This is the complete archive of posts at Passing Curiosity in reverse chronological order.
Posts before September 2007 were originally posted on other -- now defunct -- blogs. I'm gradually cleaning them up, but there may be some broken links and the like.
This is a quick introduction to using the litecal module to display month calendars on Drupal powered web-sites.
Providing default settings for Django applications
There doesn't seem to be an official way for a Django application to provide default values for its "custom" settings - you just document them somewhere and hope that the users take note. Here is some proof of concept code to automatically inject an application's defaults into Django's settings.
A colleague asked if I knew a way to edit a line in a particular section of a .ini file in a shell script. There are plenty of ways to do this, but my answer is in AWK.
Barcamp Perth 4.0 (or 2010, there seems to be some confusion) was held today at the Central Institute of Technology. Here are some notes about the day.
Attribute Oriented Programming in PHP
The fourth talk at the Open Programming Language Miniconf 2010 was Peter Serwylo's presentation about Attribute Oriented Programming in PHP.
My notes on Ben Balbo's talk at Open Programming Language Miniconf 2010: Preparing for PHP6.
My notes on Giuseppe Maxia's talk at Open Programming Language Miniconf 2010: Introducing Gearman -- Distributed server for all languages.
Notes on Haskell, and all the wonderful things it doesn’t let you do
My notes on Stephen Blackheath's talk at Open Programming Language Miniconf 2010: Haskell, and all the wonderful things it doesn’t let you do.
So LCA2010 is underway. It's been busy and it's only day two (day one really), so I'll give a brief recap so that I can remember it later.
In Wellington for LCA2010 and DrupalSouth
I'm currently in Wellington, New Zealand for linux.conf.au 2010 and then DrupalSouth. It's going to be a pretty awesome week! I'm...
I've made a bit of progress hacking on this blog the last few nights...
This blog has been languishing for months now, nearly untouched. I'm changing that now, by throwing WordPress away and replacing it with Jekyll.
Nick Cowie's talk on Progressive Enhancement with CSS3
My notes on Nick Cowie's talk "Progressive Enhancement with CSS3" at Edge of the Web 2009.
Dmitry Baranovskiy's talk on Your JavaScript Library
My notes on Dmitry Baranovskiy's talk "Your JavaScript Library" at Edge of the Web, 2009.
Lachlan Hardy's session The Open Web
My notes on Lachlan Hardy's presentation "The Open Web" at Edge of the Web, 2009.
Anil Dash's keynote on "Next Year's Web"
My notes on Anil Dash's keynot speech on "Next Year's Web" at Edge of the Web, 2009.
The rather hackish way I instrumented SPIP to record debugging information about its file locking to a remote syslog server.
A list of the sessions I plan to attend at the Edge of the Web, 2009.
Treatments, Typography, and Markdown for SPIP
A quick and rather hackish way to replace SPIP's built-in text markup format with Markdown.
UML Statecharts meeting in Perth
Last night I went to my second (or third, does the first "yes, we should" meeting count?) meeting of the Perth...
Some links on public key encryption in Python
This is the text of the first answer I've posted on Stack Overflow. You can see it in context , but...
A complaint regarding the ABC's uncritical dissemination of anti-vaccine propaganda
Here is my complaint to the ABC regarding one of their recent articles regurgitating anti-vaccine propaganda from the AVN loons. ABC...
Being the closet Apple fanboy that I am, I pre-ordered Snow Leopard and had my Macbook upgraded the day of release....
HAgg: a Haskell FastCGI application (in development)
I've had just about as much of PHP as I can take. I distrust the language itself and most of the...
Reversing the arrow; or how to break canonical URLs
My colleagues and I have recently been working to improve our practices when it comes to semantic mark-up, document structure, metadata,...
AES encryption in Python with M2Crypto
I've needed to write some Python code to handle encryption and decryption recently. This is a short post describing how I...
SPIP is an open source content management system written in PHP. It was originally designed to use a MySQL, but now...
Adding a distance function to MySQL
This is a quick and rather hackish way to add a "distance" function to MySQL and call it from the Django ORM framework.
The Ethos Effect by L. E. Modesitt Jr
Feeling a bit scifi-y over the weekend, I wound up buying and reading The Ethos Effect by L. E. Modesitt Jr.....
Writing view decorators for Django
Using decorators to wrap and modify Django views is quick, easy, composable, and just about the most awesome thing I've seen in a while. It also takes a little bit of figuring out. Here's my explanation...
Notes on "Tuning MySQL performance"
Trent "lathiat" Lloyd talking about MySQL performance tuning. The slides are available on his talks page. Default MySQL configuration Use small...
Notes on "Statecharts and Numbats"
This post consists of my notes on the Statecharts and Numbats presentation by Harry McNally at Perth Barcamp 3.0.
Notes on "Building scalable web apps (and why no-one really bothers)"
A presentation by Adrian Chadd (adrian@creative.net.au) on building scalable web applications. Failure in scaling means running out of: CPU, memory, disks,...
Notes on "Debunking Christianity"
This post is some notes I took during a presentation at the Perth Atheist Meetup given by Aaron Alderman. They were...
Getting started writing web applications in Haskell is pretty easy with FastCGI.
Django form fields and templates
Determining the type of a form field object from a Django template requires writing a new filter.
Specifying a UNIX socket using MySQL with Django
Configuring Django to connect to MySQL with a socket according to the official documentation works fine (for me), but it breaks the dbshell command (for me). This is how I configured it so that Django works and so does the dbshell command.
Installing the Python Imaging Library on Mac OS X Leopard
Like many other developers, I work on a variety of UNIX-like operating systems including Linuxen, BSDs, and Mac OS X. While...
