This page features every post I write, and is dedicated to Andrew Ho.
Seriously, WikiWords are the dumbest idea for marking a link to a document node. But when you generate HTML that looks like this, you are doing it wrong:
<body class=”patternViewPage”><a name=”PageTop”></a>
<div id=”patternScreen”>
<div id=”patternPageShadow”>
<div id=”patternPage”>
<div id=”patternWrapper”><div id=”patternOuter”>
<div id=”patternFloatWrap”>
<div id=”patternMain”><div id=”patternClearHeaderCenter”></div>
<div id=”patternMainContents”><div class=”patternTop”>
<div class=”patternToolBar”>
<div class=”patternToolBarButtons”>
I mean, that just means that you have gone batshit insane.
Anyway, back to learning how to parse information from HTML documents using Python . . .
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Dialogue from two ChinesePod lessons: Can You Use Chopsticks? and Does it Have Bones?
Man: ä½ ä¼šç”¨ç·å马？
ni3 hui4 yong4 kuai4zi ma?
You can use chopsticks?
Woman: 当然会。 ä½ çœ‹ï¼
dang1ran2 hui4. ni3 kan4!
Certainly can. You see!
Man: å“‡ï¼ çœŸåŽ‰å®³ï¼
wa1! zhen1 li4hai!
Whoa! Truly awesome!
Woman: 这个很好åƒï¼
zhe4ge hen3 hao3chi1!
This is so delicious!
Man: 有没有骨头？
you3 mei2you3 gu3tou?
Does it have bones?
Woman: æœ‰ï¼ å¾ˆå¥½åƒï¼
you3! hen3 hao3chi1!
Yes! Very tasty!
Man: 我ä¸åƒéª¨å¤´ã€‚
wo3 bu4 chi1 gu3tou.
I don’t eat bones.
会 = hui4 = can do something
用 = yong4 = use
ç·å = kuai4zi = chopsticks
å¥½åƒ = hao3chi1 = “good eat” = delicious (é¢åŒ…个很好åƒï¼)
有没有 = you3mei2you3 = “have-not-have” (does it have . . .)
有 = you3 = “have” (yes)
没有 = mei2you3 = “not have” (no)
骨头 = gu3tou = bones
Yeah, it has been awhile. This time through, 骨头 threw me for a bit of a loop because the character rendered differently in a certain font. According to my dictionary, 骨 is a compound of a skull-with-vertebrae (冎) over flesh (肉) though the bottom particle is drawn as a moon (月) except in one font it came out with the skull facing right, and the two horizontal strokes in the moon slanted downward in opposite directions to better resemble flesh. This appears to be question of style.
骨？
Meanwhile, if you combine a dog (犬) with a bone (骨) you get sly (猾). It seems that the homonym 滑, water (水) plus bone is more common but I like that the sly dog gets his bone.
The other thing I did is after scanning the drawing I ran the scan through the Potrace bitmap tracing engine in Inkscape, which converted the lines to a vector graphic, smoothing things out somewhat.
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I will never forget a day in high school when I was sitting on a crowded bus, headed home, and the lady in front of me, who was not old or pregnant, had what looked to me to be a pained expression on her face. I wondered if maybe her legs hurt as the vehicle lurched around, but I was a shy kid scared to offer her my seat in case really I had just totally misread the situation. After a while the crowd eased and the woman took a seat near me with obvious relief. I had failed on that day to give my seat to someone in need, and ever since I have made an effort not to repeat that mistake by paying greater attention to my fellow passengers.
I still ride transit most weekdays, and I have noticed especially that younger people tend to fail at the whole courtesy thing. Part of it may be self-involved rudeness, but part of it I think is a combination of shyness, and a fear of making contact with strangers in a public place. My generation was raised on the lessons that the world outside our homes is extremely violent and treacherous and that the most dangerous thing a child could ever ever do is to talk to a stranger. I like to think that with time most people grow out of their shells and feel more comfortable taking the initiative for social responsibility.
My own strategy is that if I see a person who might better deserve my seat, I try to make eye contact, at which point I start to get out of my chair. Then they either move forward or gesture for me to sit down. (It is better to err on the side of getting someone a seat. Also, I think people looking for a seat know to look others in the eye.) In other cases if the vehicle is crowded and eye contact can not be achieved, I’ll often just stand the heck up anyway, positioning myself in such a way that the person who could best use my seat finds it most accessible. (I would hate for a young punk to ignorantly snipe my seat.) (more…)
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The Wall Street Journal Reports:
Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures. Several said Google provides little formal career planning, and some found the company’s human-resources programs too impersonal.
Concerned that employees may leave because HR is uncaring and impersonal, Google has naturally responded in the Google way:
The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.
Good luck with that.
I picture some super HR geniuses down in the Googleplex able to predict with great accuracy who will quit next, and exactly when, but lack any clue as to why they are likely to quit, or how to retain them. Still, they will still be hailed as ingenious visionaries because they figured it all out with great scientific precision and implemented their analysis using MapReduce.
