let me have my old shitty language back. I want the language that makes no sense... the one that lets retards write really bad code and forces real programmer to tear out what is left of their hair. I for once think microsoft should do it. The more stupid VB programmers the better. I for one will take the new VB.Net and C# and be happy. Let the retards sign whatever they want... they are signing their life away.

Are knowledge workers in control?

This is an interesting article about how knowledge workers (like programmers) are in control of their destiny when it comes to money. Now more than ever.

Interesting stuff about ruby on the rails

Read this.

Sexual frustration leads to castration?

I cannot think that in all of my youth I ever would have wanted to cut my member off.

Time to reboot the supercomputer

Do you really want a windows supercomputer? It reboots really fast... and can do a windows update really quick!

Dear lord this cannot be true...

This story cannot be true. It just is not possible. All I have to say is there are some desparate horny kids in the world.

Swear in lots of languages!

This is funny. Amazing that someone would take the time to do it. But it is great.

Personalized Google Search

http://labs.google.com/personalized

Yahoo developer network

This is cool. Search yahoo like google, just get an appid and go to town! The dev kit comes with java, perl, python and javascript examples. Very nice.

Is WSDL really simple?

This is a great post. Is there really a problem here though?

Use the IPod to hold digital pics

There is a gizmo coming that will let you store your digital pics on your ipod. And just like Alton Brown would like it, the ipod becomes a multifunction device like it should have been in the first place! (Why is there not an SD slot on that sucker?)

dmza?

What in the world is dmza and why am I at the top of the list for interesting blogs. I would like to think that some people are reading my drivel... but this is probably a mistake. I am gonna have to look into it I guess. If anyone has any ideas just comment. Thanks

Great article on .Net problems

This is a really good article on problems with .Net. But this is not just an attack article. The author makes some really good points on what Microsoft has done wrong and how it appears they have lost confidence in the technology.

Star wars spoilers...

Here is a HUGE spoiler with lots of photos.

Quit your job to blog

Could you quit to blog? I could not. First off I am a jackass! Second, relying on strangers for money would be hard... I mean REALLY hard for me to do. These are interesting times when a person that is not a journalist can just quit to write stories on the web for a living.

Get rid of linux?

This is an interesting read about how Dvorak would get rid of linux. Not in a way that you would think really but he might have a point. I already use linux in a virtual machine on windoze and it is somewhat useful, though still too slow.

More illegal tactics from Microsoft

I read this on Slashdot... so most of you have already read it I would imagine. Why is this company still in business? If this is true.

Good list of search engines

Here is the list.

Game of Life as a mushroom

Here is a neat version of the Game of Life from Conway. Done with mushrooms.

[NSFW] 50 famous images from Playboy

This is nice but not safe for work!

Happy V-Day

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/724a/zoom/ This is the perfect shirt for a geek!

See the computer "think" about chess

This is an interesting link. I never imagined it looking like this to be honest. I always imagined a big mean smirky chess master laughing at my crappy moves. I suck at chess, I always have and probably always will... not matter how many versions of chess master I have purchased.

Nutty but interesting...

This is kind of strange but interesting to read. Can some random number generator predict the future? Maybe random number generators are just windows into the future? Strange stuff. Here is the mother site.

Boy Bob sure loves his enemas!

Click to read the full story.

Jython is slower than perl?

Jython is slower than perl. Hmmmmm.... What was I thinking? Oh yeah. And about one thousand times more readable.

Javascriptty goodness

Here is a cool translation of the little schemer into javascript.

State of the union parsing...

This has got to be the coolest thing I have seen in a while.

Gates is wrong

Bill Gates and interopability.

"Open source is a methodology for licensing and/or developing software - that may or may not be interoperable. Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts," Gates wrote.

Software in the larger sense can be more or less interoperable regardless of its origin. Open source software in fact sticks to standards much better than most Microsoft products. He is in fact just lying.
You can look no further than his pathetic browser to see how great Microsoft follows a standard, like CSS I mean.
In some sense the question of interopability is really just a symptom of a larger problem. Data and moving data is hard under any circumstances. Web Services have an answer to this and it is called plain text (in the form of XML). So is that the answer, plain text? Not really, more like well formed plain text.
If that were the case, comma separated files solved this problem years ago.
You can read more rants on slashdot since this is where I saw the story.

Collab Text Editor

A cool text editor that you can share across the internet... like a video game without the blood and lots of letters. Unless you are playing typing of the dead.

Gosling on scripting

I got this from another weblog so... just follow the link. I do not really have a dog in the fight, but I prefer python myself.

Good post

This is a really good post with some wisdom about how to live and how to work. I really like the part about specialization. Know your strengths.

Chunking

Chunking in Python

Chunking is the term that I will use to explain something that I do as a programmer almost everytime I look at code. Chunking is visual grouping. Sometime it is grouping at the function level, sometimes it is grouping at the scope level, sometimes it is even at the class level or even down to the statement.

When I look at code, I do not always see separate lines of code. Most of the time when I am looking at code I see structure. And this structure changes according to what I am looking at the code for. For debugging the chunking can change from statement level chunks to function level chunks in an instant. As I am reading through code this chunking happen automatically and switches from the level of detail as I need without effort.