Authorising user actions in SPIP
One of the APIs that many SPIP plug-ins will need to use is `autoriser()` -- the function which determines whether a user should be permitted to perform a given operation. As I couldn't find any document on using this function, here are a few notes.
SPIP tags with multiple aliases
This post describes creating SPIP tags with multiple "names" (like #INCLURE and #INCLUDE) and taking the technique further to implement families of related tags.
Dynamic tags, fake arguments, and AST mangling in SPIP
Sometimes a dynamic SPIP tag (one evaluated at request time) needs details about the template, but this information is not available. This post describes a technique for passing data from the AST into the tag's static and dynamic evaluation functions.
Creating custom tags for SPIP - Dynamic Tags
A lot of the content on modern web-sites is dynamic: from lists of "currently online" user and targeted advertising, to widgets...
There's been a bit of noise about alternatives to the rather limited permissions system in Drupal. Here are a few of my thoughts about one proposal.
Lua is a small, portable, and fast scripting language designed for embedding in other software. Being designed for embedding, it has...
Content types and dispositions in PHP
Exporting data as CSV is pretty run of the mill for most web developers (though generating "valid" CSV is not exactly trivial), but every time I do I find myself figuring out how to force the browsers to save it to a file. This quick post is about using a Content-Disposition header to strongly suggest that browsers save the data to a file.
Accessing SQL databases with Haskell -- HSQL
(Or "Connecting to SQL databases with Haskell" as per DoeL's suggestion, it was getting a bit long) As the first step...
Literate Haskell with Markdown and Syntax Highlighting
This post describes the scripts I (used to) use to turn a literate Haskell programme (with Markdown formatted literate comments) into HTML and PDFs using Pandoc.
Installing hsql and HDBC on GHC 6.10.1
I've become more interesting in using Haskell for web development lately, so I've started playing around with it a bit. As...
The company that I use to host this site had a rather large problem yesterday -- routine maintenance of some power...
A better way to control attributes in SPIP templates
This post describes a PHP function to replace SPIP's inserer_attribut and extraire_attribut filters with a single jQuery-inspired attr filter.
Hosting change finally complete
The migration of this site to my new VPS is finally complete. After a bit of faffing around and waiting for...
An Experiment in Social Media Stuff
I'm a member of the Perth Atheists meet-up and we had our monthly get together at the Flying Scotsman in Mount...
Once you've got a piece of code to check that a string uses correctly matched brackets, hooking it up to widgets in Interface Builder is pretty simple.
A List Apart Survey for People Who Make Web Sites 2008
I just finished the A List Apart Survey for People Who Make Web Sites, 2008. They told me I ought to...
I have no idea where I came across the link (someone's solution in PHP?), but I stumbled on A Programming Job...
Native iPhone/iPod Touch WordPress Client
This is my first post using the native client on my WorsPress client. It is very nice (and free) but makes...
Emulating Operators for Core Data
My last Cocoa post described a problem I encountered extending a Core Data tutorial by using bindings operators to aggregate a...
SPIP is a great CMS with lots of powerful features, but it does embed quite a lot of policy within its...
Computed Attributes in Core Data, How?
I've worked through a few Core Data and Cocoa tutorials in the last few weeks and most of them are exceedingly...
Binding Operators With Core Data
Tim Isted posted an excellent tutorial on building Core Data applications with multiple windows which really cleared up some of the...
SPIP is an open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL. It has excellent support for multi-lingual sites, for community...
While Cocoa is nowhere near as large as some other APIs, it does cover an enormous amount of ground and it...
I made the switch to Apple computers nearly four years ago when I used part of a scholarship to by an...
Notes from an announcement at Barcamp Perth 2009 about the "World Blog Awards".
Starting your own web-business
Notes from a Barcamp Perth 3.0 talk on starting your own web business by Paul Faix.
Notes from a question and answer session with Myles Eftos at Barcamp Perth 3.0.
Some notes from a Barcamp talk about Model-View-Controller in ASP.Net.
This is a live blog of Perth BarCamp2. If you're here and want to be added as an author, DM or email...
Myles is talking about BarCamp2, it's an AWIA thingy, just like port80, barcamps, blog awards. They've announced the Edge of the...
Some questions and answers about angel funding and venture capital for web projects and about Silicon Valley.
Given that we've got half a pumpkin and a sweet potato to use up, I made a soup based on the...
I bought two CDs from Mojo Music today. My selections (The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance and Beatles Go Baroque...
It's the 9th of January and I've already broken my main new-year's resolution by buying the Myth of Ability by John...
Resolution for 2007: no more books!
One of my resolutions for 2007 is to beat my book buying habit. Too often I find myself buying a new...
Adding LaTeX output to HsColour
My patch adding LaTeX output to HsColour (a syntax highlighter for the Haskell programming language) was accepted into the main darcs...
Adding LaTeX output to HsColour
My patch adding LaTeX output to HsColour (a syntax highlighter for the Haskell programming language) was accepted into the main darcs...
I bought a copy of season one of Lois & Clark on DVD. It was nice to actually get the DVDs...
I bought a copy of season one of Lois & Clark on DVD. It was nice to actually get the DVDs of the...
I borrowed a LEGO MindStorms for Schools kit from the University today. I'm going to have a go at using Esterel,...
A patch adding latex support to HsColour
HsColour is a syntax highlighter for Haskell that can generate output in a number of formats including, if the patch I just submitted...
I want to really learn Ruby on Rails so I've decided to start working on a project. Being interested in online learning, I'm...
Programming language design ideas
This post will contain some of my musings on programming language design. At some point, my first programming language will be...
Wanted: a better understanding of constructive logic
I was thinking about how little I understand of type systems today -- I know that they tend to be an...
I've just moved this blog to my new host: thomas-sutton.id.au. I'm not sure what else to make available here, but for...
