Sunday - July 24, 2005
Weekly Log 13
Life
Had a blast the last few days with the MITE kids; I really enjoy teaching kids how to build web pages. The CSS session did not go as well as I hoped, but it was not a disaster either. I threw up a quick page in a couple of hours to help, but I think they paid more attention to me—who had not really rehearsed through the lesson plan. Ah well; there's only so much you can do in an hour anyway.
I gave some of them some contact info. I hope they take advantage of it. You know the kids are awesome when they have fun debating how to solve a tricky math problem at a dinner party.
Attended the Bite of Seattle on Saturday; it comes highly recommended as a free event to go to. Many different kinds of food all in one place, with a price cap of $5; and let's not forget the free samples. Try to go at a less crowded time than 6pm, though.
Sunday: Minh-An's surprise birthday party at Carkeek Park. She probably doesn't know of this blog, but… happy birthday, Minh-An! There was an interesting scene where five guys were attempting to hide behind a single tree.
Thoughts
I love orange juice. That is all.
Links
Context Free. A program using context free design grammars to generate beautiful pictures. I haven't tried this out yet, but it appeals to me both aesthetically and to my inner computer geek.
Keith Devens → pents90: Java Port of C++ Algorithm Performs Better with No Optimization. JIT compilers are like black magic to me. It seems a bit insane that they can make bytecode run faster than machine code through dynamic optimization. In this case, the -server flag made the algorithm implemented in Java run 20% faster than the C++ version.
Boing Boing → The Forgotten Technology. A single man moves and stands some gigantic pillars of stone without special tools or even a pulley. He suspects that this is one of the techniques used to build stone henge and is going to build himself his own.
Context Free is beautiful; I haven't delved into figuring out how the grammars work, though, and I haven't stumbled across any incredibly helpful tutorials. The examples are plentiful, and the people on the forums seem to have things figured out (highly impressive, too, I advise everybody check some out), but it looks like it's a steep learning curve. (Though, some incredibly cool character managed to add color!) I hope someday to figure out this grammar and redesign my blog around a ruleset of my own.