So I saw Spectre.
Archives for 2015 (Lifestream)
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Dec 9, 2015, 12:12 PM -05:00 -
Dec 9, 2015, 12:12 PM -05:00 So it's funny when the characters in the reboot are recognizable, not from the originals, but rather from their Austin Powers counterparts.
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Dec 9, 2015, 12:12 PM -05:00 I never really watched most of the original Cold War Bond movies.
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Nov 26, 2015, 3:44 AM -05:00 Graffiti and the Art Test
If you're in the tech industry, or you're just generally interested in technology, chances are you've heard of the Turing test. It's usually billed as a litmus test for intelligence in machines. The idea, in its most basic form, is simple. A judge converses with two subjects, one of which is human and one of which is a machine, via some sort of mechanism that hides the physical characteristics of the subjects. If the judge cannot tell the human from the machine, we say that the machine is intelligent. Simple as that.
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Nov 22, 2015, 7:11 PM -05:00 The first two episodes of "The Man in the High Castle" are, indeed, appropriately grim
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Nov 18, 2015, 12:11 PM -05:00 Switzerland banned minarets in 2009? I had no idea...
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Nov 16, 2015, 11:53 PM -05:00 Have You Ever Actually Read That Thing?
I saw this headline today:
And I started gibbering just a little. I admit, I haven't read the full article because, frankly, I don't really care about the answer. It's a stupid question.
But, like those who insist on calling the hijab a cultural artifact when confronted with the grim reality of women who are forced to wear it, many people seem to find the question pertinent.
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Oct 22, 2015, 10:10 AM -04:00 Javascript people: React or Angular?
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Oct 20, 2015, 7:10 AM -04:00 Every time Justin Trudeau smiles I always think I see the sunlight glinting off his teeth.
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Oct 10, 2015, 12:31 AM -04:00 Putting "Meta" in Front of Words Makes them Sound Cooler, Right?
One time, back when I was actually semi-active on Google+, I came across a rather heated debate. Someone had posted an article telling the story of a child bride who had died on her wedding night. The post was directed accusingly at self-described proponents of "multiculturalism", an ideology which, in the poster's opinion, was in the same category as "cultural relativism", which he considered deeply depraved.
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Oct 9, 2015, 9:10 AM -04:00 Line from Asimov's 'The Stars, Like Dust': 'Gillbret fingered and stroked the knobs gently'. Oh 1951, you were a simpler time.
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Oct 6, 2015, 2:52 AM -04:00 On Being "Accommodating"
Niqabs are in the news again. Stephen Harper wants them off during the Canadian citizenship ceremony. The whole thing is surely a tempest in a teapot, as there have been a grand total of two, count 'em, two women since 2011 who have refused to show their faces during the ceremony, but it has started occasionally ugly debates on the limits of what is generally known as "religious accommodation".
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Sep 25, 2015, 10:48 PM -04:00 Yet Another Requirements Versus Setup Post
In a previous post I wrote down some notes on the current state of the python packaging ecosystem. I felt that this was useful because most of the information that I found online was out of date or spread out in various places.
One area that still confuses me is the relative merits of requirements.txt versus setup.py files. Ironically, the best article I've read on the subject is aimed at ruby developers. I think python developers should read it - it's surprising (or maybe not so surprising) how similar the ecosystems are in this respect. I've even made a handy Rosetta stone, which is hopefully not completely inaccurate:
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Sep 22, 2015, 2:15 AM -04:00 Generating Pylint Badges
Badges, on github and other code sharing sites, are a way to communicate small snippets of information concerning the status of your repository. They generally appear on your README file, so they are one of the first things you see when you load a repository page.
On my yawt page, for example, you can see several badges for things like my travis build status, and my GPA at code climate.
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Aug 31, 2015, 12:08 PM -04:00 Repeating the Facebook experiment. Sending out a tweet from a python app. Can you see me? :)
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Aug 27, 2015, 3:08 PM -04:00 Chocolate eclair at 10am. Mistake. Delicious mistake, but still a mistake.
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Aug 21, 2015, 8:08 PM -04:00 Calvados Crusta. Possibly my new favourite drink.
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Aug 20, 2015, 1:48 AM -04:00 Emacs and Python
I use Emacs as a python IDE. The web already offers a significant number of resources on the subject but I've made a couple of specialized tweaks that I feel may be worth sharing. So here we go.
Why am I doing this? Well, the simple answer is that I like using Emacs. I do most of my writing in it. I use it as my task manager and TODO list. I have, in the past, used it as my email client. So it makes sense that I would use it as my python development environment. Your mileage may vary.
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Aug 18, 2015, 9:08 AM -04:00 It's weird to think of email as "old-school".
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Aug 14, 2015, 12:08 PM -04:00 When one is writing about software, does one capitalize the software names? Like, do I say Emacs or emacs?
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Aug 13, 2015, 8:08 PM -04:00 Lays Montreal Smoked Meat potato chips bear an uncanny resemblance to the real thing. Bravo.
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Aug 13, 2015, 12:31 AM -04:00 Reflections on the Ethnic Vote
Jacques Parizeau died not too long ago. He infamously commented that the 1995 Quebec Referendum was lost due to money and the ethnic vote.
I was in high school, in Toronto, during the referendum. I remember my school following the whole thing very closely. I remember feeling relief when the No side won (by a hair) and I remember the uproar that his statements caused afterwards.
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Aug 7, 2015, 8:08 AM -04:00 I really, really hate it when people use "political correctness gone mad" as an license for simple, plain assholery.
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Jul 11, 2015, 3:33 PM -04:00 Don't Make the Joke
Visiting Greece presented some interesting linguistic challenges.
I live in Montreal, which means I have at least some knowledge of the French language. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, fluent in said language. Frankly, I'm not even very good. My French, basically, is terrible.
But while my French may be terrible, it is at least there. I'm generally able to ask for directions, order a meal from a menu, read the road signs, and even to some extent carry on a conversation, if I keep my words short and avoid slang. When someone says a word in French, I'll stand a chance of being able to match it up with a series of letters on paper, even if the word is unfamiliar.
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Jul 11, 2015, 12:07 PM -04:00 And...now I know about the Open Graph protocol...