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I think Twitter is over rated. Some BBC commentator was yammering on the radio this weekend about how Twitter was insufficient to replace established media. WTF? Twitter is a way to waste a few minutes of time and occasionally score a chuckle or a wry observation off a friend. Much like a grilled cheese sandwich, Twitter should not be taken too seriously. And yet, there’s a whole ecosystem of people re-tweeting each other and #tagging their posts and live-tweeting as if like hey, its the blog-o-sphere 5.0 with a 140-character limit. Seriously, if you’re imitating the blagojoshere, you’re doing it wrong.
Today, I tweeted:
Twitter would be more pleasing if not for all the RT RT RT RT and #tagged #whoring #bullshit. I mostly un-follow those twats.
Which gets mirrored over to Facebook, where three people have “liked” it.
Consider this entry as my coming out of the Twitter closet. You can follow me if you like, but I really really really don’t care.
But I will say this for Twitter: it keeps my rants short!
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Public Domain from teslasience.org
Are you a fan of Nikola Tesla? His last remaining laboratory, Wardenclyffe, on Long Island, where he had ambitions of developing a worldwide network of free electrical power, is threatened with sale and demolition. The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, a would-be museum, wishes to purchase, preserve, and museum-ify the land. They’ll accept donations via personal check. This random lady on Livejournal will accept donations on their behalfonline casino via PayPal, write a check, and for donations in excess of $20, she will draw you a picture of Nikola Tesla, “to your PG-rated specifications” and mail it to you.
(Thanks, beatonna!)
Update: Andrew suggested this crucial documentary on Nikola Tesla.
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I enjoyed Pingdom’s recent posts about the size of technology companies, as well as the money they are making, and I asked myself how that equates to the average profit made per employee.
So, I borrowed Pingdom’s numbers, which Pingdom borrowed from Google Finance, and then I quickly larned myself on the Perl GD::Graph module and I generated my own graph:
Or, if you prefer:
| Company |
PPE |
| Sun |
$11,920.37 |
| HP |
$25,950.16 |
| Yahoo |
$30,882.35 |
| IBM |
$30,969.62 |
| Amazon |
$31,553.40 |
| Dell |
$32,418.30 |
| Oracle |
$63,699.41 |
| Intel |
$64,121.21 |
| eBay |
$109,876.54 |
| Adobe |
$118,609.41 |
| Cisco |
$121,731.77 |
| Apple |
$150,937.50 |
| Baidu |
$164,139.44 |
| Microsoft |
$194,285.71 |
| Google |
$209,779.81 |
What is Baidu? Think of it as Chinese Google and you’ll know as much as I do. I’d reckon that profit-per-employee would be very roughly predictive of job security. My feeling about Google is that they are perpetually understaffed due to their traumatic recruiting process.
If you want to play, feel free to grab my ugly hack of a Perl script, the input data file, or unsorted output.
Update: Pingdom took my suggestion to heart and published their own summary.
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In browsing the Internet I was tempted to click a link labeled The 101 Hottest Princess Leia Slave Photos. Alas, I was horrified at the horrible scaling and otherwise atrocious user interface.
Then I asked myself if I could solve this problem. Well, not me personally, but the crowdsourcing tool called Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=slave+leia
Flickr can even find a CC-licensed sense of humor:
“You can’t un-see this.” (CC: Official Star Wars Blog)
See also: The force is strong with this one « Flickr Blog
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He is just too cute:
Party Cat Episode One
Party Cat Episode Two
Party Cat Episode Three
Party Cat Episode Four
Party Cat Episode Five
Party Cat Episode Six
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In order to make a Mac nearly half as useful as a typical Unix distribution, you have to sign up with Apple to download special “developer” stuff like a compiler. That means that years after you have given up on using a Mac, you’ll get funny spam like this one:
So, they are soliciting me for a design contest, and the “fine print” to unsubscribe is not merely the usual small, gray text, but small, gray text on a gray background. Layers of delicious failure.
The last spam I received from Apple was for a recruiting event, with no unsubscribe option whatever.
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I am presently enjoying an old thick history book. A footnote in the first chapter says:
“Biologically considered, the distinguishing mark of humanity was systematic developmental retardation, making the human child infantile in comparison to the normal protohuman. Some adult human traits are also infantile when compared to those of an ape: e.g., the overdevelopment of brain size in relation to the rest of the body, underdevelopment of teeth and brow-ridges. But developmental retardation of course meant prolonged plasticity, so that learning could be lengthened. Thereby the range of cultural as against mere biological evolution widened enormously; and humanity launched itself upon a biologically as well as historically extraordinary career.”
W H McNeill
“The Rise of the West”
I was thinking that domesticated animals are similarly developmentally retarded relations of their wild kin. Dogs mature to a wolfishly adolescent level. By remaining in a younger, more affably co-dependent state, they more easily get along with humans. From what I have seen, a lot of adult humans could be described as childish, and while the usual concern is that they are less effective for their childishness, they also subordinate themselves more readily to more ambitious leaders, and this facilitates collaboration.
Or, I guess, domesticated humans and animals fall more naturally into packs, for better and for worse.
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