Self-analysis reveals nothing very exciting

I have been undergoing a process of intense self-analysis, and have discovered the shocking fact that I tend to post here around once a month, foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm, and claiming to be back for good, whilst gesticulating wildly. But then I don’t post for a while. Who would’ve thought it?

Content: This summer is crazy!! Going to be going to France, Italy, Spain, Egypt, Senegal!! That’s a lot of countries. Super-exciting! Also going to be working on all sorts of personal projects in the meantime. Super-exciting! I’ll keep you (my faithful audience) posted!

Exclamation point! Exclamation point? Filler!

Signature!

-Spencer

Parallel Lines in a Slow Decline

Not much to say, gonna grab a snack. Been getting deeper into computer science. I’m getting obsessed, but then again that’s the name of the game. The best are the most obsessed. Finals approaching like a brick wave.

I’m back, everyone.

I was kind of just typing this here, and leaning back in my chair, and debating whether to get involved with the whole enterprise, and the answer is yes. I am recalling a promise I made to myself back when I started this blog: lack of content was never going to stop me from publishing; lack of quality was never going to stop me from publishing. So here goes nothing, literally.

-Spencer

The Celtic Soul Brothers

So for fun, I’ve been working on some animations for algorithms recently.

I’ve succeeded in getting a couple working and online, and though they’re definitely a work-in-progress, I’m happy to present what I have so far:

They are available at: algorithm.herokuapp.com. At that page, you will see animations of Prim’s and Kruskal’s algorithms for finding minimum spanning trees.

If you instead go to algorithm.herokuapp.com/huffman.html you can see the animation I’ve made for Huffman coding. I don’t have any explanations of the algorithms at the moment, so it is quite possible that they will make no sense whatsoever, but if you go to wikipedia, it should e possible to get a sense of what is going on. Anyway, check them out, and let me know what you think.

-Spencer

Hard to Handle

Hello,

I’ve not been blogging. It irritates me. I need to blog.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the exercise of blogging is good for me, and is vital to my continued growth as a human being. Stefan Sagmeister writes “Keeping a diary supports personal development”, and I agree with him entirely.

I’ve been listening to a ton of different music recently, too much new stuff to list. I’ve been thinking about theoretical computer science a lot, and math. Math is really messed up. I feel like anyone who puts more than a moment of thought into trying to figure out just what Math is will realize that no one has any idea, and that we are nowhere near a satisfactory answer. They also will see the various intuitions that lead to the major schools of thought re: the nature of mathematics. Add in computer science, and you have quite a clusterfuck. I hesitated before using that particular word in that last sentence, and then decided for it, on the grounds of “fuck it”, the universal grounding for all decisions unsupported by reason. How sweet it is to be young and impulsive, flush with passion and such and stuff.

Blah, blah, blah, music, philosophy, computer science, books, I’m going to go take a shower, and then a nap. College is super exciting!!!

From an unseasonably and suspiciously warm Providence,

-Spencer

 

It’s been a while

Hey,

It’s been a while since my last post, and I’m a little annoyed at how infrequently I’ve been posting recently. I would like to be writing more, and this blog is about the only context in which I write write these days (excluding programming) and so I’d like to keep it up to date if only to exercise my writing muscle, which has been withering away.

That being said, the topic for right now is programming language design:

Basically, I love functional programming, and my favorite all-around language is Haskell. I recently have been working on a project that will take graphs and animate various algorithms on them. I initially wrote this in Haskell, but then I decided that I’d like to have something that is more easily accessible, that can be accessed by anyone, and so I rewrote it in Javascript, which was quite an educational experience.

Comparing the experience of writing the same program functionally and imperatively, I can see very clearly places where one functional programming gets really really awkward, and I can see places where the imperative version becomes very error-prone, in contrast to the almost inevitable correctness of the functional version. That’s all very diplomatic, and of no help to the vehement language partisans that haunt the internet, looking for incendiary blog posts upon which to unleash their vitriol and fervor.

