As a programmer (or sysadmin, IT professional, cluster maintenance worker, scrum leader, etc) there will absolutely be times that a debugger isn’t powerful enough or optimal enough or simple enough. For some classes of problems, whether they be visual (graphs, animations), size (too much stuff changing too quickly), security (only munged objects come with this module) etc, a debugger will only hinder your ability to work. We inevitably go to data logging for these classes of problems, as it’s quite simple to learn and generally the first method that we’re taught. Unfortunately, it’s also the most lackluster and limited method of debugging information that we have. However, it doesn’t have to be. I’m going to be highlighting a super simple but powerful idea that may just change the way you debug. Debug logs that are fully executable Python programs. Read on for more info and some examples.
So I was unwinding after work today, and I thought it’d be fun to create a little Javascript function and mobile-optimized site for changing textual words to American Sign Language. *FYI I throw stuff up on my GitHub all the time, and it doesn’t always make the blog. Everything runs on the client browser, nothing is ever sent to my server and it’s safe to embed in applications. It only took about an hour to throw together, mainly because the only public domain images are that of the manual ASL alphabet. That in itself seems like a problem somebody should do a Kickstarter to solve (seriously). Anyway you can check out the page here, and check the source out here.
I just unearthed all of my homework from my CS courses from my undergraduate degree (1999-2003). While assembling the retrospective gif for the previous post, I recalled I had a web page on my school’s csserver back as an undergraduate. Google confirmed this, but more amazingly it was still serving my hand-written redirect page. My amazement turned to horror as I realized I had served many a redhat ISO internally, and they were probably still lingering on there. A quick ssh later, and I’m back in the csserver of my youth. The account was never shut down, and the redhat ISOs were still there. I made a quick copy of all the rest of the data, deleted the data from the account, and logged out. I then realized what I had actually unearthed, a perfectly preserved history of each assignment I had ever completed for every CS class I had as an undergrad (dozens). Not only that, i had written some simple openGL games for the csserver. Sitting in the top level of a forgotten web directory was a compiled windows executable for a shitty little Tron openGL game you can download here.
I was relaxing after a hard day at work today, and thought it may be fun to throw up a little reminder of where hunterdavis.com came from and how far it’s come. In glorious GIF format 🙂
Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony, and many others have recently released large color Android tablets/e-book readers out into the wild. Effectively the third generation of e-book readers, these tablets priced at 150-250$ USD represent the current pinnacle of our e-book world. But I’m not telling you to go buy them. Oh no. The value may be there but the price isn’t right and the technology isn’t optimum for reading books.
I hadn’t logged into my account in some time (I’m registered with so many publishers and sites etc I end up checking them twice a year or something) Turns out people have been buying my books on the Apple book store. That’s cool, and an extra little bump in income I wasn’t expecting. Not as many sales on Google books though, I wonder if that speaks to the breath of market penetration or perhaps the percentage of book readers per platform. At any rate, I’ll try and post up a preview of my fourth book sometime soon.
Besides numerous other interesting forks which have come out of the open sourcing of Quick Grapher, I just got wind of a very interesting fork which ports it to Android. Two of my favorite projects coming together for a peanut butter and jelly style open source sandwich. Sharing for the win! Check it out!
QuickGrapher.com was one of the research projects spun out of Discursive Labs. One of the most promising projects we worked on, it always felt like a project without an intended audience, and it never really lifted off. I’m quite proud of the work that Mark and I did, and still think it’s a tremendously fun and important project.
QuickGrapher.com was one of the research projects spun out of Discursive Labs. One of the most promising projects we worked on, it always felt like a project without an intended audience, and it never really lifted off. I’m quite proud of the work that Mark and I did, and think it’s a tremendously cool project.
As most of you know, Mark and I shelved Discursive Labs about a year ago. While the business didn’t make it, we ended up creating some really cool stuff in our research department. One of those projects was Source Tree Visualizer. We’ve decided to open source it with a BSD license, so feel free to modify the code and use it most anywhere.
