-
Getting Shit Done
I came across an old LifeHacker article Get Shit Done Blocks Distracting Web Sites So You Can Do As the Name Instructs, that mentions a productivity script, get-shit-done. So I went to the github repository only to discover that the Python script was no longer functional. I didn't have permission to fix the script at the site, so here's a quick ( Read more... ) -
Fifth Grade Homework - Nine digit pandigital prime number
Yesterday my daughter in the fifth grade got the following homework assignment "arrange the digits one through nine into a nine-digit prime number." (Note, since zero wasn't included, it's not really a pandigital number ( Read more... ) -
Prepopulating lists with objects in Python
Dear self,
Never admit to the world you lost a couple of hours thinking that the following line created a list of objects.
l = [Obj()] * n
It doesn't. It creates a list of references to one object.
What you meant to write was this:
l = [Obj() for _ in range(n)]
You dummy. -
David and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Today was to be errand day. But an out-of-town family member needed to drop by so his young daughter could take naps and play with my kids while he was stuck in the neighborhood on business. That was OK, I just wouldn't run quite so many errands then.
The credit card company (for our only credit card) emailed me to verify that the last few ( Read more... ) -
Transparency vs. Anonymity
Namesake.com released an infographic that was brilliantly designed. It's informative, addresses a hotly contested issue, has plenty of high value keywords, some statistics and - the biggest reason for getting mentioned here - is wrong.
Their Transparency vs. Anonymity infographic provides the following two rationales:
For Transparency, Mark ( Read more... ) -
Would You Like To Tweet This?
I just visited a Twitter Statistics page that had a persistent popup window in the bottom right corner that looks like this:
( Read more... ) -
Time for a New Computer
The oldest computer in the household, "That Fucking Laptop", running Windows XP, is finally giving up the ghost.
We're thrilled! Finally, we get to replace it with something that can actually run a client for Minecraft. Finally, we get to replace it with a system that'll run the latest Firefox correctly. (Firefox 4.0 doesn't show the Bookmarks ( Read more... ) -
Compromised Blogs
Now that it's been a few months (since the second attack), I'll admit that when my WordPress blog was originally compromised over a year ago, I didn't know that I didn't completely fix it. I missed a back door, and a virtual storefront later appeared deep in my blog's hierarchy.
I wrote a script to find out which other websites were affected by ( Read more... ) -
A New Kind of Science and The Information
Two books that I think I'd really enjoy but haven't purchased yet: Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind Of Science, and James Gleick's The Information (aww, there's no Wikipedia entry for that book yet). They're the kind of geniuses who've crossed a certain line that really appeals to me.
I know that this isn't a fleshed-out blog post. It's more of a ( Read more... ) -
Minecraft, Local File Storage, Home Networking and the Internet
I've got a couple of kids who are beginning to use the computer more and more for their own purposes. A couple of days ago, My son couldn't enable monsters on his Minecraft server, because he didn't know which of the files was the properties file, "Server" or "Server".
Yeah, "Server" or "Server". I forgot to check "Show file extensions" for his ( Read more... )
