grant

GetGnuWin32

The name says it all; this program makes it easy to get all of the GnuWin32 goodness (no more tedious individual downloads).

Condorcet method

The R7RS working group is using this approach, which got me curious about it.

A Condorcet method is any single-winner election method that meets the Condorcet criterion, that is, which always selects the Condorcet winner, the candidate who would beat each of the other candidates in a run-off election, if such a candidate exists.

In other words:

It is possible for a candidate to be the most preferred overall without being the first preference of any voter. In a sense, the Condorcet method yields the “best compromise” candidate, the one that the largest majority will find to be least disagreeable, even if not their favorite.

(via wikipedia)

Quasicrystals

Pretty animations of a quasicrystal here.

Scribfile: File and Operating System related Scribble Functionality

http://planet.racket-lang.org/package-source/grettke/scribfile.plt/1/0/planet-docs/scribfile/index.html
Is a little library that provides two forms, one to read a lispy language file into a codeblock and another that makes a system call and renders the results in a verbatim form. Pretty helpful for demos of non-Racket code and who knows what else.
Thanks Racket team, and Danny and Matthew for getting this working.

A Soul of an Old Machine

A generous biker let me take this 1982 CB750F motor off of his hands for free (sure his wife didn’t mind either). Only 20K miles on it. Now looking for a free frame and wheels.
As it turns out, a $29USD Walmart plastic container will hold an engine, and it won’t fall out of the bottom; that was very convenient!

More Great Books

Portland / OSCON 2013

Angular Unstable will be in Bower Soon

Tried to install AngularJS unstable today via bower and followed this trail:

to find that Bower currently doesn’t support unstable releases due to a versioning issue, but, they will soon.
In the meantime, Michael Ahlers went above and beyond to provide an alternative here.

Rush 2013 Clockwork Angels Tour

It felt good to have Rush share with us their artistic contribution “Clockwork Angels”. They are not living in the past, and how could they, nobody would keep showing up just to hear Tom Sawyer would they? That said, it was great to hear the 2112 Overture performed by it’s creators ;).

Though it wouldn’t look it, the Marcus Amphitheater sounded great. There was great sound, you could hear everyone; certainly not what you would expect staring up at the 1.5 story tall P.A. system hanging above the stage.
The show was a blast and the guys are indeed masters.

One Path to SML

Never knowing what is the right time for a path to present itself, I think I am back on the path to SML again. This time I got some more feedback and wanted to capture it here.
Various feedback:

ML for the Working Programmer. Skip it. A wonderful book. Excellent for advanced programmers.
Programming in Standard ML. Definitive, once you are through, you are done. A wonderful book.
The Little MLer. An introduction to the idea of typed programming not an introduction to SML
Elements of ML Programming, ML97 Edition (2nd Edition).
ML Primer. Good for beginners.
Functional Programming Using Standard Ml. A good introduction to the language. Good for beginners.
Abstract Data Types in Standard ML. Poorly written, but good code for intermediate programmers to read.
Purely Functional Data Structures. Excellent for advanced programmers.
Applicative High Order Programming: The Standard M.L.Perspective. Excellent for advanced programmers.
Elements Of Functional Programming. Excellent for intermediate/advanced programmers.
The Definition of Standard ML – Revised.
Concurrent Programming in ML.
ACM Workshop on ML. The proceedings.
Programming With Standard Ml. Good for intermediate programmers.

We’ll see what is my cup of tea.