I like Vim. Especially learning new tricks with it. Do you?
If yes, check out VimConf, it's an online conference where people show all sorts of tips about using Vim, extending it with scripting, etc.
Aug 30, 2011
Aug 25, 2011
Reincarnated Blog
It's been a long time since I posted. About four months to be exact. I have a series of excuses, but they are mostly irrelevant so I won't really go into them here.
Instead I'll announce I'm starting a new blog. In an attempt to become less reliant on Google for services I've decided to move the blog onto a server where I have control over things: robbritton.com. The blog is not likely to have the same content as this one, there will be a lot less Linux/programming/statistics posts and more on just random stuff that I like. If you feel like hearing about those sorts of things feel free to start following that one (which I hope to start updating on a semi-regular basis).
Instead I'll announce I'm starting a new blog. In an attempt to become less reliant on Google for services I've decided to move the blog onto a server where I have control over things: robbritton.com. The blog is not likely to have the same content as this one, there will be a lot less Linux/programming/statistics posts and more on just random stuff that I like. If you feel like hearing about those sorts of things feel free to start following that one (which I hope to start updating on a semi-regular basis).
Project Euler
I've already managed to fail at my 250 words per day project, since I haven't posted in a while. That's alright I suppose, maybe it will take a bit of time to get into it. Anyway, here's another brief post about something I discovered the other day: a site called Project Euler. This site has a whole bunch of mathematical problems that you can solve via programming.
The fun part about this site is that many of the problems are fairly easily solvable using a recursive solution. I find that in everyday coding, you don't really do much development using recursive functions. This is disappointing because it really is quite an elegant way to solve problems! For example, problem 28 might not seem like a recursive problem, but in fact can be solved trivially using a recursive solution! I enjoy "games" where I begin to think in this way, maybe it helps stroke my nerd ego a little. On top of that, the focus is also on efficiency; it is possible for a computer to solve any of the problems within one minute (the one-minute rule) provided you're using an efficient algorithm.
Most of the problems, if not all, are based on work done by Euler. This includes problems involving prime numbers, combinatorics, factorials and other tasty bits of number theory. These are very useful bits of math to learn, and the harder questions on the site force you to do a bit of research in order to find a proper solution.
The fun part about this site is that many of the problems are fairly easily solvable using a recursive solution. I find that in everyday coding, you don't really do much development using recursive functions. This is disappointing because it really is quite an elegant way to solve problems! For example, problem 28 might not seem like a recursive problem, but in fact can be solved trivially using a recursive solution! I enjoy "games" where I begin to think in this way, maybe it helps stroke my nerd ego a little. On top of that, the focus is also on efficiency; it is possible for a computer to solve any of the problems within one minute (the one-minute rule) provided you're using an efficient algorithm.
Most of the problems, if not all, are based on work done by Euler. This includes problems involving prime numbers, combinatorics, factorials and other tasty bits of number theory. These are very useful bits of math to learn, and the harder questions on the site force you to do a bit of research in order to find a proper solution.
Aug 17, 2011
250 Words
I've decided to start up my own little project based on the idea at the site 750words, which is a game where you're supposed to write 750+ words per day to engage the brain juices. I remember when I first started going hardcore on my old blog this was my goal: to just write about random things and see what happens. It worked pretty well, I ended up getting a few articles posted on reddit and other silly places like that and basically learning how retarded some of my ideas were (or how retarded some other people on the Internet are).
From what my teachers and professors have told me I've always been very concise with my writing, so I think I'll shorten it from 750 words to 250 words. That way if I don't have a lot to say on a topic I have a lower bar to shoot for, but also to keep things bite-sized since reading long blocks of text that aren't incredibly well written and aren't really about anything is not always the most fun thing to do.
For the topics I'll probably just be writing random posts about stuff that I've been thinking about, things that interest me, or maybe random happenings in life that are not too personal to tell the world about. I want to try and avoid rants since those tend to be annoying to read and there are enough rants on the web already (including on my old blog) that more of them would just pollute the Internet and not be terribly constructive. I'd also like to reserve my old blog for HOWTOs since I'm tired of writing about how to make the world a better place or how to help random folks because that is what discouraged me from writing before: the worry that what I'm saying isn't good enough for the world means I avoid just writing for the sake of writing, which is the main reason why I started my blog in the first place! So I'll stick to talking about things that I like to talk about, and anybody who cares to listen can do so.
From what my teachers and professors have told me I've always been very concise with my writing, so I think I'll shorten it from 750 words to 250 words. That way if I don't have a lot to say on a topic I have a lower bar to shoot for, but also to keep things bite-sized since reading long blocks of text that aren't incredibly well written and aren't really about anything is not always the most fun thing to do.
For the topics I'll probably just be writing random posts about stuff that I've been thinking about, things that interest me, or maybe random happenings in life that are not too personal to tell the world about. I want to try and avoid rants since those tend to be annoying to read and there are enough rants on the web already (including on my old blog) that more of them would just pollute the Internet and not be terribly constructive. I'd also like to reserve my old blog for HOWTOs since I'm tired of writing about how to make the world a better place or how to help random folks because that is what discouraged me from writing before: the worry that what I'm saying isn't good enough for the world means I avoid just writing for the sake of writing, which is the main reason why I started my blog in the first place! So I'll stick to talking about things that I like to talk about, and anybody who cares to listen can do so.
Aug 5, 2011
New Blog
I've started up a new blog here to replace my old one. The old one was initially about Linux and my joys/woes with it (hence the name of the blog) but slowly over time posts about programming, statistics, economics, etc. took over and the content of the blog changed.
Unfortunately I ended up talking about things that I thought other people were interested in, and not so much about things that I was interested in. Eventually I just lost inspiration and stopped writing. This is a problem because I like to write and share stuff that I'm interested in, so this new blog is an attempt to start doing that again.
I suppose I could have just continued writing on the old blog, but I don't really want to because the old blog has a Linux brand to it that I want to get away from and also I'm slowly losing trust in Google so I'd rather host the blog on my own server. Plus the fact that this blog has my own name as the domain lends some credibility to it!
Anyway if you've liked some of the things I posted about in my old blog (fractals, some of the stats stuff) then feel free to stick around! Otherwise I hate to disappoint, but I probably won't be writing too much on Linux or how-to-be-a-better-programmer or things like that.
Unfortunately I ended up talking about things that I thought other people were interested in, and not so much about things that I was interested in. Eventually I just lost inspiration and stopped writing. This is a problem because I like to write and share stuff that I'm interested in, so this new blog is an attempt to start doing that again.
I suppose I could have just continued writing on the old blog, but I don't really want to because the old blog has a Linux brand to it that I want to get away from and also I'm slowly losing trust in Google so I'd rather host the blog on my own server. Plus the fact that this blog has my own name as the domain lends some credibility to it!
Anyway if you've liked some of the things I posted about in my old blog (fractals, some of the stats stuff) then feel free to stick around! Otherwise I hate to disappoint, but I probably won't be writing too much on Linux or how-to-be-a-better-programmer or things like that.
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