Just watched Little Women. Beth recovered (after a fashion, and for a while), but I wonder what happened to the baby...
"Do you REALLY want to be a NPC?"
In a recent rant, Fred Gallagher (a.k.a. Piro) wrote:Don't just blow voting off like its a game you just aren't interested...
I've just added my first real contribution to the Wikipedia: Image:Airfield_traffic_pattern.svg, a vectorisation of Image:Airport_traffic_pattern.jpg....
The preliminaries out of the way, we began looking at "real" physics in week two -- kinematics. Various definitions, as is...
Cooking (and Blogging Software)
I made some baklava yesterday and, as I do occasionally, I took some photographs of the process and posted them on...
To ensure that all students are starting at the same point, the first topic to be covered is the International System...
The first lecture began with the distribution (in three locations several hundred kilometres apart) of textbooks, questionnaires, course outlines, and a...
Significant Figures & Rounding
The concept of significant figures, which came up toward the end of the previous post on scientific notation, deserves a bit...
As the talk of 'prefixes' in the previous post on units suggests, physics involves working with both very large and very...
Aristotle was perhaps the first in the Western tradition to look at mechanics in any sort of structured way. A philosopher,...
Over the course of the next six weeks, I will be taking an enabling course in physics. Designed to prepare people...
So my Apple iBook G4 is in the shop. Again. Getting repaired. Again. Having its logic board replaced. Again. I love...
Chickenfeed have been flogging some cheep DVDs lately and every time I'm in one of their shops, I have a look...
A well-rounded practical experience
I've just put in my preferences for my Professional Experience 3 placement next semester. In the interest of a well-rounded set...
Today I took my first CAD lesson as teacher. I'd intended for the students to use this first lesson to being...
The second week of PE2 began with my colleague teacher off ill. This was a little inconvenient, but everything went well...
The last day of my first week began with the IT class talking about web-page design and Dreamweaver. The discussion about...
Planning and Professional Development
Today was the fourth day of PE2 and I spent it mainly on planning and professional development. Before school started I...
I taught my first lesson of PE2 in a year ten science class today. Last term they began a physics unit...
Today was the second day of PE2 and the first day of classes for term three. We've sorted out my time-table,...
Today was the first day of my second practicum which I shall spend at Ulverstone High School. It was also a...
I read this comment on a story a few days ago and was appalled.i am a 15 year old australian i...
I've just finished reading Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson (who has a blog) and published by Piatkus Books, the first...
This is a test of the new Blogger Beta. There are a few rough edges (literally — some of the "buttons"...
Alas, the knitting, it would not felt
I finished my knitting off last night and today I tried to felt it to no avail. I shall have a...
Internet language resources for the win!
I've been thinking about trying to learn another language for a while now. I'd really like to learn Japanese or Welsh,...
Internet cookbooks for the win!
Rather than buy a few cookbooks, or a guide to leather-work or knitting, I usually hit the 'Net. For some reason,...
This is the first of what will be a series of posts over the next few days. Each of them will...
My copy of Megatokyo volume 4 (buy) finally came in and I bought it yesterday. It's good to see another Megatokyo...
I've been neglecting this blog quite badly. I had intended to post semi-regularly about my studies toward a Bachelor of Teaching...
It's been quite a while since last I posted (here, or anywhere else), so I think it's about time for an...
I just got caught up on my reading of the Maria-sama ga Miteru translated by Lililicious. Revisiting marimite brings back my...
Resources for Teaching Pythagoras' Theorem
I've decided to make the lesson plans, materials and such I write freely available under an Attribution, NonCommerical, ShareAlike license from...
I've just finished watching the first episode of Mizuiro Jidai. If the first episode and the AnimeNFO entry are anything...
Interactive and Media Programming
As I've mentioned a few times, I'm hoping to work on some materials for computer science education this semester. The gist...
I'm currently sitting in a lecture about inclusion and inclusive schooling. We're discussing a case-study about a primary school class and...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling
Still on a musical note (sorry), I just bought Once More, With Feeling the cast album of the musical episode of...
On a somewhat related subject to my last post (the one about LaTeX), I've just started working on adding LaTeX support...
I've been looking around on iTunes Music Store today and managed to spend more than $20, mainly on classical-y songs.I started...
I've been watching fansubs of the anime series Suzuka lately. Suzuka is about a boy (Yamato Akitsuki), a girl (Suzuka Asahina),...
I've just begun rereading that masterpiece of epic fantasy, David and Leigh Eddings' series: The Belgariad. I was given The Pawn...
I've got a hankering to dig out my incomplete thesis and polish it off as an excuse to really get up...
Just finished watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Mum has had a tape of the soundtrack for many, many years...
One of my house-mates made an interesting find yesterday: a 36 inch folding ruler. After a bit of cleaning up (it...
Transactional memory with data invariants
A few thoughts about a Transactional memory with data invariants by Tim Harris and SPJ.
Fundamental Constructs in Mathematics Education
Fundamental Constructs in Mathematics Education. John Mason and Sue Johnston-Wilder (Eds.). (buy)After an introduction to the beingness of the thinghood of...
I've just watched the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest for 2006 on SBS. The only comment that springs to mind...
As on my other blog, I've added support for tags and categories to TR[W[WL]]OACSS using Del.icio.us. Readers with a browser that...
Today was the third day of Professional Experience One and the other shoe dropped. Continuing with the material I've planned, the...
My second day of teaching went quite a bit better than the first. I managed to address quite a few of...
I've added support for tags to this blog using Del.icio.us. New posts will be tagged with links to the appropriate tag...
Today was the first day of my first block of professional experience at a high-school in Tasmania. I'm teaching a unit...
