Author Archives: Ethan

Nytimes Oracle (a Markov text generator)

From this comment on HN, I came across a well-written article on generating sentences using a very simple Markov algorithm.  The basic idea is that a body of text is divided into word-pairs, where the frequency of a given pair determines the likelihood of the generator producing the second word in that pair when presented [...]
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Security: Simultaneously Weak and Amusing

At the urgings of a friend, I recently set up a script that takes a picture (with iSight) every time the lid of his MacBook is opened. To be fair, the sense in which I actually did any work is quite marginal, as two tools — ImageSnap and Sleepwatcher — handle any aspect of the [...]
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High On Lisp

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Thunks and Haskell

I’ve been spending a bit of time this weekend playing with Haskell, and I came across an interesting problem while writing a few functions that, overtly, would seem quite simple. Notably, Haskell is a lazy language, storing promises of later evaluation in what are called thunks. Having some reasonable amount of experience in Clojure, lazy evaluation [...]
Posted in Haskell | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Allure of the Asymmetrical

Thoughts on code asymmetry, as inspired by the lowly egg. Although I’ve lived in Charlottesville for quite a while now, I haven’t really taken advantage of the numerous and various local farms. This is perhaps odd, given my health-obsessive nature, and our local prevalence of natural, grass-fed animal products. But whatever the impediment to my action [...]
Posted in C, Clojure, Computer Science | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Analyzing Word Frequencies with Clojure, Enlive and Incanter

I’ve long been interested in getting a better feel for Incanter, a statistical computing and graphical environment for Clojure. So gifted with the fleeting favors of my muse (otherwise known as free time), I thought I’d put together a small library — although it’s not quite a library, yet — for analyzing word-use patterns on blogs and webpages. To do [...]
Posted in Clojure, Computer Science, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

As it turns out is quite innocuous

What a strange title, you say! Well, this is true, but as it turns out, you are quite likely to have parsed it incorrectly (that is, unless you have just come from this post on Hacker News). In any case, there was a recent small flurry of activity regarding Paul Graham’s use of the rhetorical device [...]
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Gajure Now on Clojars

Gajure, my small genetic algorithm framework, is now up on Clojars. Hopefully, this should make it much more convenient to use in a real project. I also added Leiningen support, and if you use Clojure with any frequency, I’d recommend checking that out.
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Police Pursue and Capture a Barefoot Runner

I went running today. In and of itself, this is far from unusual, and indeed, I go running most days. Something else happened, however, a deep and dark and disturbing something. Today on my run I was detained by the police, forced to enter an officer’s vehicle, and “escorted” back to my  apartment. I was [...]
Posted in Barefoot Running, Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

On Initiative

This past week, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about success. Now, perhaps this is a somewhat pedantic exercise, but it seems that if I would like to be successful (and I assure you, this is a valid premise), then I ought to better understand the term — what it means, what it implies, and [...]
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