Javascript vs. Haskell with respect to Stateful Data Structures:

Basically, you can’t directly mutate anything in Haskell. You can get around this by using a State Monad, but it’s hard and annoying, and I would much rather just be able to manipulate state directly.

So here is my idea for a programming language: By default, everything is imperative, with mutable state and all that jazz. But you can designate certain regions as purely functional, and define all sorts of functions in those regions that could then be used in the rest of the program.

The functional parts of the program would have to be secondary to the imperative ones for the simple reason that the very act of running a program requires IO and state, and is intrinsically side-effect having.

The functional parts of the program would allow you to demarcate functions that are guaranteed to be free of side effects, and which you can reason about assuming referential transparency.

Ideally then, you would do all IO and storage and retrieval of state in the imperative sections, and use the functional sections for the heavy-duty data transformations in which 95% of bugs would eventually be located.

I like the idea, but I haven’t fully thought it through at all, and so there may be some obvious flaws.

Anyway, if you have any comments, feel free to comment, as that is what the comments sections here is for.

Goodnight, and sleep tight, cruel world,

-Spencer

(Blogging officially resumed!!! Yay!!!)

I’m a street walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm; Spencer’s Albums of 2011: “Majesty Shredding” by Superchunk

I feel kind of stupid.

I just gave up on something I shouldn’t have given up on. I let myself be paralyzed by the fantasy that I was walking into a place where my very presence offended, where the brute fact of my breath caused the world to wobble.

Put in other words, I chickened out. It’s a really unpleasant sensation, to feel as though you offend with your very existence, to feel as though the best thing you could do would be to curl up and collapse inward, implode and pop out of existence. Don’t try it at home.

Majesty Shredding by Superchunk:

I have a weakness for power-pop, hooky chorus-driven songs that soar and dive, and at their best feel like a roller-coaster ride. This is one of the best power-pop albums I’ve ever heard. It’s short and sweet, at 42 minutes and 11 songs. Song after song twists and turns and dazzles, and you want to sing along from the opening chord. Mac McCaughan sings his heart out and the guitars sear, and the drums don’t once let up. The world created by this album is an electric winter wonderland, a cozy cabin surrounded by dense woods where sparks and snowflakes whirl in the chill air. It’s a thrilling album, and since I’ve found it, it’s been on constant rotation, a guaranteed pick-me-up, a lightning bolt to the heart. One of my favorite moments is the chorus of “Slow Drip”:

“… and every time I thought it couldn’t get worse, I’d start to wake up and I’d see the nurse.

She said “You checked in with a broken heart. We don’t even know where to start.

I just put something in your line, it’s starting to drip, it’s gonna take its time.

The next voice you hear, well it won’t be mine. I think you’d better wake up. I think you’d better wake up one more time”

Majesty Shredding is the ultimate wake-up call, an unmatched collection of wonderful tunes, and a testament to the power of pop done right.

-Spencer

 

A Message to You Rudy

Its’ been a while since I last posted. Life’s been good, busy but good. School’s started. Gotta narrow 7 courses down to 5 (or maybe just 4). I hate this part.

Just started up “Marquee Moon” on the album of the same title. 10min:47secs of guitar wizardry, shrill shrieks, lightning strikes.

Good stuff.

Finished Notes From the Underground, though I think I might have mentioned that in a previous post. Anyway, it’s fantastic, and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. Don’t know what to make of it. But then again, that seems to be my catchphrase in these salad days. Days of milk and honey? Days of split ends, and skywriting, clouds spazzing through the skies. Someone should give Tom Verlaine a medal .

Aztec grips, burning bridges, and fiddling through the flames. Oppenheimer looks out from under that comically oversized hat, skeletal and ominous. Fifth street is an ace, and we’re back in business, humming and skimming. Dizzying heights, blinded by the light, Mike Skinner said a long time ago.

I should get to work, so bye.

-Spencer