I've just bought three new philosophy books: Logic by Greg Restall (buy); Conspicuous Consumption by Thorstein Veblen (buy); and On The...
The Fun of Programming edited by Jeremy Gibbons and Oege de Moor. (buy)My copy of The Fun of Programming came in...
We've just read a sci-fi story called The Cloudbuilders in my ICT curriculum class which, as far as I can tell...
I went into town today and saw that Katherine Kerr's new book The Gold Falcon is out. I'm just over fifty...
I've just finished reading Teachers, students & the law by Andrew Hopkins (published by the Victoria Law Foundation). It covers a...
A Final Post On 'On Education'
I've just finished reading On Education by Harry Brighouse. It is, without exception, the most accessible, well written and well presented...
Watched Moonraker again last night. Was surprised at how repulsive I found Mr. Bond. Perhaps shouldn't have been. I much prefer...
The Surfin' Safari Blog has three posts on making the CSS pixel a relative unit (and the fact that, to an...
Having decided that computer science isn't really my thing (I prefer it as a hobby, rather than a career), I'm now...
Integrating support for undo with exception handling
Integrating support for undo with exception handling by Avraham Shinnar; David Tarditi; Mark Plesko and Bjarne Steensgaard.This paper appears to have...
An already noted, I recently purchased Harry Brighouse's new book On Education and I've just now finished reading the first two...
I'm going away for a few days tomorrow (or, having looked at the clock, today) and do not plan on checking...
I bought Madman Entertainment's special edition DVD of Appleseed today and I've just finished watching it. The art is absolutely beautiful...
Justice and On Education, both by Harry Brighouse.My first Harry Brighouse book (Justice) left me with a bit of a bad...
Transactional memory with data invariants (DRAFT)
A few thoughts about a draft paper Transactional memory with data invariants.
Threads Cannot Be Implemented As a Library
Threads Cannot Be Implemented As a Library by Hans-J. Boehm. In PLDI'05. (PDF)I read this paper for a presentation I had...
Learning Content Management Systems
.LRN -- a free software educational content management system based on the OpenACS platform. Quite difficult to get installed (a task...
Wondrous oddities: R's function-call semantics
Wondrous oddities: R's function-call semanticsAs much as I disliked using R, it does have some very cool features. The post above...
Great Moments in Logic... by Greg Restall.A short survey of 30 important logicians, philosophers and mathematicians and their 'great moments' in...
Stark Effect has a number of MP3 tracks up ranging from We Like Repartee (dictionaraoke -- songs sung by the pronunciation...
A not very recent post (I'm trying to catch up; only 970 messages to go) to the Haskell-cafe mailing list pointed...
Even Spammers Need Subsidising
Even spammers, it would seem, need to subsidise their operations with advertising. In the screen capture above, you can see that...
A recent experience reminded me of some posts on Math and Text, a blog on mathematics education. So Long, Aunt Sally!...
I've watched a couple of good films recently. First, a couple French films distributed in Australia by Madman Films.The Dinner Game...
Dead Witch Walking and Pure Dead Magic
Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison.Dead Witch Walking is yet another paranormal romance. In a similar vein to the works of...
Permission-based ownership: encapsulating state in higher-order typed languages
Permission-based ownership: encapsulating state in higher-order typed languages by Neel Krishnaswami and Jonathan Aldrich. In PLDI'05.I'm still puzzling through the examples,...
I saw a little display in Birchall's today advertising the imminent release of Katherine Kerr's latest book Gold Falcon (excerpt). This...
I just got an email telling me that I've got a Google Page Create account.I've got a demonstration page up at...
Essential Language Support for Generic Programming
Essential Language Support for Generic Programming by Jeremy Siek and Andrew Lumsdaine.This paper presents an extension of System F called System...
Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C#
Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C# by Nick Benton.This paper presents the solution to the Santa Claus...
Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy
Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy by Benjamin H. Barton.An interesting paper from the Michigan Law Review. The author interprets the...
An efficient implementation of SELF a dynamically-typed object-oriented language based on prototypes
An efficient implementation of SELF a dynamically-typed object-oriented language based on prototypes by Craig Chambers, David Ungar, and Elgin Lee. (PS)I...
Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I
Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I by John McCarthy.A milestone paper in computer science, this...
On the Revival of Dynamic Languages
On the Revival of Dynamic Languages by Nierstrasz O, Bergel A, Denker M, Ducasse S, Gälli M, Wuyts R.This paper reads...
I've just started yet another blog: The Education of an Educator. As the title might suggest, this new blog will focus...
This week's practical session we started working on the first three of the C.A.D. worksheets we're using to learn VectorWorks.In the...
This morning's professional studies lecture was about teacher identity. Dr. Cole covered a number of topics beginning with the question: "What...
Professional Studies Tutorial 1
In our first professional studies tutorial, we formed our Professional Learning Teams. The purpose of these teams is to give us...
Development in an Educational Context
This afternoon (though I'm posting this the day after) we had Dr. Marion Myhill give a lecture on development in an...
On this page I shall provide a partial list of the books required and recommended for my units. Where appropriate I...
Maria-sama ga Miteru Novel English Translation Project
Some of my favourite anime and manga are based on Japanese novels which can be quite frustrating: anime and manga are...
With the first week of classes over, it looks as though I'm going to enjoy this degree: Professional Studies looks like...
Playing with Del.icio.us in the sidebar made me realise that I really ought to list the podcasts that I subscribe to....
Designing Effective Step-By-Step Assembly Instructions
Designing Effective Step-By-Step Assembly Instructions by Agrawala M, Phan D, Heiser J, Haymaker J, Klingner J, Hanrahan P, Tversky B. In...
ESA184 - Technology Education (Single)In the next few days (i.e: before Thursday), I need to decide on a technology module to...
