Entries from January 2009

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

Quicksort in the Erlang Shell

It seems that one of the canonical examples of the power/simplicity/elegance etc. of functional languages/recursion tends to be an implementation of Quicksort. In Pragmatic Programming Erlang it appears on page 62. qsort([]) -> []; qsort([Pivot|T]) -> qsort([X || X []; ([Pivot|T]) -> QSort([X || X Q = fun([],F) -> []; ([Pivot|T],F) -> F([X || X […]

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Nonbelievers

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.” – President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, 2009-01-20 I interpret this to mean Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus are believers, or more generally, believers are people who ascribe to a religion. However, why shouldn’t it be the other way around, that the […]

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Full Boats

Registration for the Sunday 12am, 50 person maximum, $70 No-Limit Texas Hold-em at Caesars opened 2 hours prior to the start. As luck would have it, I attempted to sign up for it at 10:05pm (thinking it might fill up and giving my wife and I time to eat dinner beforehand) but it hadn’t been […]

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

Would Obama Have Voted Nay On H.J.Res. 114?

In October of 2002, Obama publicly condemned the use of force in Iraq. During the 2008 US Presidential Election, I kept wondering, had he been a senator, would he have voted Nay on H.J.Res. 114 A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. With the release of the NYTimes […]

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Winds Still 404

While I’m waiting for the Amazon.com “Gold Box For Gamers” which begins at midnight PST, it seems like a good time to comment on completing LostWinds. This was my first WiiWare purchase, 1,000 points (10 USD) and it provide exactly 7 hours of gameplay. 2008-12-28 – 2hrs 54min (co-op with my wife) 2008-12-30 – 2hrs […]

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Learning About WordPress

One of the things I struggle with is resisting the temptation to, “build vs. buy”. Certainly I’m capable of writing my own blogging software or designing my own theme; however, my goal is to start keeping track of my thoughts and ideas and embarking on either of those endeavors would not be productive. Initially, I […]

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Auf Wiedersehen Tannenbaum

Our loft is now ChristmasTree--. It was a nearly 14′ tall Red Fir (commonly known as Silver Tip) and came from the East Bay Nursery. We purchased the tree on 2008-11-30 and used a 20% off coupon from the East Bay EcoMetro book. This was the first year we used LED lights. The ornaments were […]