fferen

9 ms·

61.
Mercator Puzzle(gmaps-samples.googlecode.com)
400 points by fferen 14y ago|91 comments
62.
by fferen 14y ago
I'll take this opportunity to once again plug Strang's excellent linear algebra series [1] with associated textbook [2]. Also right now I'm working through some Cornell lecture notes [3] (that read a lot like a textbook) on manifolds and di
63.
by fferen 14y ago
This is basically how I live my life. Throughout high school and freshman year college (I'm 19) I was always so concerned about things that were utterly unimportant in hindsight, like not offending people, making friends, not being a shut-i
64.
by fferen 14y ago
The MIT ones taught by Strang, my new favorite professor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK3O402wf1c
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by fferen 14y ago
Cool. I haven't gotten to the change of basis lecture video yet, or I might have tried that :)
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by fferen 14y ago
"Let V be the vector space of all polynomials of degree at most 2. a) Prove that d/dx is a linear operator on V. b) You can put a coordinate system on V by mapping p(x) to (p(0), p(1), p(2)). (Please imagine that flipped 90 degrees so it is
67.
by fferen 14y ago
I know this isn't the point of the post, but I'm learning me some linear algebra from online video lectures now and wanted to check my answer for the bonus question, part b. Is it [[-3/2 2 -1/2] [-1/2 0 1/2] [1/2 -2 3/2]]? My method was to
68.
by fferen 14y ago
I'm watching them now, and they are simply superb, probably the best math class I've ever "taken". I particularly liked his "4 ways of matrix multiplication" (lecture 3) and explanation of fourier series (lecture 24), but his exposition of
69.
by fferen 14y ago
It looks like it's selecting from only 6 predefined celebrities (none of which are Stallman), so among those, Arnold matched best.
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by fferen 14y ago
I guess it depends on the college. My ECE intro to programming class taught gdb very early, basically right after we learned the basics of C. I thought it was pretty neat but it never really seemed like a huge advantage over printing, espec
71.
by fferen 14y ago
I just keep a fixed .cpp file with a bunch of common includes and directives, and alias the g++ command to link to common libraries, so my workflow goes: > vim temp.cpp > g++ temp.cpp > ./a.out Very similar to my process with Py
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by fferen 14y ago
I eat it this way too, but everything in the article about spirals fits me well (even the C++ template metaprogramming).
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by fferen 14y ago
I know, right? Reminds me of this: http://www.thrivemovement.com/
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by fferen 14y ago
Don't worry, with the magic of symlinks anything is possible!
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by fferen 14y ago
Not as much as for killing babies! http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net/?s=killing%20babies
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by fferen 14y ago
Ah, ok, that makes more sense. I guess I assumed that they only showed the students holding the items after trying, not their actual effort. Now I'm a bit depressed.
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by fferen 14y ago
I'm not sure what the purpose of that was. Clearly, you CAN light a small bulb with a battery and wire, as done in the video and introductory physics classes everywhere. So... is it the fact that the students were unable to figure out that
78.
by fferen 14y ago
Well, yes, obviously, but it would certainly affect how we (read: aliens) approach space travel psychologically, and thus to a certain extent its feasibility - a trip across the solar system could seem like a trip across the street.
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by fferen 14y ago
Here's an idea that's been kicking around in my mind for a while: what if it's not that it takes such a tremendous amount of time to travel anywhere interesting in the universe, but that our perception of time is just too fast? Perhaps to a
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by fferen 14y ago
This is ALPHA software and will routinely bully other software to assert its dominance. Sorry, couldn't resist :)
81.
by fferen 14y ago
Perhaps my google-fu was weak back then; searching now I see posts about it on several sites. Ha, there's even a Facebook group called "Stop using the I V vi IV chord progression" ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-using-the-I-V-vi-IV-cho
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by fferen 14y ago
When I was young and learning music theory in piano lessons, one day I realized that literally half the songs on the radio used the chord progression "I V vi IV". This was a huge revelation to me! To my dismay, I couldn't find any evidence
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by fferen 14y ago
"Morale-boosters".
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by fferen 14y ago
If you can code, Project Euler is really good. Particularly the problems past #100; those tend to concentrate more on mathematical insights than programming ones. It's what kindled my interest in math in high school.
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by fferen 14y ago
I like how this kind of turns the "main idea" of computer vision on its head. Namely, instead of trying to emulate and catch up to human abilities, it augments them the way only a computer can; it plays to computers' strengths instead of th
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by fferen 14y ago
Right, if time was an issue I would have used an existing implementation, but since I largely code as a hobby I figured I may as well take the time to practice implementing stuff like this.
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by fferen 14y ago
It's funny, because I recently tackled this exact same problem in Python as well. And guess what my first step was? Writing a prefix tree implementation, in order to use the exact same approach the author took in C. It never seriously occur
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by fferen 14y ago
I know, right? I was writing this complex OO solution to a problem in Python, then I realized I could just do it with a function returning a closure.
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by fferen 14y ago
Until you run into the recursive base case, then you stop. ;)
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by fferen 14y ago
I've only played acoustic and I'm still a beginner, but I believe I've encountered this with my (cheap) guitar - after trying a friend's higher-grade guitar I was shocked at how much easier it was to play. I've found that a capo mitigates m

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