Evolution of dance

If you need a laugh or some flashbacks to long past saturday nights, watch Judson Laipply’s dancing video.

And while you’re at it, watch this Treadmill Dance too.

Negative Captcha

In case you’re being troubled by comment spam bots, a negative captcha might be the solution.

I read about it last week. Today already, I might use it for a subscription form at work. My colleague complained about her mail box being littered with fake subscriptions. To the rescue!

Marriage equality

Let me take a stand.

If two people love each other, unconditionally. If they want to express that love in promising each other, the world and maybe their God, to stay together and care for each other until death do them part.

Then let them.

Inspired by I drew this.org and Jamie Whyte’s “Crimes against logic”

Don’t make me think!

Last weekend I finally read Steve Krug’s Don’t make me think (2nd edition). One of the few books I actually read entirely. And this one even within two days. Not only because it’s easy to read. Also because it is a fun book, with valuable content.

The first edition dates back to 2001. After encountering several references to this book as ‘a classic’, I figured I should read it.

If you’re in a profession related to publishing on the web - who isn’t these day? - than I can only recommend you to read mister Krug’s work. It provides you with some usability basics, without getting boringly scientific.

Microformats: vCard / hCard

1. Running Firefox
2. Installed the Greasemonkey extension
3. Installed Microformats finder
4. What will happen when I view the hCard data below?

Robert-Reinder Nederhoed

The Hague, The Netherlands

This hCard created with the hCard creator.

OLPC: Python for transparency

At the end of One Laptop per Childs Human Interface Guidelines / Design Fundamentals:

Transparency

OLPC also hopes to encourage the children [...] to explore the technology under the surface. [...] a view source key has been added to the laptop keyboards, providing them with [...] the code that enables the activities that they use from day to day.

[...] OLPC has written much of what can be in Python, a scripting language, to enable children to view the source code.

Their SVG page reads this notable development guideline:

Authors of OLPC content should try to use SVG wherever possible. Only use bitmaps such as JPEG or PNG where it is not possible to use SVG.

As a sidenote, their Python page pointed me to Movable Python. This product enables you to run Python programs from your USB memory stick, without installing software on the PC you’re using. Sounds like something I will be using.

Children should be making things: laptop.org

“In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs [...] is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint. [...] I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.”
– Nicholas Negroponte, chairman One laptop per child

In Novel software drives ‘$100 laptop’ - cnn.com

Five essential phone-screen questions

For just five interview questions, it surely ended up as a long read. Nevertheless worth the read:

The Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions — Steve Yegge

I just might translate some of his examples to Python:

Example 1: Write a function to reverse a string

def reverse(text):
....result = list(text)
....return ''.join(result[::-1]) 

or, just

def reverse(text):
....return text[::-1]

Example 2: Write function to compute Nth fibonacci number

def fib(n):
...."""Calculate fibonacci value for given n
....Doctests:
....>>> [fib(i) for i in xrange(0, 10)
....[0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 21, 34, 55]
...."""
....if n 

Example 3: Print out the grade-school multiplication table up to 12×12

def multiplication_table(n):
...."""Generate an n*n multiplication table
....>>> len(multiplication_table(10))
....10
....>>> len(multiplication_table(5)[0])
....5
...."""
....# Create matrix
....table = [[x*y for x in xrange(1, n+1)] for y in xrange(1, n+1)]
....return table

def print_matrix(matrix):
...."""Expects a list of lists """
....for row in matrix:
....|...print "%4d" * len(row) % tuple(row)

if __name__ == "__main__":
...."""Run actual program code """
....print_matrix(multiplication_table(12))

Example 4: Write a function that sums up integers from a text file, one int per line

def sum_file(filename):
...."""TODO: catch exceptions """
....fp = file(filename)
....try:
....|...numbers = [int(line.strip()) for line in fp]
....finally:
....|...fp.close()
....return sum(numbers)

Example 5: Write function to print the odd numbers from 1 to 99

def print_odds():
....for i in xrange(0, 100, 2):
....|...print i 

Example 6: Find the largest int value in an int array

def largest(sequence):
...."""Find the largest occurrence in a sequence ('array')
....>>> largest([0])
....0
....>>> largest(range(100))
....99
....>>> largest([1, 0, -1])
....1
...."""
....return max(sequence)

Example 7: Format an RGB value (three 1-byte numbers) as a 6-digit hexadecimal string

def format_rgb(red, green, blue):
...."""Convert integer RGB to hex RGB string
....
....>>> format_rgb(0, 0, 0)
....'000000'
....>>> format_rgb(255, 0, 0)
....'FF0000'
....>>> format_rgb(0, 255, 0)
....'00FF00'
....>>> format_rgb(0, 0, 255)
....'0000FF'
....>>> format_rgb(255, 255, 255)
....'FFFFFF'
...."""
....return "%02X%02X%02X" % (red, green, blue)

Test solutions:

def _test():
...."""Run tests on functions in module """
....import doctest
....doctest.testmod()

Please ignore points and pipes. WordPress can’t handle code layout well. Python is white-space sensitive. This is the best I could come up with.

Television is like…

“Television is just like making a hole in the wall. All kinds of stuff comes in, on the screen, that we would never allow to come in through the door.”
– Albert Borgmann

“You shift time to the television. If you start watching television, there’s something else you’re not doing. Who knows what you were doing before?”
– Annie Lang

Via NY Times

(Somehow, for me, this time shifting seems to apply to the PC and Internet)

Vista content protection costs

Peter Gutmann wrote a very long article concerning the impact of the Windows Vista “content protection” specifications. I spent the previous hour reading this article and comprehending its implications. Somehow I had hoped that MSFT had changed. Become more open. But little of that hope is left.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection - Peter Gutmann

If Vista turns out to be as limiting - “costly” - for the PC user as stated, then maybe this pain will lead to more users switching to alternative OS’s. It might also drive users to alternative methods of acquiring entertainment, when their legal “premium content” doesn’t show properly or requires expensive hardware.

First found via Reddit, decided it was too long. Refound tonight via Karel Donk.