BenCrowder.net » Digital Bridge

Outside the Box

Ben — Tue, 02 May 2006 22:12:47 +0000

I’ve created a new blog, Outside the Box, to replace this one.

This blog has moved

Ben — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 23:09:02 +0000

I’m going to retire this blog and post to my main blog, Top of the Mountains, instead, effective immediately.

Boot camp

Ben — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:00:53 +0000

I’ve hesitated to post because I’m trying to move this blog to a different location (and name), but this is good stuff: today Apple announced Boot Camp, which lets you install Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac (and boot both OS X and Windows). Personally, I’d never use such a feature because I don’t need or want Windows ever again, but I’m sure there are plenty of people out there to whom this’ll be a very nice feature. Go Apple! :)

[tags]Mac, Windows, Apple, Boot Camp[/tags]

A temporary setback

Ben — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 23:51:41 +0000

(I hope.) So, my Powerbook died yesterday. Luckily I can still boot it in target disk mode and get all the data off, but it looks like it’s going to be out of the game. (Once I finish backing up I’ll run the hardware diagnostic test and see what’s up.) At least there are Macs on campus that I can use, because otherwise I think I’d go crazy.

On a side note, I don’t think I really like the name “Digital Bridge” anymore. All those “idges” rather bother me. So I’ll be renaming the site and redesigning the look. And hopefully writing better posts on a more frequent basis. (Considering that the readership is still zero, I’m not doing so well on that front. :))

Seized by illness

Ben — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 17:26:36 +0000

Well, it’s not that bad — just a huge headache, really achy bones, and loss of balance — but it’s keeping me in bed. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to get anything done today or if I’ll have to give in and sleep it all away. I hate wasting a whole day. ~sigh~ But as I don’t have much choice in the matter, I may as well accept my fate.

Brain candy

Ben — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 15:36:09 +0000

Last night I stayed up late reading Learning Python. Most of it was ordinary programming stuff — “This is a function” — but here are the three things that got me excited and almost gave me goosebumps. First, being able to return tuples from a function (so you can return multiple values from a single function). Wow. Second, map(), which lets you run a specified function on a list. (It’s equivalent to iterating through the list and calling the function manually, but much cooler.) Third, lambdas. Hmm, how can I describe lambdas? In-line functions? That’s not a very useful description per se, but oh well. :) Apparently lambdas are one of the things that make Lisp so cool, and I can see why. I’ve been reading about metaprogramming and it looks quite interesting (and ESR mentions it in his article, linked to in my last post). Yum. :)

I doubt I’ll ever go back to C now. :)

[tags]Python, Lisp[/tags]

Python goodness

Ben — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:44:18 +0000

The more I read about Python, the more I’m liking it. (See Eric S. Raymond’s Why Python?, for example.) I suppose that if I upgraded to Tiger, the binding problem I had would go away. So, if that does indeed happen, I suspect I’ll be doing most of my Mac development in Python rather than Objective-C. :)

[tags]Python, Mac, Objective-C[/tags]

Python around my neck

Ben — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:35:11 +0000

I’m supposed to be in bed (early meeting tomorrow morning) but I figured I’d quickly mention this. I downloaded and installed PyObjC today and tried to get the sample program (from Apple’s website) working, and I was so close, but for some reason my Xcode (1.5, on OS X 10.3.9) wouldn’t show the Averager in the binding tab of the info dialog. I’m pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly, and I even watched the Quicktime movie to double-check that I was doing it right, but with no luck. Oh, and I downloaded the project from their site and opened it and the info dialog said it was hooked to Averager (for “value”) but when I expanded the value thingie, it went away and I was left with just “System Defaults” and the other one, which I can’t remember at the moment. Anyway, I’m not sure what the source of the problem is here, but I may just go back to Objective-C for now…

[tags]Python, PyObjC, Cocoa, Objective-C, Xcode[/tags]

Wordsmith

Ben — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:14:17 +0000

In my linguistics classes, we’re doing stuff with text processing/analysis software (like WordCruncher) that’s Windows-only, and it’s a shame. How hard would it be to write a text analysis engine in Perl or Python and a frontend in PyObjC? It can’t be that hard… Perhaps I’ll use that as my learning program for Python — start small and build up. So, the next question then is what text analysis software ought to do. There’s got to be a ton of different ways to look at a text computationally — wordprint analyses, statistics of various types, etc. The engine would also have to support tagging the text, so you could say “This word is a verb, 3rd person singular present active indicative” or “This is a conjunction” or whatever. I really only have experience with WordCruncher, but in my research class we looked at some Oxford tools a month or two ago which seemed to be the same sort of thing.

But in all reality, to make this project worth my time (and to keep my interest), it has to be something I care about. Adding statistics on end won’t cut it. So, what does it need to do to be useful? For me, it’d be nice to make a list of the top x (50 or 100 or 1000 or whatnot) words in a text. Foreign language texts are important to me as well, and I can see this tool (let’s call it Wordsmith for now) being of some use in preparing texts for Riverglen Press “publication.” In fact, that’s a good way to ensure that it will be useful, to me at least — focus it on helping with production for Riverglen Press. Excellent…

[tags]text processing, Mac, WordCruncher, Perl, Python, PyObjC[/tags]

Googleness

Ben — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:35:40 +0000

Found a very interesting read today: Secret Out – How Google Ranks Websites. Now I’m wondering if all those language links on Blank Slate are such a good idea after all…

[tags]Google[/tags]