Science, tech, art, culture
If you get this error when launching a Run Configuration in Eclipse with the IAM (Maven) plugin:
Referenced classpath provider does not exist: org.maven.ide.eclipse.launchconfig.classpathProvider
It’s probably because your Run Configuration was created on an old project, and has bad entries in the Classpath section. The solution is to delete the Run Configuration and create a new one.
I just saw the new Pumping Station: One location for the first time, and it’s made me very excited. Getting a bunch of talented, interesting, friendly people together is just what I had in mind as I finished reading Earth Abides. Seeing everybody in the actual space today cemented the reality of the group in my mind, and has me full of anticipation of what we can accomplish.
Everybody is making me jealous with their ASUS EEE PCs, and now that I have somewhere to hang out and code I really need a laptop! So that’s my next project… The big decision is not really on the hardware but the software: Linux or Windows? The last time I ran Linux was in college, so I’m a little hesitant.
Use your keyboard to play hangman, and view recent activity in the Feed section. Speak & Spell is live as my homepage.
Those of you who remember the Speak & Spell will probably love my first attempt at a website redesign based around it.
So far, you can type letters using the keys, and it has sounds I recorded from my actual Speak & Spell. The text is much bigger than the real thing, so it can be read, but it is limited to 8 characters like the real thing. The sounds are somewhat delayed on Firefox, and the text is in the wrong place in IE… but you can see the potential!
The image is from a patent application made by Texas Instruments. Hopefully they don’t mind if I use it!
I like Ruby on Rails, but the design is sometimes inconsistent.
For example, consider the “text_method” parameter to the collection_select helper method. The argument forces you to call a method on the model object which returns the text which is used in the select list. That’s ok when you only want to display a single field from that object, for example “name”. It’s not ok if you want to display something more complicated, because then you’re putting display logic into the model. You’re supposed to use helpers for that! Since doing it right would make it ugly and more complicated, I end up giving in and doing it the wrong way by adding a method to the model. It frustrates me.
It’s nice to have a girlfriend who works for the Skokie Theater. I’m getting free admittance to see Fareed Haque tonight. Awesome.
This blog is notably lacking in the subjects of music and art, so to help remedy that here is a video of the classical guitar duo I had the delight of hanging out with this weekend. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXMOB1BvpwY
They are amazing musicians, not to mention hilariously funny and smart. Besides hearing a totally INTENSE and inspirational performance, I got to hear really funny and endearing stories about their adventures. Susana is from Spain, while Alexis is from Greece, so they’re doubly interesting to talk to.
Unfortunately, writing about it tends to deflate the experience. But I will update if they are in Chicago again. Until then, check out their website http://www.duomelis.com/
Delicious firefox extension – intelligent tag grouping to cut down on size of menu
Sage – load feeds by opening an rss of rss feeds
Particle system research. Bird for website redesign.
Embattle – write gtd to identify unresolved issues
A while ago, I couldn’t find any Javascript mergesort implementations, so I wrote one. The nice thing about mergesort is that it is “stable”, id est it retains the previous order of elements with equal value. Therefore it is great for sorting rows in a table on different columns sequentially. Also, the merge() function is handy for merging two sorted arrays into one big sorted array.
Check out Wikipedia for more info on mergesort and other sorting algorithms.
Here it is:
function mergesort(a,f)
{
var alength = a.length;
if(alength <= 1)
return a;
else
{
var middle = Math.round(alength / 2);
var left = new Array(middle);
var right = new Array(alength - middle);
var result = new Array(alength);
left = a.slice(0, middle);
right = a.slice(middle, alength);
left = mergesort(left, f);
right = mergesort(right, f);
result = merge(left, right, f);
return result;
}
}
function merge(a, b, f)
{
var alength = a.length;
var blength = b.length;
var result = Array();
var i, j, k;
i = j = k = 0;
if(alength == 0)
return b;
if(blength == 0)
return a;
while(i < alength && j < blength)
{
if(f(b[j], a[i]))
result.push(a[i++]);
else
result.push(b[j++]);
}
while(i < alength)
result.push(a[i++]);
while(j < blength)
result.push(b[j++]);
return result;
}
The "f" argument is a comparison function that you provide. Here is a sample comparison function to get you started:
function compare(n1, n2)
{
return n1 >= n2;
}
I’m curious. Who knows the origin of the word “heredoc” or “here document” to refer to a way of representing string literals? It seems like such a strange name.