unpxre

2008-11-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

cd -
toggles between directories.

2008-04-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

I was using server timestamp in the smacks of Smacklet
So it was just PDT.

Per user request, I've made this truely global :)

User wanted an option of setting timezone. I thought it would be even better if I read the client side time using Javascript's Date() function. This way, even if the user moves to a different time zone, he/she will not have to change the settings! Yay! Me is very pleazed ;)

2008-04-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

Learned some git stuff. Installed git in work computer (Windows)

I just skimmed through this:
http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git
I should read it again when I use git more intensively.

vim:
I have to use f more often.
I forgot ^r

vim tips learned:
J - join two lines
H, M, L - home,middle,last
zt, zz, zb
using /xxx\> to search for words ending with xxx. likewise \<
D = d$
In visual mode, use o to change the other end (wow!) another o gets you back

2008-04-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Watched AppEngine videos. Cool.

Did 'Hello World' in Google AppEngine.

Few days ago I enhanced Optibus.

2008-04-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Recently Learned

Threads in Python - Used it to send 3 queries in parallel to metrokc for my OptiBus project
Using re.sub to remove all tags and thereby convert html to txt
Contructing POST requests using urllib. (Note2Self: I should use urllib2 and pose as IE)
More experience with writing bookmarklets for my webapps
vim: few cool tricks #
'map' can be used as a faster 'for' #

2008-03-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

Got a sudden insight now :-)

x=[11,22,33,44]

To get last element, we use x[-1]

Instead of using the negative index directly, we can use the bitwise NOT operator ~, since ~0=-1 and ~1=-2 etc!

So you can simply say x[~0] to access the last element, x[~1] for last but one etc.

[Hacker News discussion]

2008-03-17T09:05:00.001-07:00

Learned pdb basics: http://www.ferg.org/papers/debugging_in_python.html

Wow IDLE debugger is impressive: http://www.python.org/idle/doc/idle2.html#Debugger

I was playing with 'Path Browser' in IDLE (came to know about it only today) and discovered that Berkeley DB comes with py (at least a simple interface). Just an 'import bsddb" will do.

Lucene

2008-03-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucene

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=137802

Lucene is a fast text search engine. Nutch is a derivative project that also has web crawling etc. There is pyLucene too - Python interface for Java based Lucene.

Cool Quote

2008-02-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

"I sometimes edit my .emacs file in vim."

From : Mark Tran's Blog

2008-02-24T21:01:00.000-08:00

Did Today:

Parsed email with Python
Poached egg (tasty)
Read some "Ender's Game"
Got bluetooth working my laptop
Installed Arc
Ran news.yc - played with it

2008-02-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

Since I acknowledge that I don't know much, I am able to learn more. I didn't learn much all through college as I had this sense of greatness as someone who had been coding since 11. Gaa... Had I been more open about my stupidity, I could have got more done, instead of feeling the need to seem elite and shit... Anyway, lesson learned and onward we march.

This is the article that triggered these thoughts:
Gmail's Humble Beginning

GNU date

2008-02-18T07:42:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that you can use date strings with this tool

kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ date
Mon Feb 18 07:25:16 PST 2008
kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ date --date "ten years ago"
date: invalid date `ten years ago'
kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ man date
kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ date --date="ten years ago"
date: invalid date `ten years ago'
kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ date --date="10 years ago"
Wed Feb 18 07:25:57 PST 1998
kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ date --date="10 years and 12 days ago"
date: invalid date `10 years and 12 days ago'
kiru@kiru-laptop:~$ date --date="10 years 12 days ago"
Tue Feb 6 07:26:28 PST 2018

[more info]

Human friendly date strings are awesome. It would be a nice feature to have in my webapps. I need to wrap this GNU tool in Python/Javascript code. I wonder if there is one already.

2008-02-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

I didn't know about Python signal handling before. I think I lost a lot of my cockiness and feel much more humble now.

I was browsing these 15 exercises for learning a new programming language. I attempted this in Python: "Display series of numbers (1,2,3,4, 5....etc) in an infinite loop. The program should quit if someone hits a specific key (Say ESC key)." Really trivial execise, right?I've done the exact same thing in C about a goddamn decade ago using getchar. I realized that I don't know the Python equivalent. Googling gets me kinda unrelated stuff like marriage without sex! Hmm. Ok. Then I came across this good example. Then I wrote this: Pgm1. It calls that fn when Ctrl-C is pressed.

Miles to go still...

2008-02-06T14:44:00.001-08:00

I thought I'll construct a computer from scratch. Instead of messing with hardware, I thought I'll build each of the fundamental hardware components - primarily NAND gates - using software and take it from there. In effect, it would be a computer inside a computer.

Though I've groked it, I've not been a fan of structuring my programs using object oriented techniques so far. I wanted to model an electronic circuit with resistors, batteries and wires (and later, the other components like transistors). I am doing this to slowly build up a computer as popularized by 'From NAND To Tetris in 12 Steps'.

I ended up getting an intro to OO in Python.

2008-02-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

I am writing a compiler to learn Computer Science better (Stevey influence). People suggested that I write an interpreter first and slowly expand from there. I am playing with writing few text transformation programs. It is fun.

I am reading "The Little Schemer" book. So naturally, I am trying to solve things by writing recursive functions... with equivalents of CAR, CDR, CONS etc.

Program input:
"1,2-5,7,10-14"

Program output:
[1,2,3,4,5,7,10,11,12,13,14]

I wrote this as the first step: Program 1

Today: Feb 06, 2008
I wrote this instead: Program 2. It is a complete program that produces the above mentioned output. I didn't use any recursion or functional programming ideas. I just wrote a "as simple as possible" python program. Just wanted to start the day with a working program. I'll rewrite it the car-cdr way soon. I actually wanted to write in Lisp but didn't know to car-cdr strings. I should learn that.

Notes:
What if the paste-bins I linked to go away? I should set up my own paste-bin. [Update #1: the pastebin site I used is open source. I should install it in my website.] [Update #2: Created a 'private' pastebin on the site... kiru.pastebin.com]

Concurrency and Python

2008-02-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Dr. Dobb's | Concurrency and Python

Why?

2008-02-03T10:21:00.000-08:00

This is my geek journal, seperate from my personal blog.