Author Archives: adam
Maker Faire 2008 Highlights
This weekend I attended my first Maker Faire and was amazed at the variety of cool stuff to be seen. I’m sure every attendee has their own list of highlights, but here’s mine: TechShop: The TechShop provides access to tools … Continue reading
Pretty colors: Syntax Highlighting in Mercurial
I recently switched my personal revision control system from subversion to mercurial. One of the great things about mercurial is the built-in web interface, but I missed the syntax highlighting that’s available in interfaces such as ViewVC. I’ve written a … Continue reading
Python λ Shorthand
In Python a lambda expression (anonymous function) is created with the lambda keyword: map(lambda x: x+1, [1,2,3]) Some Scheme interpreters such as Dr. Scheme allow the λ symbol (U+03BB) as a shorthand for lambda. I started wondering what this would … Continue reading
One more time: BK Trees in Haskell
After the Python BK-tree implementation I decided to try my hand at a Haskell version. Here it is.
Burkhard-Keller (BK) Trees In Python
I recently came across a description of an interesting data structure called a Burkhard-Keller tree (BK tree). BK trees provide efficient lookup of the set of words that lie within a certain distance of a query word. For example, this … Continue reading
Serving mercurial with mod_wsgi
Here’s a quick and easy recipe for serving a mercurial repository with mod_wsgi. Create a file called hgwebdir.wsgi with these contents: from mercurial.hgweb.request import wsgiapplication from mercurial.hgweb.hgwebdir_mod import hgwebdir def make_web_app(): return hgwebdir(“/path/to/hgweb.config”) application = wsgiapplication(make_web_app) Add it to the … Continue reading
etframes: Applying the ideas of Edward Tufte to matplotlib
Edward Tufte is a professor and author known for his excellent (and beautiful!) books on the visual display of statistical information. Last year I had the opportunity to attend one of his courses and was inspired to apply his ideas … Continue reading
26.2
Yesterday I completed the San Francisco Marathon (my first) with a time of 3:50:09. Here’s the stats. My goal was a flat 4:00 so I’m pretty pleased with the time. Most of my family came down to run the half … Continue reading
dsc.py: Automated Warnings for Debian Security Updates
dsc.py (Debian Security Check) is a Python script that automatically notifies a machine’s administrator when installed packages require a security upgrade. Why this is useful This week there were 9 Debian security advisories released, and I don’t always know which … Continue reading
Go West, Young Man!
Erin and I have arrived in Berkeley, completing our NC to CA cross-country road trip. We’ll be staying here this summer for Erin’s internship in the Bay Area. The drive out was great, with stops in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Badlands National … Continue reading