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Category Archives: Those that have just broken the flower vase
MapReduce Implemented with “map” and “reduce”
The MapReduce paradigm was inspired by functional programming techniques, so why not take things full circle and rewrite a MapReduce job in a functional language? Here is a one-line Scala implementation of the classic “word-count” program. Okay so I used … Continue reading
The Medium is Not the Message
That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it. –Ludwig Wittgenstein Here is Frank Sinatra performing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” on his 1957 album A Swingin’ Affair. Here is a solo guitar version of … Continue reading
40,000 KenKen Puzzles with Unique Solutions
KenKen I wrote a solver and generator of KenKen puzzles called CanCan. It started as a Scala learning exercise but became a full-blown tool that may be of general interest. I’ve used it to generate and publish over 40,000 KenKen … Continue reading
Alt-Backtick is Awful
In a graphical user interface you want a keyboard-based way to switch between open windows. The convention across contemporary operating systems is the two-key combination Alt-Tab. (On Apple machines it’s actually Apple-Tab, but for brevity’s sake I’ll call that Alt-Tab … Continue reading
Playing Slapjack with the Unity Dock
I don’t like the Unity shell, but I’m willing to give the Ubuntu developers the benefit of the doubt. Though I’ve been tempted to go storming back to GNOME, I’ve ultimately decided to have patience. There are design flaws. People are … Continue reading
Why It’s “Statistical Modeling” Instead of “Artificial Intelligence”
Underpromise. Overdeliver.
The Think System
In The Music Man, con man Harold Hill runs a scam on the people of River City, Iowa, in which he promises them that he’ll form the children of the town into a fine marching band if their parents will … Continue reading
Leave the Monkey at Home
The comedian Eddie Izzard has a bit in which he says the only French he knows is “the monkey is on the branch”, “the mouse is beneath the table”, and “the cat is on the chair”, so every time he … Continue reading
Seeing the Bars of the Hadoop Cage
Recently I was giving @trochee a tour of a project he’s been hired to work on. It’s a Hadoop pipeline that does very sophisticated things with gargantuan amounts of data. @trochee hasn’t used Hadoop before, but he is an experienced … Continue reading
Java Should Have a Pair Class Considered Again
Heterogeneous Pairs in Java The debate over whether Java should have a pair class is a perennial one. Not quite a religious war, but heated, and unlikely to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. I’m in the pro-pair camp, but want … Continue reading
