pdmccormick

I've taken some mathematics and logic courses at a university level, and the thing I took from those experiences and apply everyday is the reasoning and proof structuring. Struggling through and coming to something of an understanding of the concepts of analysis (calculus) and algebra were a pivotal point in my intellectual development. As somebody for whom math has never come easily (and still doesn't), but for whom the beauty and wonder of it all was still enchanting, I'd heartily encourage any and everyone to learn some higher maths in detail. The specific results may not always be applicable day to day, but the way of thinking will stay with you. Good luck!!

Give even a cursory review of code for those id Software titles to see that they were not rewrites from scratch (http://fabiensanglard.net/ gives a wonderful overview of each.) Even without any revision history from one to the next, the structure of each code base shows a continuity and evolution of thought and design that disproves the theory. As I understand it, towards the end of the development cycle for each game, once the core tech was in solid and in place, John Carmack would branch off to aggressively pursue research and development on next gen graphics and tech, leading to a lot of new and rewritten and expanded code, yes, but still not starting from scratch each time.

Historically speaking, his act of open sourcing those codebases and the chronicle of cutting edge graphics/gaming development that they represent is a significant record of and insight into one of our generations leading minds. His work ethic and dedication is pretty phenomenal, he is a big personal inspiration.

Recently I had to bitbang I2C through a voltage level translating buffer that had a direction setting pin that needed to be manipulated when sampling SDA on input. The uC's hardware I2C block obviously couldn't handle that extra signaling oddity. Not the fastest approach but then this I2C application wasn't that high speed to begin with. Good times indeed!

I've often wondered about this phenomenon, people empowered by the web and their new found audience, struggling to find the balance between the solo soapbox and tapping into a collective sentiment as authority and sage.

I'm not trying to assert any of this as being the case for the author, but when I was in my teens during the early days of the web, entranced by that heady feeling of being on the vanguard of something truly special, with a little fiefdom at my fingertips simply by being there, I too felt an emboldening, a sense of purpose and grandeur and the emotional vitality and certitude to make sweeping statements, to talk of The Community and be a bold spokesperson. To be figuring out the world, positing ideas and learning about where they take you and how to communicate and convince and argue and wax and eulogize, these are valuable things to learn at any age. Let Apple and Samsung tremble before a critique written with passion and determination long before any such fire is quenched, we are always free to be our own filters for taste.

I welcome the Retina Revolution (and look forward to its progression beyond the Apple world), despite the messy consequences. Three things plague my eyes and psyche:

  1) 1080p as a least common denominator
  2) composite analog video feeds
  3) low bitrate MPEG/JPEG/iDCT compression artefacts

Let the reader understand.

Solid copy!

Ahh, the hipsters dilemma: your sensibilities are offended when something you cherish sell out and go mainstream, yet you wear the hard earned "I liked them _before_ they were popular" badge with honour. It's hard growing up and having your sense of identity and place in the world challenged when you peer behind the curtain. There is something real to be mourned there, yet we are better for it.

PHP as a language is, at present, defined by the behaviour of the canonical PHP.net implementation. Change the implementation, and de facto you've changed the language; Perl 5 is similar in this respect. A claim that an alternate implementation or tool chain supports _that_ very same language is a curious statement. It is an alternate implementation, and surely it must differ behaviourally, even if only by having unique bugs.

IIRC Facebook engineers must use HipHop for all their development, with PHP.net's php being now incompatible (hence the push to speed up the interpreter.) Wouldn't that make the language-supported-by-HipHop a PHP flavoured superset at the very least?

The good thing about hashing something repeatedly is that the result is always the same!

On the theme of a very rewarding change of perspective and exciting new possibilities, I'd heartily recommend everyone try their hand at developing for a small, embedded microcontroller platform. I don't know why sequencing and flashing LEDs is so satisfying.

That being said, I am excited about the possibilities of Raspberry Pi's, and hope they can meet their ambitious price point and stay well stocked. The design is impressive, and I hope they find equal success with the logistics and supply chain management side of the equation.

How was PayPal able to get a single-letter dot com domain? I thought they were all reserved. But then there is x.org on the other hand too, hmm...

`sudo -s` works nicely too.

Not disagreeing, but I thought the Maps web UI came about post acquisition, and that the technology had previously been developed for desktop apps?

I have a warm fuzzy memory about the first time I saw Google Maps and Suggest, and had that feeling that, "surely this is the future."