tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:12:07 +0000http://etalog.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)Blogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-1806315370728919008Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:52:00 +00002009-07-21T01:43:35.410-04:00pythonprogrammingNick Matzke pointed me to this discussion of string concatenation approaches in Python:Efficient String Concatenation in PythonThe issue here is whether adding strings together in a for loop is inefficient enough to be worth working around. Python strings are immutable, so this:s = 'om'for i in xrange(1000): s += 'nom'means doing this 1000 times:Translate the assignment to "s = s + 'nom'"http://etalog.blogspot.com/2009/07/faster-string-concatenation-in-python.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-469615028017332339Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:50:00 +00002009-03-23T15:49:20.157-04:00educationscienceIt had been bothering me since I joined this lab that I couldn't confidently just read a protein sequence and understand what it meant — naming the residues, picturing the side chain structures, and understanding the significance of replacing one residue with another. I expected that I'd just pick it up naturally from working with sequences and structures, and that did happen somewhat. But I http://etalog.blogspot.com/2009/03/mnemosyne-getting-things-memorized.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-546727074630579025Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:36:00 +00002009-02-07T14:49:04.640-05:00educationWhat's old is new again:Professor makes his mark, but it costs him his jobIn Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig mentions his own experiment in withholding grades at a university. He didn't just announce on the first day that everyone would get an A+ (that seems gimmicky), but since it was a class on rhetoric, he spent the course developing an argument for eliminating the http://etalog.blogspot.com/2009/02/carrots-and-sticks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-123050970038111966Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:29:00 +00002009-01-09T13:29:28.829-05:00scienceElevator pitch: There's a missing gear in the machine of psychology research. Every significant human study requires weeks or months of data collection, and more time coding that data in a form that can be analyzed statistically. This makes it infeasible to do the sort of fast, iterative refinement of models that biology has seen in recent years.Amazon's Mechanical Turk provides the missing piecehttp://etalog.blogspot.com/2008/10/psychology-research-with-mechanical.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-7275581963388096144Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:48:00 +00002009-06-13T17:56:29.360-04:00toolsproductivityvimHere's the Vim syntax file I use for highlighting my to-do list. It's based on the syntax file for YAML.http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2599Benefits:Different colors for lines ending in ':' or starting with '*' or '{'Assign keywords to be automatically highlighted, like important locations, coworkers' names, customers, taquerias, etc.Start sections with a line of underscores and ahttp://etalog.blogspot.com/2008/03/vimming-your-way-to-top.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-3731994283989264393Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:58:00 +00002009-03-09T00:13:43.825-04:00lispfunctionalfunction-levelprogrammingblublanguagesThere's an interesting (old) discussion thread at Raganwald.com:http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/10/are-we-blub-programmers.htmlBlub Theory evolves over the course of the comments. First off, the requirements for Blubbiness are defined as:There's at least one language that's worse for the task at hand, and the programmer realizes (validly) that it's less suited for the task than Blub.There's at http://etalog.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-blub.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-4126275864422630342Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:43:00 +00002008-03-07T16:47:51.526-05:00javascriptc++programmingcstyleThis is not new, but neither is C:http://www.chris-lott.org/resources/cstyle/witters_tao_coding.htmlI'm investigating coding style, and this is the best style I've seen so far -- at least for C, C++ and Javascript -- which appear to be the two languages most susceptible to oddly formatted code, anyway. I flailed against the extra space inside parens for a little while, but now I see the wisdom ofhttp://etalog.blogspot.com/2007/11/this-is-not-new-but-neither-is-c.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-4066766658321960654Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:46:00 +00002007-10-16T23:16:51.196-04:00linspirearchopensuselinuxdebianubuntususecnrIn a way.I'm coming from a more Ubuntu climate, so immediately I see some regressions:The main installer requires a DVD, not a CD.The CD installers are split between KDE, Gnome, and Non-Free programs. This wouldn't be a problem, except...The hardware detection, particularly for networking, fails where Ubuntu and Puppy succeed. And once I find a decent (wired) ethernet connection, avoiding that http://etalog.blogspot.com/2007/10/opensuse-103-does-it-satisfy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-5654912634930399580Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:31:00 +00002008-01-31T19:49:19.048-05:00pythonunixprogrammingperlshelllanguagesscriptingThough it's barely plannedThe kludgiest of Perl scriptsIs one day maintainedI've been learning Perl lately, after having used Python wherever possible for a couple of years. It's gut-wrenching. So today's pedantry is on the topic of scripting languages -- interpreted, batteries-included, "!#/usr/bin/env"-ready languages for getting a simple job done with a minimum of hassle, as I'm defining http://etalog.blogspot.com/2007/08/right-tool-for-job-scripting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266234734515043410.post-5343940066420548863Wed, 01 Aug 2007 22:01:00 +00002008-03-07T16:46:46.378-05:00linuxuserfriendlyubuntuUpgrading Ubuntu between major versions is a game. Your machine was running smoothly before you ran update-manager and plunged into a massive set of repository changes and software upgrades, so clearly, your machine is also capable of running the next major version of Ubuntu. The game is when something breaks during the transition. It's randomized to make it more of a challenge, so you can't justhttp://etalog.blogspot.com/2007/08/upgrading-ubuntu-between-major-versions.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Talevich)0