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Stuff and things

Calum writes things of questionable importance here.

Mar 18

“ There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things

Feb 24

“ How do you solve a problem like Moria?
How do you travel through without a sign?
How do you find a word that means Moria?
A civilisation? A gaping Black Pit? A mine?

— Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the peak of our culture.

Feb 13

“

Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way — or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn’t do “the right thing”, according to the experts.

So we really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.

— Old news for everyone on earth I’m sure, but I’d never read Richard Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science before and it’s well worth it

Jan 26

“ The important thing here is that the music is not in the piano. And knowledge and edification is not in the computer. The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

— Alan Kay

Jan 21

» Live at The Ark

The Ark in Edinburgh has live video streams of their gigs (with an archive). This is a really cool idea and it’s great to see a local venue doing it.

Thanks to Andy (whose band Proxy will be playing from 8pm tomorrow 21st Jan) for pointing this out.

Jan 01

Why did the Zunes fail?

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}

(source)

Dec 26

“ …apparently there’s big money in fart apps — nearly $10,000 a day for the most popular ones.

— What

Dec 24

“ Effectively, Merb 2 is Rails 3.

— Interesting news from Rubyland

Dec 19

» iPhone Dev Spends $500k on Development, Still Not Approved by Apple

This app sounds really neat. Maybe they’ll give up and transfer over to a platform I can use…

Dec 11

Go on Scala! You know you can do it!