Python has a unique feature in that it is pre-chunked. Most good Python is written pre-chunked by default. The is because of the whitespace scoping. What most programmer find to be the bane of Python is the very thing that draws me to it more than any other language. It is possible to write obscure Python that is not pre-chunked but most Python written by sane programmers is pre-chunked.

All programs are really pre-chunked if you think about it. If the program is a running viable program, then it has at minimum met the "must-compile" status. That does not mean it is readable or even chunkable (two different issues I think).

A procedural language like C is somewhat pre-chunked in that most action is happening in functions or in scoped places in the code. The problem with C vs Python is that even though it is pre-chunked into functions, the syntax of the language does not promote any further chunking, in fact it is just the oppisite. There are an infinite number of ways that source code can be moved around in C, and all of the ways are valid. For instance:

if (someCondition) {
	// do something
}

or

if (someCondition)
{
	// do something
}

or

if (someCondition) //do something small

or

if (someCodition) { /* do something */ }

All of these are valid ways to write an if statement in C. In Python there are only two ways to write an if statement.

if someCondition:
	# do something

or

if someCondition: # do something; do more; ...

The second case is not the norm but is still used and valid in Python. In both cases the suite of statements that are connected to the if condition are readily apparent and cannot be confused with any other group.

In C, the whole world can change based solely on coding style or lack thereof. This means that code that I did not write will not conform to my chunking "model."

Why did I use the word "model" in a description of chunking? Well chunking is personal. Very personal. I chunk differently than anyone else I know. Chunking might even be experience based. More experienced programmers chunk at a higher level than less experienced programmers? Why is that? As you get used to seeing code in your life you become less entrenched in the details and more concerned with the general flow of the code. Or sometimes you do anyway. The mantra here is what is this code doing and not how.

Less experienced codes tend to get hung up on syntax or source code features that draw attention from the purpose of the code. How is this code working vs what is this doing?

So can you teach someone to chunk? Probably not. But Python REALLY helps with this I think. If you read Python code for anytime at all you get used to the shapes and in fact you come to rely on the appearence of the code. Switching back to any other language that does not support this appearence based scoping makes you long for Python, where scope is visible, beautiful and obvious all at the same time.

This need for beauty in your code can lead to better habits in other languages and ultimately will make you a better programmer.

Not even here and hits are high?

Jroller has a new look I guess. I notice that my hits are kind of high and I have not even been here in a while. Looks like some kind of strange search engine in the referer listing. Anyway... I am still at http://tonetheman.blogspot.com, come on over and read if you want. See you around.

Moved back to blogger

Until I get my own site... which I think will take me a while... I am back using blogger. You can find me there writing Tony Blog, which hopefully will remain on topic of programming.
My first post is about programming and beauty. If you have a chance, go check it out. Thanks.

Still here...

Moving to another site is not as easy as I would like. I am looking into getting bellsouth DSL for my home and a static IP and then hosting it myself. The terms and service of bellsouth do not permit running a server... what is everyone else doing I wonder. I still have some investigating to do. And there have been so many stories that really scream for my mean spirited comments.

And so it ends

I think that I have lived my life out on this free service and have nothing more to say here. At least nothing that will not get censored by a not so easy to find terms of service document.
No hard feelings thought, to each his own. I will start my own server and wish you all the best of luck. Changes are afoot in theman's life and this is just one change of many.
Good luck.

War President

A picture of the war monger, made up of pictures of the people who have sacrificed the most. I got the pictures from The American Leftist where you will find larger version of the same picture.

Who is that with Jeremy?

Who is that with Jeremy is a funny site with lots of pictures of one kid with some really famous people. I thought that some of them looked photoshop but some of them looked real. Funny site. New Yorkers have it good.

Slipping into obscurity

Ah now that my comments have gotten back to normal I think that I am going to just slip away into obscurity. My hits are back to normal and my 26 comment thread has fallen from the front page. The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth though. I am not sure that I will continue to use this service any longer. I am still trying to decide...

Web logs are strange really (I have said that before). I really started writing a web log to try to share my programming knowledge with the world. Obscure Oracle things, java techniques and tips, and python. But quickly I have turned into a political commentor, and not even a good one at that. Or I have turned into a meta-link gatherer. I forage links that I think are interesting hoping that someone else will too. I waste so much time reading on the web it is not even funny.

Then the other day while ranting on Muslims I was attacked for being way too mean. Which was true, I was being way too mean. I made it through the storm though I feel dirty and now I am not so sure I need to be writing here any more.

I will think about it for a while longer before I make my final decision.

Ticket selling and 5 Win2K boxes

Here is a sad tale about how 5 Win2K boxes are just not enough to sell tickets to the Glastonbury Festival.

.Exe and Java

How can I make an exe from Java? This is a post just about that. This guys is right, if you watch the news groups you see this question come up time and time again. Actually if you watch the Python groups you see the same thing. Anyway he give some ideas of how to handle the situtation. He refers to this article over at codeproject. (a great resource these days by the way)
Ecelsior is a company that does this already but you gotta pay. The real question to me is... do you really need an exe? Maybe not. If you can get the JRE onto a machine you really do not need an exe. If you are trying to protect IP you probably ought not to be writing in Java to start with... I am sure there are other valid reasons for wanting an exe though... I would guess the main one is not wanting to install the JRE.