thebox

Playing With Scala

I was playing around with Scala, following the "First Steps to Scala" article on Artima. The article doesn't touch on advanced topics like "Higher Order Functions" and "Monads". But the article does review Scala's raison d'etre:

• to be a functional language like SQL & Spreadsheets (focuses on 'what' rather than 'how')
• to unify Object-Oriented and Functional language approaches.

It also gives you a bit of Scala's feel. So artifacts like val/var, type inference, Arrays/Lists/Sets and Traits/Mixins are discussed. Martin Odersky, Scala's creator, gives a good talk about it here. I can't wait to try this out with some real code.
 

Linus Torvalds on Git

I know all you redditors have already seen this one, but it was worth a special mention. Linus Torvalds talks here about Source Control in general, and the proper way to do it - using a distributed model. What's special here is his outline of how we should be thinking about source control applications (distributively, many developers using their own local branches, merging within a network of trust), rather than a narrow technical discussion. He talks extemporaneously, and follows a loose outline. The result is very absorbing.

The Unwritten Laws of Business

A tidy treatise on business and professional conduct. It was originally written in 1944 for engineers. The rules though can be applied everywhere. It's a good, concise read; instructive, comprehensive, and might make you wince for some of the unwritten rules you've broken.

Link

Total Chaos

I haven't had a fun crime-thriller since Layer Cake (book's way better than the movie). So I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up Total Chaos, while in the middle of another novel. Warning: semi-spoiler.

At last Marseilles was revealed. From the sea. The way Phocian must have seen it for the first time, one morning many centuries ago. With the same sense of wonder. The port of Massilia. I know it's happy lovers, a Marseilles Homer might have written about Gyptis and Protis. The traveler and the princess. In a soft voice, Lole recited:

O procession Gypsies
May the sheen of our hair guide you...

One of Leila's favourite poems.
Everyone was invited. Our friends, out lovers. Lole placed her hand on mine. It was time for the city to burst into flame. White at first, then ocher and pink.
A city after our own hearts.

Iraq Reckoning

It is so difficult to actually find historical and political analysis of Iraq before and after second the U.S. led Invasion. This is a documentary about the real events that have played out in that war shown beside the image portrayed by U.S. and British politicians and media.

The Threat of Mobile Data

I've been thinking about this issue for a while. How to make sure your data maintains its integrity and how to share it across various services securely? This post discusses the problem of data mobility across apps; tricky due to ownership issues and all the politics that entails.

Tim O'Reilly also talks about this problem: Shouldn't he be able to point his family tree web site to the data that his genome web site has, for that part of his data. This paradigm is really useful for project's like Sun's Liberty Project or the OpenID standard. A user has 1 set of authentication/authorisation data that is used by any site that wants to manage that user.

Are You Serious!!!

"Thus, it would appear that both Barack Obama and Ron Paul were the primary targets of vote-rigging operations in New Hampshire.", reports the European Press. How is it that Diebold machines are still being used to run elections when it was shown they were rigged in the previous election debacle in Florida.

The Century Of Self

Chomsky refers to this all the time. Where propaganda, had become a bad word near the beginning of the century, the term "Public Relations" began to be used. Propaganda was rooted in Freud's idea that human nature had hidden primitive sexual and animal forces.

This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in the age of mass democracy. This is a very interesting series (see parts one, two, three, four).

Kraftwerk Musicprogramme

Kraftwerk was a huge influence in dance and electronic music. Because they're still big name, I think most people forget that they were doing shows all the way back in 1970 & 71 (in Germany). Their big impact came in 1975, when they toured the US. Check out this backgrounder on these trailblazers who influenced Africa Bambataa among many others (parts one & two).

And as a bonus, I've been hiding an old Ralf & Florian (the original members) song, "Tazmusic". You judge if it's stood the test of time since 1973.

London Drum & Bass

I remember when a lot of house and techno were kicking up dust in Detroit and Chicago. And then I heard some sounds from London and the UK and they were just as devastating. I was in grade school and high school and I didn't really have an appreciation for how special those days were. This is footage of some of the early days of the jungle scene in London (see parts one, two, three).