Professional Studies Lecture 1
ESA160 - Professional Studies 1A.The course has undergone a lot of change since last year, most of which regards the proportion...
ESA196 - Multiliteracies 1AAfter professional studies we had our first multi-literacies ICT class, in which the lecturer introduced all the ICT...
Today I took the first step on a new path, that of teaching, with orientation day for the Bachelor of Teaching....
Putting Curry-Howard to Work by Tim Sheard.This paper describes some type system feature suggested by the Curry-Howard isomorphism (which states that...
This is the last in a posting splurge I've had this afternoon: six paper posts have been added and one has...
Matching Power by Cirstea H, Kirchner C and Liquori L.
Matching Power by Cirstea H, Kirchner C and Liquori L.This is the first paper I've read about rewriting calculi and, if...
Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall (Draft)
Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall (Draft)While MapReduce and GFS allow Google to use their massive computer clusters effectively, the...
Finger Trees: A Simple General-purpose Data Structure
Finger Trees: A Simple General-purpose Data Structure by Ralf Hinze and Ross Paterson.This paper presents 2-3 finger trees, a purely functional...
Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous DemocraciesAn interesting look at the claim frequently...
So I'm back in Tasmania (at Mum's place) and I'm looking for something to do. At the moment, the plan is...
Lock-Free Data Structures using STMs in Haskell
Lock-Free Data Structures using STMs in Haskell. Anthony Discolo, Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, and Satnam Singh. Submitted to...
Why are Internet/games places always full of noisy pricks? I'm sitting here waiting for my email to download, DarwinPorts to update,...
My thesis was due last Friday (delayed to last Monady) and I have an extension (or, rather, an I-don't-have-it-done) until today....
Wanted: A feed module for iPhoto
While iTunes does a decent job of managing MP3 enclosures in news feeds (pod-casts), iPhoto could really do with similar functionality....
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory I want this book!!!...
I've decided that I'm going to try to read everything nominated for the Booker Prize. The short list shouldn't be too...
Numbers, Groups and Codes (2nd ed.) by J. F. Humphreys (University of Liverpool) and M. Y. Prest (University of Manchester)A Gentle...
I recently found a CD full of MP3's that a friend gave me whilst I was in England a few years...
I've recently (i.e. since my last post on manga) purchased a whole bunch of new manga books. Today I got The...
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom - Wikiquote
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom - Wikiquote It is a pity that Her Majesty is prevented by tradition from voicing...
Why do Chokito bars taste like crap?
I've just had (or started) a Nestle Chokito. I'd forgotten just how revolting they are. What a waste of $1.90....
I'm not sure how I found this, but I did: Bodoni Tag A cool little story, with a twist at the...
The Evangelical Atheist - God is a Dick
The Evangelical Atheist - God is a Dick The "God is a Dick" series by I Am over at the Evangelical...
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.
I've just been looking for material on The Shadow. I've managed to find a fan novelisation of the 1994 film staring...
I've just finished the second assignment for the data mining course I'm doing this semester. The one thing I got out...
I've just spoken to Jon about the problems and ideas I have posted about previously. One of the things I came...
Modal Logic Wikipedia Articles
I've been poking at Wikipedia again (I dislike free time) and decided that a list of articles relevant to modal logic...
People view you as a Loner Artist. Loner Aritist are exactly as their title says, loners and artist. Now you are...
There are a few topics that I'm interested in reading about, but haven't got any books on yet. This post will...
Yet Another Book Purchase or This Time, It's Maths
Recent Data Mining lectures have been looking at the Apriori Principle. The discussion of a set-theoretic framework within which to consider...
Annoyances of the Feature Kind
Yesterday, I finally sat down and wrote a priority queue (a heap to those in the know) to store the formulae...
What sort of person drinks coffee with cream? Milk - yes, cream - no....
A while ago, I watched the annual Burton and Garran Hall public speaking competition. One of the speakers presented an argument...
Alleged "Intelligent", Alleged "Design"
What jeezuz me off is the way that people are serious in considering "Intelligent Design". As many, many, many articles (by...
I've just started reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I got an etext from the eBooks@Adelaide collection of free web books...
There is some stupid air show going on (part of the Salute to Veterans I think) here in Canberra. There have...
For my second week of Tai Chi lessons (there are two a week), I've managed to remember the first few steps...
Open Letter An open letter to the Kansas School Board asking them to give "equal time" to Flying Spaghetti Monster-ism in...
Purely Functional Data Structures
The Haskell code from Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki can be found as his web-site at the United States...
I seem to be on a bit of a humanities kick... I've recently read a book on economics and a book...
There are three items that have shown up on my feeds that I thought I'd post here.I've just read that Robin...
I've just had my first Tai Chi lesson. Hopefully I'll manage to remember some of it next week....
Bond (the string quartet, not the spy)
I've just watched the DVD of Bond live at the Royal Albert Hall (which I bought on special at JB Hi-Fi...
As I'm on a roll of posts about anime, books, blog-posts and the like, I've decided to branch out into music...
The B&G Public Speaking Competition
I've just watched the annual Burton and Garran Hall public speaking competition. There were eight speakers who each had seven minutes...
RSChem is Burning Down, Burning Down, Burning Down...
There was a fire at the Research School of Chemistry.
Intelligent Design is dangerous. The thought that anyone, anywhere, could think of teaching this as fact (which, in the scientific sense,...
Intelligent Design is dangerous. The thought that anyone, anywhere, could think of teaching this as fact (which, in the scientific sense,...
And Watchings and Listenings...
I've just added another "W" and an "L" to the name of this blog to stand for "Watching" and "Listening". "Watching"...
A while ago, Hack programme on JJJ did a story on iPods. According to one of the Apple service people they...
