everything is an experiment
This post will not mean very much to anyone other than myself.
Albert Kwok-Wai Yeung 「楊國偉」 and Agnes Yuk-Lan Yu 「余玉蘭」 are child abusers. I just wanted to post this fact on the Internet so that it can be recorded for posterity… » [Expand post] [Permalink]
The previous post advertising the Perimeter Institute’s Master’s program reminded me of this book, which continues my series “a life in books”.
The Physics of Star Trek
Reposted from my Facebook:
This is a poster for a Christmas Party hosted by Campus for Christ which is found all over UW campus. The problem with it is that the Arabic writing at the top is wrong. As anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Arabic script knows, the letters should be joined, and they change their shape according to position. Clearly, someone had typed the word “Christmas” into a translation program on a computer not equipped to handle Arabic glyph-shaping, and put it on the poster without actually bothering to check it with anyone who can actually read Arabic.
Lesson: If you’re going to plaster something all over campus in a foreign language, do yourself the favour of getting someone who actually knows the language to translate it for you so you don’t massively embarrass yourself. I’m sure there’s at least one Christian who knows Arabic on UW campus. Seriously.
In today’s world, it’s very important for computer software to be able to support multiple languages. You can’t assume that, just because your software is sold in a predominantly English-language market, your users won’t try to use it with other languages.
In a previous post, I noted the current lack of support for glyph-shaping and other aspects of complex text layout on the Android phone. I hope that this changes in the near future (and, if I have any say about it, it will).
– davinci 11859
I was asked to pass this information along to anyone who might be interested:
Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), in partnership with the University of Waterloo, welcomes applications to the Masters level course, Perimeter Scholars International (PSI). Exceptional students with an undergraduate honours degree in Physics, Math, Engineering or Computer Science are encouraged to apply. Students require a minimum of 3 upper level undergraduate or graduate courses in physics. PSI recruits a diverse group of students and especially encourages applications from qualified women candidates. The due date for applications to PSI is February 1st, 2010. Complete details are available at www.perimeterscholars.org.
There’s also a downloadable poster with more information at this link.
– davinci 11855
I don’t quite remember where I saw this problem, but I’m sure it’s appeared in a number of places. Given two strings \(s\) and \(t\), determine whether a string \(u\) is formed by interweaving \(s\) and \(t\). That is, determine whether \(u\) can be formed by taking the first few characters of (say) \(s\), followed by the first few characters of \(t\), then the next few characters of \(s\), and so on. For example, the string “abccdcxey” can be formed by interweaving “abcde” with “ccxy”… » [Expand post] [Permalink]
I’ve been practising coding on the whiteboard for job interviews. This is very different than coding in front of a computer which has a keyboard, a monitor, and a nice editing program that allows you to correct your mistakes and type repetitive text very quickly. I’m trying to keep my programs simple and short, and writing in a C-like pseudocode.
This exercise comes from Skiena’s The Algorithm Design Manual
I recently got a new smart phone — an Android-powered HTC Dream. As I wrote in a previous post, one of the first applications that I always look for is a multilingual dictionary, or at the very least a way to enter input in languages other than English… » [Expand post] [Permalink]
I’ve collected a number of web sites with lists of programming exercises, which I’m going through for practice.
In no particular order, these are… » [Expand post] [Permalink]
I happened upon this passage in a book called The Chinese Language: Its History and Current Usage
In some words, only one part of the original has survived: the ní in 尼姑 nígū “Buddhist nun” is the last syllable of the Sanskrit bhikkini (sic)…
… » [Expand post] [Permalink]
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It’s been a while since I’ve made a post in the series “a life in books”.
This textbook
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