05.31.06
Fortune Of The Day
Some IRC chat is just priceless:
absinthe: marking python-2.3.4 stable unless anyone has any last-minute bugs they’d like to tell me about.
darkproximity: it f*cked my girlfriend
darkproximity: :(
absinthe: that’s a feature
Kinsey
Plot Outline:
A look at the life of Alfred Kinsey (Neeson), a pioneer in the area of human sexuality research, whose 1948 publication “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” was one of the first recorded works that saw science address sexual behavior.
Personal Comments:
This is a movie which I rented months ago and had the review here to complete in my post to-write stack. This is not an ‘afternoon movie’. It’s is an heavy, sexual content, violent movie, even somewhat disturbing I might had. Still, the movie is excellent in its content. I hadn’t heard about Kinsey before the movie… seeing the most taught me some very nice things about him and his life and afterwards, I went a bit further and studied some of his work in sexuality. The nice things is that you can still find his book in amazon. See ‘his’ movie, study his books!
Monster-in-Law
Plot Outline:
The love life of Charlotte is reduced to an endless string of disastrous blind dates, until she meets the perfect man, Kevin. Unfortunately, his merciless mother will do anything to destroy their relationship.
Personal Comments:
This is a very soft but comic movie, I found delightful to see it last sunday afternoon. It was a well-spent renting money. I’d a ‘regular’ type of comedy, still, there’s something original, instead of being the usual guy fighting her mother-in-law is the non-usual girl fighting her diabolic mother-in-law. And when I say diabolic, I mean it!
The Da Vinci Code
Plot Outline: A murder inside the Louvre and clues in Da Vinci paintings lead to the discovery of a religious mystery protected by a secret society for two thousand years — which could shake the foundations of Christianity.
Personal Comments:
I’ve went to the cinema on the May 19th. I was really curious about it. I’ve read the book like most people and I had great expectations. My motivation diminished as the film neared release due to some rumors that it was terrible. I must say that my expectations have been largely fulfilled. The movie is great, and the end is excellent. As a book adaptation it went fine although some details are easier to grasp from the book and also in the movie every puzzle seems to be easily solved while in the book there were some puzzles which took chapters to solve. Still the adaptation was great and I thought that the end is better in the movie. It’s a great movie for those who read and for those who didn’t read the book… Check it out! It’s not bad as other say it!
Some Languages Benchmark
by Brent Fulgham at:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sandbox/benchmark.php
05.30.06
ANN: A Matemática das Coisas
A Matemática das Coisas é o tema de mais um colóquio no Pav. do Conhecimento:
Será verdade que o amor é cego? Para a matemática, a resposta é um redondo “Não!”. Genes, cheiros, classe social e cor da pele são factores fundamentais para a escolha do parceiro em todo o reino animal, mesmo entre os seres humanos. A forma como é feita essa escolha é o tema do próximo colóquio do ciclo “A Matemática das Coisas”, que terá lugar no sábado, dia 3 de Junho, às 15h, no auditório do Pavilhão do Conhecimento – Ciência Viva.
O matemático Fabio Chalub (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) e a socióloga Cristina Palma Conceição (Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa) falarão sobre as contribuições da Teoria de Jogos para construir um modelo sobre o comportamento animal na escolha do parceiro sexual. Discutirão a relação entre o comportamento de um lagarto e o jogo infantil “Pedra-Tesoura-Papel” e mostrarão como os conflitos entre o macho e a fêmea se transferem para o nível genético. Com base nas estatísticas de casamento em Portugal, abordarão a prevalência de uniões entre indivíduos com afinidades de classe social e mostrarão que a matemática também pode prever o comportamento humano.
A entrada para o colóquio é gratuita e oferece a oportunidade de visitar também as exposições do Pavilhão do Conhecimento – Ciência Viva. Poderá haver tradução simultânea em Língua Gestual Portuguesa, após marcação.
Ainda a propósito do tema deste colóquio, o Pavilhão do Conhecimento – Ciência Viva convida os visitantes a participarem em várias actividades que relacionam a biologia com a matemática. Jogos sobre hereditariedade, avaliar se o próprio rosto seria mais bonito se tivesse uma simetria perfeita e conhecer o Jogo da Vida inventado pelo matemático J. Horton Conway, são algumas das propostas. Estes ateliers têm lugar entre os dias 27 de Maio e 10 de Junho, durante o horário de abertura do Pavilhão.
05.28.06
Maya… Perigosa…
Hoje de manhã acordei ainda não eram 9 para ir, como é de meu costume, escalar. Sentei-me à mesa para o pequeno-almoço e verifiquei que em cima da mesa a revista que saiu ontem com o correio da manhã…
Abri, apressadamente e sem grandes preocupações a revista. Saiu-me a página 54 onde aparecia uma monumental fotografia do Pinto da Costa que não me atraiu muito a atenção. Atraiu-me mais a atenção uma questão no fundo da página que já fazia parte do consultório astral da Maya.
Ora, dizia então, e passo a citar:
Tenho 17 anos, sou estudante, boa aluna e o meu sonho é ser médica, mas conheci um colega de escola por quem me apaixonei. Acabei de saber que estou grávida e não sei o que fazer. Será que devo ter este filho? (…) Gostava de continuar os meus estudos e ter o bebé mas não sei se conseguirei sozinha. O meu namorado deixou-me e não sei o que fazer?