A thought just occurred to me. Has John Howard ever actually identified an election promise as "non-core"? Or is it something...
I've just finished reading Freakonomics and my overall impression is that it could have done with an appendix on statistical analysis,...
The presentation is over and done with. It didn't go too badly, though I did run under-time: I finished my presentation...
I have to give my mid-term seminar tomorrow afternoon and I'm getting rather nervous about it.My supervisor has told me that...
Some language communities (CommonLisp is probably the largest, most obvious example) are used to incremental development, live updates, online bug-fixing and...
D-squared Digest -- A slightly overweight thirtysomething without a good word for anyone
D-squared Digest -- A slightly overweight thirtysomething without a good word for anyone via Crooked Timber An well-written, insightful look at...
I've been playing with hs-plugins, trying to get a version of my generated propositional calculus code working as a dynamically loaded...
I'm about half-way through reading Freakonomics and, while it hasn't changed my opinion of economics, it has impressed upon me the...
Stupidity or How Dumb Can I Get
I've just been trying to install hs-plugins on my iBook with GHC 6.4. Sorting out the dependancies, getting stuff to build...
System.Console.GetOpt is a Haskell port of the GNU getopt library (which is almost impossible to find, unless they mean getopt(3) in...
I'm currently experimenting with hs-plugins, a library which supports dynamically loading plugins in Haskell. Or, rather, I would be if I...
Why don't shoes have real eyes for the laces? Is there some aversion suffered by the makers and designers of modern...
I've been having fun extending my environment for literate Haskell programming in LaTeX. While I still haven't looked at the suggestion...
That [W] is now for "Watching" too
I've just finished watching a wonderful anime series: Someday's Dreamers. The characters are engaging, especially Yume and Angela, and the way...
I just bought a copy of Photoshop Elements 3.0. As I've got a digital camera now, I thought that I'd better...
I'll start this post with a disclaimer that I am a mathematically naive person and don't really know what I'm talking...
Last night I spent a while wrestling with latex, vim, make and ghc as part of my source-code reorganisation. One of...
A fourth post for today, also on a non-logic related topic. I'll be releasing an initial, non-modal, version of my code...
One of the statements in my calculus language is the operator declaration:Neg operator "~" has arity 1, fixity 0, priority 1.As...
I'm about one third of the way through the rewrite of the system so far, this time using doing the job...
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Based on some of the fan fiction out there (already), it sounds like Harry winds up with Ginny in book six....
Dr. Seuss on Parser Monads Every time I see this, it strikes me as more and more amusing....
I've just bought two new books: Freakonomics and Purely Functional Data Structures.I'll read PFDS fairly immediately (as I'm hoping it'll help...
I'm not sure how recent a development it is, but there certainly seem to be a fair (and growing) number of...
Apple - iTunes - Podcasting With the new iTunes update, I've been able to throw out one more of the third-party...
I love Lililicious. They have done translations of some great manga and Pieta is, in my opinion, one of the best...
I've just had to take my iBook in to The Mac Shop to get its charger (or perhaps the power regulation...
The logic compiler generates Haskell code to implement a calculus. This includes a data-type to represent formulae, a function to resolve...
I'm currently sitting in an Internet cafe in Launceston, which hasn't changed in the nearly eight months I've been away. It'll...
In the cool things that will help implement this project, the Haskell Hierarchical Libraries contain a Graph library which supports querying...
Last night (or, more correctly, this morning) I constructed a model: ~a, b for the formulae: ~a, a∨b using only the...
The system is nearly to the stage where I can write the propositional logic in it. I've been held up by...
I've been flying with Virgin Blue since they started and if I had any lingering doubts about returning to QANTAS, this...
Incremental development is fun. I've just added support for branching as required to implement the disjunction and implication rules of my...
I've just had my first go at writing a monad, and it's harder than it would seem. As a result of...
I've just finished the first major part of my first step along the road to [real] implementation: I now have a...
I ordered another book today: Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki.I downloaded a PDF of his PhD thesis (PDF, 616K)...
The mid-semester holiday starts, for me, when I submit my second report for Milestone Papers in Computing, that is, tomorrow morning....
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Using type classes for polymorphism of data constructors
Re: Using type classes for polymorphism of data constructors A message on the Haskell-cafe mailing list gives an alternative (better, even)...
Goals: the Motivation of Procrastination
So far, I have:written a parser for my logic definition language;solved the problem I was having with polymorphism;designed, in the large,...
Deriving Backtracking Monad Transformers
I started reading Deriving Backtracking Monad Transformers, by Ralf Hinze, this afternoon (or, rather, yesterday afternoon). It's already been valuable, though...
A4 paper format / International standard paper sizes
A4 paper format / International standard paper sizes by Markus Kuhn. I just checked a PDF to see if I'd be...
Today's NotYASS session is entitled The Matrix as metaphysics. According to the blurb, we'll be discussing the various bits and pieces...
The Matrix is in the Eye of the Beholder
The NotYASS session on the Matrix was interesting. A lot of people (or, rather, more than usual) showed up, including a...
Polymorphism and Generality Redux; or The Beneficial Side Effects of Reading
I've started looking at how to code my backtracking monad (the framework that will provide the branching, failure, etc within which...
Death, Jr.I've just read issue two of Death, Jr. and it is even better than the first. Ted Naihef's art is...
Today's Word of the Day is: unbosom. Some words derived from archaic or specialised usage, like disrobe perhaps, have evolved to...
Finding the MuseRecently I've been on a Harry Potter fan fiction trip. Specifically, I've been revisiting my fascination with Pumpkin Pie,...
I have never liked strobing lights. From flashing on the TV screen, to lights at clubs, flashing lights make me uncomfortable....
