Now this story (via reddit) is easily the creepiest one I’ve ever read (provided it’s authentic; it seems to add up). While I was scanning through the code, I couldn’t help the feeling of morbid fascination of what he did and that of sorrow and regret for the same thing. Having watched Platoon just before coming across the script makes it even more unsettling. I’m sure this sad story will pop to my head every time I write something along the lines of var isAlive = false;

Much to my delight, _adept_ conjured up a neat puzzle today. It wouldn’t hurt if it had more levels and were heavier on programming, but other than that, it’s pure fun. I recommend that you drop your XML for a while and go solve it! :)

А вот душевное поздравительное новогоднее стихотворение, которое сестра сочинила лет десять, наверное, назад. Писательский талант чувствовался ещё тогда.


Транскрипция с бумажной копии (авторские орфография и пунктуация тщательно сохранены):


Всех поздравляю с 2010 годом!

If you’re even remotely interested in visualizing data, you should check out ploticus, a “non-interactive software package for producing plots, charts, and graphics from data”, as the creators put it. Basically, it’s Google Chart on steroids, which works offline, supports a variety of output formats (such as PNG, SVG, and PS), is Unicode aware, and has so-called “prefabs” for the common visualization patterns (just look at this eye candy!). Moreover, it’s extremely easy to start working with; just dump your data to a text file in any of recognized formats and run the main executable (pl) like that:


This will get you a pretty picture. Yay.

Ploticus is also sufficiently fast (250000 points in a matter of seconds). The only real problem I stumbled upon is using logarithmic scale for the axes; for some reason, the stubs are all wrong. I’m sure it’s possible to find a workaround (I’ll try to); meanwhile, just take the logarithms yourself. :)

Not long ago I couldn’t comprehend why I would want to listen to the music while working. I perceived it as an annoying distractor preventing me from concentrating on the task at hand and completing it. Well, what do you know? Since I’ve found The Key in February, I can hardly imagine myself slogging without my headphones and some kind of player, whether it’s iPod, iTunes or foobar2000. Turns out, the right kind of music actually makes you more productive.

So, with New Year inevitably approaching, I tried to make a compilation out of the tracks I liked the best in 2009 (I don’t say songs, since there are no vocals on any of them). It’s neither a mix (I know nothing about being a DJ) nor a hit parade (the order of tracks is pretty much arbitrary); just a minute of sound from each track in the list below.

1. Slum — Don’t Miss The Aimed Loot [Sunflowers Of Today]
2. Itchy Vibes — Vem Vet Rmx [Vibraspirit 11.11.11]
3. Talpa — No Place To Hide [The Art of Being Non]
4. Infected Mushroom — Bombat [IM The Supervisor]
5. SubConsciousMind — Hector The Dark [Intermezzo Extended]
6. Cirez D — On Off (Original Mix) [On Off / Fast Forward]
7. Ilya Birman — Come With Me (Original Mix) [:)]
8. Ananda Shake — Street Fighters [We Speak Music]
9. Luomuhappo — Greatest Of Blessings [Pog-O-Matic Pogómen 3000000]
10. Lemon Slide — Time 2 Funktion [True Nature]
11. Hypersonic — Dramatic Combo [Access Denied]
12. Vibe Tribe — Zimba [Positive Alchemists Vol. 1]
13. SynSUN — Zygote [Symphonic Adventures]
14. The Freak Show — Fantasy (Beat Hackers remix) [Not For Sale]

Roughly defined, these are the tracks I’ve listened to 10 or more times this year. Most of them are relatively old (released in 2007 or earlier), but that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable. :)

Download the compilation (.mp3, narod.ru, 13,7 MB).

When I saw francomanca’s trilingual posts (in Russian, English, and French), I was fascinated. I was going to copycat that and even decided what I would write about.

I’ve never got round to it, though, partly due to laziness on my part and partly because my French still fails me when it comes to producing a coherent and meaningful text. I figured I’d try to blog in English for a while, just to get things started; feel free to correct me when my English is unidiomatic or just plain wrong. Then, when I feel like it, I’m going to gradually add some French to my posts (right now I don’t feel like it).

I received my Code Jam t-shirt yesterday and, unlike all the other programming contest t-shirts I have, this one actually looks good (to the extent it is possible for a garment with geeky inscriptions on it). There’s something puzzling about it, however; on its back, it has code snippets in a variety of languages and a picture of either a boy or a girl next to each snippet. Judging from that, girls tend to use Perl, Lisp, and Haskell, whereas the ‘manly’ languages are Pascal, OCaml (supposedly), Java, Python, Brainfuck (duh), VB, C#, and C++. I couldn’t figure out the logic behind this, but apparently they imply something with that. I’d be delighted if I found out this is actually an encrypted message, that would be very Googley. :)

Another welcome parcel from overseas is a small collection of language-related books. The one I’m reading now is A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, by Geoffrey K. Pullum & Rodney D. Huddleston. I knew there could be no doubt about the quality of the end result when one of two creators of Language Log was involved in writing, and the book is indeed awesome. The authors are inclined towards theory and this approach appeals to me. They carefully distinguish syntax (grammar) from semantics (meaning), provide the reader with numerous examples illustrating the concepts they are trying to get across, and, last but not least, favor descriptivism over prescriptivism.

The latter means the book studies how people actually speak and write, and doesn’t try to impose any artificial restrictions on the language, such as forbidding split infinitives, stranded prepositions and singular ‘they’. In fact, the most ludicrous rules of this sort are convincingly debunked in what the authors call the ‘prescriptive grammar notes’. I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment; if a rule conflicts with the actual usage of the language, then the rule is wrong, period. This is something the Russian grammar nazis should consider before scolding someone for confusing «одеть» with «надеть» or uttering «зво́нить» (let alone «ма́стерски» or «обеспече́ние»).

The authors even have a sense of humor (I didn’t expect to see this as an example of the historic present):

I’m thinking of buying the seminal work this introduction is based on, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. 300 pages is OK with me, but 1800 seems like an overkill, I doubt I could read that from cover to cover. Maybe it can be used as a reference, I’m not sure.