Ao que a Maya responde:
Cara leitora, ter um filho é a melhor coisa do mundo e nem que seja sozinha deve ter essa criança. Pelo que vejo nas Cartas vai ter todo o apoio dos seus pais e restante família e a criança vai crescer feliz e acarinhada por todos. (…)
Epá… os meus sensíveis não continuem a ler porque esta resposta passou-me da cabeça. Só posso considerar esta Maya uma grande Besta! Como é que é possível que dê um conselho destes a uma rapariga de 17 anos que está a estudar e tem oportunidade de ser alguém. Sabemos muito bem que é muito improvável que ela consiga fazer tudo junto. Só uma atrasada mental como esta é que pode dizer que ela deve ter o filho e depois justifica a sua demência num baralho de cartas que ela interpreta como bem entender. Tenho a certeza que se fosse ela própria ou a filha dela as cartas muito provavelmente já teriam uma opinião diferente.
É pena é que se permita este tipo de conselhos numa revista. É que mesmo querendo dar a sua opinião devia era aconselhá-la a marcar uma consulta de planeamento familiar e a falar com os pais mas não, em vez disse só diz disparates. Só me faltava esta…
05.19.06
ANN: PLT-Scheme 301.15
And another major breakthrough, 301.15, thanks to the PLT Team!
MzScheme and MrEd are now version 301.15 in the SVN repository trunk.
This version is the next-to-last step in the overhaul that I described
for the 301.13 release:
http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/plt-scheme/2006-April/012654.htmlChanges:
* Documentation has moved from plt/collects/doc to plt/doc.
By tomorrow or so, when you update your documentation, the copies in
plt/collects/doc will be deleted, and the new copies will be
installed in plt/doc, instead. Also, if the current user cannot
write to the main “doc” directory, docs are installed instead to a
user-specific “doc” directory.The old plt/notes directory is now plt/doc/release-notes.
* Under Unix, if you run `configure’ with a –prefix argument, then
the resulting install tree has a different shape than the in-place
tree:collects -> ${prefix}/lib/plt/collects/…
[shared] libs -> ${prefix}/lib/…
.h files -> ${prefix}/include/plt/…
docs -> ${prefix}/share/plt/doc/…
extra C objects -> ${prefix}/lib/plt/…You can get the old shape by using –enable-origtree.
If you run `configure’ with no –prefix argument, then (as before),
installation produces an in-place build.In addition to –prefix, standard `configure’ arguments like
–bindir provide fine-grained control over the installed tree.Installation generates a “config.ss” module in the “config”
collection, and this information is used by the “dirs.ss” library in
“setup” to communicate the installation tree to all PLT tools and
libraries.* Moved plt/teachpack to a “teachpack” collection.
As always, let us know if you encounter any problems. It may take us a
couple of days to get the nightly bundles working properly.The next and final step is to support truly “stand-alone” executables.
Currently, when you create an executable in DrScheme for Windows or Mac
OS X (or certain Unix configurations), the resulting binary is
hard-wired to your installation (e.g., to find the MzScheme DLLs). So,
the last step in our overhaul is to provide tools for assembling all
needed DLLs, etc., together in a package that can be run on any machine
(with the same OS).Matthew
05.10.06
Site, PLT-Scheme and WebIt!
Just to announce my new website (static content) at the usual URL but this time 100% generated with scheme code using Webit! and PLT Scheme. I designed a structure that will help me to generate as many sites as I possibly want. The page online is still missing a lot of personal info and there are still some dead links but the structure is there. Thanks to Noel for the SchemeUK site which provided some ground to learn Webit! basics and for the design which is the main design for my
site with minor modifications. Although not yet announced on the site (it will be), you can get the code directly used to generate the site with darcs:
darcs get http://sat.inesc-id.pt/~pocm/software/mySites
In fact, you’ll get all sites I’m developing, currently 2. There are not many comments since the code in this case is simple and almost self-explanatory. Still, if you wish some comments on it just ask me.
05.09.06
ANN: PLT-Scheme 301.14
PLT-Scheme 301.14 was just released. Due to lack of time PLT-Scheme 301.13 was not announced here so I’ll append both changes in what follows:
Changes:
* When building from source, `make install’ always runs Setup PLT. It
used to not run Setup PLT for in-place SVN-based builds; as far as I
can tell, the reason for that exception went away long ago.* Added a `current-thread-initial-stack-size’ tuning parameter.
From 301.13:
This version continues a series of changes that will result in simpler
installers on Mac OS X and Windows, more flexibility in re-packaging
PLT Scheme for Unix variants, and better support for creating your own
stand-alone executables.One effect of the changes is that the concept of “PLTHOME” is going
away. Instead of a root directory that contains all other parts of a
PLT installation, there will be functions to find the main “collects”
directory, the “lib” directory, etc., and the locations of those
directories will be configurable. Those functions are not ready, yet.Starting with 301.13, however, MzScheme and MrEd no longer recognize
the PLTHOME environment variable. The (relative) path to the main
“collects” directory is embedded in each executable. Eventually, paths
to other directories (such as “lib”) will be embedded in a “config”
collection.Meanwhile, for Unix and Mac OS X, a launcher script refers to an
executable through a path that’s relative to the script itself.
Combined with the recent changes for Mac OS X to support frameworks
relative to the executable, this means that the Mac OS X distribution
can be drag-and-drop, instead of an installer.Finally, when creating a stand-alone executable, the path to “collects”
within the executable can be set (e.g., with mzc’s new `–collects’
flag). This makes it easier to distribute extra files that are needed
by the executable. Soon, we’ll add tools for putting a copy of shared
libraries with a set of generated executables, so that the resulting
package is truly “stand-alone”.
Soon, hopefully today I’ll release my new website completely programmed in Scheme. Hurray Lambda!