Wow, this blog has been mentioned in both Consequently (Greg Restall's blog) and That Logic Blog (Jon Cohen's blog).Now I'll just...
One of the main goals of this project, to my mind at least, is generality. The prover must be easily extendable...
Hello, I'll be your host tonight as we play...
Name that Project...My project is in need of a name. Rather than give it an acronym, I've been trying to think...
I've just started looking parsing in Haskell with Parsec. After a few hours of reading and poking at examples, I've got...
I've just started looking parsing in Haskell with Parsec. After a few hours of reading the documentation (PDF, 424K)and poking at...
I'm getting to the point where I'll have to start thinking about the data structures used to implement my tableaux. They...
Advice, Suggestions and Supervision
I've just had a talk with Pietro about my project and directions in which I might move it. Pietro's PhD project...
"That's Dr. Rex to you, buddy"
That's Dr. Rex to you, buddyOne person present during the defense described it as if I were “chasing five motherf***ers down...
I've been playing with some of the tools that people are talking about when they mention the Web 2.0 or, at...
Stardust by Neil GaimanAfter fighting a losing battle against procrastination this morning, I went into town and came back with a...
Yesterday, I began reading The Gene of Isis by Traci Harding.I've just finished reading part one of The Gene of Isis...
The Gene of Isis by Traci Harding, published by VoyagerI've just started reading Traci Harding's latest book: The Gene of Isis...
On this blog I will chronicle the work on my Honours project in computer science: developing a system to construct counter-models...
Spam - The Other Pink Gelatinous Substance
I just received a spam (regarding lifestyle medication) with the following as its filter-avoidance random text...I like the word 'indolence.' it...
Tomb of Thomas Sutton I like finding interesting things about my name....
A while back, I bought a novel on impulse (it was cheap). To my surprise (and delight) it turned out to...
My copy of CTM as finally arrived. It's only been 45 days since I ordered it.On a similar note, a number...
I'm currently reading up on Google so that I can prepare my presentation on The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web...
After a meeting with my supervisor, I've decided that this week is the last straw - if I can't manage to...
I've just been poking at my iPod mini's innards (in the software sense) and had a bit of a scare. It...
I can't help but wonder if my current bout of procrastination is self sabotage. Perhaps, deep down, I don't want to...
[physics/0505071] How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest I'm not...
I'm not sure what the hold-up is, but I am still waiting for my copy of Types and Programming Languages. I...
It's 2152 on Saturday, and I've just spoken my fourth word for the weekend (In case anyone cares, the were two...
The Logic of Communicating Processes
I saw a talk by Professor Robin Cockett last night on the topic of The logic of communicating processes. I've just...
Clublife There are two things that make me love Blogger, the whole 'free blogging' thing and their Blogs of Note list....
I've just been reading a bit of CTM. As I often do, I've used the receipt as a book mark (primarily...
I got the first volume of ADV Manga's translation of Azumanga Daioh today and, having just read about half of it,...
Grice and Implication in Conversation
There was a meeting of NotYASS (Not Yet Another Seminar Series) tonight, this time with the topic of: 'Implicature and conversational...
Problems, problems, problems...
I had a meeting with my supervisor today and thought that I'd better raise some of the issues I've been having....
Apple - Mac OS XI've just installed Tiger on my iBook and, I must say, some of the new features are...
[Even More] Books, Glorious [Even More] Books
I picked up Practical Common Lisp from the Co-op Bookshop yesterday. Looks promising.Now all I'm waiting for is Types and Programming...
Freakonomics I've read some good things about this book. Coupled with some of the articles on the book's web site, I...
I got back to Canberra this morning, after 10 days in Tasmania. Now that I'm back, I can't remember having actually...
Books (and Comics), Glorious Books (and Comics)
I've just got back from Tasmania (visiting my family and friends). With me, I've bought the rest of my comics collection....
One field of Computer Science I am particularly interested in is programming languages. In a probably futile attempt to speed my...
Notes on a few new comics including Nightmares & Fairy Tales, Courtney Crumrin, and Gloom Cookie.
Dirt Cheap by Elisabeth WynhausenI've just finished reading Dirt Cheap, a book detailing the author's attempt to live on the minimum...
I've been reading quite a bit of fan fiction recently and it has caused me to ponder cultural pollution. A lot...
As much as I love my iBook, want a iMac and find my iPod handy, I hate Apple. I recently bought...
Another interesting post on LtU
programmatic nature of subatomic make up | Lambda the Ultimate All that I can say is: what the fuck? One day,...
RFC4042: UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode
RFC4042: UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of UnicodeI can't tell if this is an April Fools RFC (the probable status)...
Deciding branching time logicWe've been looking at temporal logics for the last couple of lectures in Software Quality Management which has...
Stanford: Stop Hiring Me (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)
Stanford: Stop Hiring Me (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)Holy crap! I wish people would throw jobs like that at me. On the...
CommentsIn the comments on a post (at LtU) about the recent Knuth interview, someone posted a rather amusing reply to a...
Project Description and Literature Review
We've passed the first milestone in the Honours program: project descriptions and literature reviews were due today. I'm fairly happy with...
Well, I'm past the first post (even if I'm not the first past it): my project description and literature review has...
Megatokyo: 683 Crazy TalkI've just caught up with Megatokyo (I'm between bank cards, so I've not been able to put any...
George Orwell: Animal Farm I've just finished reading Animal Farm again and it has reinforced my opinion that Orwell is one...
Rush Limbaugh Eats Everything For all the fact that this is funny, I can't help but feel that it is more...
For some reason, I got the urge to look up some of the people I went to high school with. So...
On a meta-blog note: I've just updated the title in recognition of the fact that most of my posts lately have...
America unbuttons a new front in the war on breastsA chain of thought typical of my mode of thinking (that is...
