i recently played trumpet in the pit orchestra for a production of “sweet charity”. this is the second time i’ve played this show (last time was in 2010, with west valley light opera), and it was even more fun this time through. i was looking for a video of a particular song from the original [...]

i’m wrote a quicksort algorithm for my python homework, and in the discussion forums for this question, someone posted this 80′s video from the university of toronto. the video is extremely dated, but the techniques are still in use today.

“Learn about 9 different sorting algorithms in this 1980′s film. ENJOY!”

this was one of 8 questions in my last homework assignment for the online python course i’m taking at udacity.com. i wrote my solution in 12 lines of code (you can see it running on codepad.org). in the forums for the course, there’s a student who mentioned that he used the algorithm he [...]

here are two functions i wrote that will encode and decode a base-10 integer into a base-26 alphabetical code. (an example use case would be bit.ly’s url shortening system, where a url like “bit.ly/qrzcf” gets transferred to bit.ly/7627365, which then maps to a database ID… though i think their system uses 26 lowercase and 26 [...]

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to learn Python, and found an excellent online class at udacity.com. Enrollment has swelled since the course was featured in the New York Times. The class is almost over, but if you’re interested in taking it, the next session starts mid-April.

Although the class [...]

i recently upgraded a WordPress installation, and consequently, updated my jQuery library to a new version. instead of rolling back to a previous version of jQuery, i wanted to figure out why the scripts i had written were no longer working. before you find yourself beating your head on your desk, take note that as [...]

it’s pretty easy to voice your opinion about SOPA. take the mere 5 seconds you need to get it done. ending piracy is a worthy endeavor but giving control of web censorship to the hollywood & the film industry doesn’t seem like a good idea.

one-step process to notify your congressional representative:
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if doug crockford is javascript jesus, then dave herman is an ecma apostle.

ecmascript 6 has a lot of really cool stuff! i will be using several of the new features as soon as there is a shiv to make them compatible – they look really useful. some of the new features are beyond [...]