Today, the ATM ate my card. I'm not sure why the banks expire bank cards, but I'm sure that there is...
The Australian: Higher EducationIn the Higher Education section of The Australian newspaper today, some of the potential changes to Australia's higher...
I got all my front pube hairs waxedSome people have the coolest ideas!...
Cerulean Sins by Laurell K. HamiltonIndustrical Magic by Kelley ArmstrongI finished reading the eleventh book in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter...
Tableau Methods for Modal Logics
Tableau Methods for Modal and Temporal Logics in Handbook of Tableau Methods, M D'Agostino, D Gabbay, R Haehnle, J Posegga (Eds.),...
Music and the Purchase Thereof
Less Than Jake: B is for B-Sides4 Strings: BelieveI posted my brother his birthday present the other day (only a week...
Laundry: The Bane of Existence
I've come to a realisation: doing laundry is the bane of all that is good and right in the world. This...
GNUPlot (needs AquaTerm)O'CamlGraphvizI've been playing with some Open Source software for OS X lately. There are links above, and brief descriptions...
On (or rather next to) my iPod
iPod Note Reader User Guide (PDF)The other week, I bought myself a new iPod (and iWork) from my local Apple shop....
So my first week of classes as an Honours student is well underway and I can't help but feel that it...
On Friday, Pietro gave me a few papers and chapters to read regarding the theoretical aspect of my Honours project: techniques...
The SRs and the B&G Members Association and Co seem to be gearing up for O-Week. As I write they are...
Things I hate about my Flatmate
Just found a piss funny 'blog via "Blogs of Note" on Blogger.com: Things I hate about my Flatmate....
Today, the summer research scholarship program comes to an end (a lot of people have already buggered off) and with it,...
The Seikai Trilogy I made the mistake of going into Impact Comics on the way back to school today, and came...
I used to hate public speaking, now I just dislike it. I've had to give presentations on a number of occasions...
The Seikai Trilogy I've just read/skimmed Crest of Stars, Banner of Stars I and started Banner of Stars II and I...
TROACSS: The Seikai TrilogyTROACSS: More on the Seikai TrilogyI saw a comic shop whilst in town today, and decided to pop...
The Co-op Bookshop One of the things that surprised me upon arriving in Canberra (about eleven weeks ago now) is the...
It struck me today, that this year is going to be an interesting experience. This won't be the first time I've...
I've discovered that the AffineTransform support in prefuse appears to be broken. Flipping (i.e. scaling by a negative factor) doesn't work,...
Kripke: Names, necessity, and identity
Kripke: Names, necessity, and identity This sounds like an interesting book. I'll have to see if I can get a hold...
A little bit on logic and trans-world identity
I've just posted a little bit about modal logic (more specifically the idea of trans-world identity) to a message board I...
Since I got my iBook, I've been using Bibdesk to manage a BibTeX database of the papers I've downloaded (and bothered...
On the Benefits of Documentation and Its Reading
I am stupid. That is the only possible explanation for the way I've wasted most of the last couple of weeks...
I like this. I'm sitting here at my desk in my room at Burgmann College (paid for by the RSISE as...
Thoughts on a Programming Language
I've been thinking for quite a while now, that I'd like to have a go at writing my own programming language....
Whilst I appreciate and, I hope, understand the pedagogical value of using "practical" examples to offer motivation for topics that can,...
Input Processing: The Joys of a Dodgy Hack
Just finished a rewrite of the input processing scripts. I now have a single Python script that reads a SOFTIE log...
Now that the data sets can be reprocessed more easily, and have more, relevant, data in them, I've started working on...
More on Composable Memory Transactions
Caveat: I am not an RTS expert, not a Haskell expert, nor a concurrency, languages, or OS guru. This little spiel...
Composable Memory Transactions
Composable Memory Transactions. Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, and Maurice Herlihy. Submitted to PPoPP 2005. I found this paper...
The end is nigh. Or at least in sight.
The end is nigh, or in sight, depending on which way you look at it. There are only a few weeks...
The Code Book by Simon Singh A week or two ago, I finished reading Simon Singh's second book: The Code Book...
A Traditional Adjacency Matrix
John just raised the point that the size problem would be solved by using a 'full' adjacency matrix on the usable...
Onward, to a less nonsensical visualisation!
The new, matrix inspired, visualisation method is coming along nicely and, as can be seen in the picture linked above, allows...
Attending the Logic Summer School at the Australian National University has encouraged me to continue my studies of formal logic begun...
Java Programming Language, JDK 5 I was just digging through the Java 5.0 API docs and found my way to the...
Automated Deduction Image Gallery
I've started on a layout algorithm based on the concept of adjacency matrices. At the moment, it's a full matrix, but...
Alternative Relations on Graphs
This project has, so far, focused on visualising graphs of only one relation on clauses, namely the parent-child relation. Whilst the...
Alternative Visualizations and Pseudo-semantic Orderings
I've started thinking about alternative visualisation methods in the last couple of days. The most promising alternative is an adjacency matrix...
I remembered today that I had a Blogger account and thought that I should probably use it for something. What better...
My first approach at generating a radial layout of the graph data logged by the theorem prover.
Verbosity: Not always a bad thing!
It appears that we need to set `very_verbose` to get the prover to output clauses generated by factorisation, etc. Without this, we get only 5 clauses from LCL403 instead of the nearly 30,000 expected.
The amount of data produced by the problems may pose a problem. LCL005 produces more than 600MB of output and generates over 6,000,000 events. Processing this data into a graph description is the next phase of the project.
Graphviz, Dot, Large Graphs and Crashing!
Running GraphViz on my generated `dot` files exhausts memory and dies. I'll need to either use a smaller problem, or another visualisation tool.