Pier Luca Lanzi sent an email the other about help SigEvolution newsletter by taking an on-line survey. The survey was host at SurveyMonkey.com. I had never run into this guys before, but after digging a bit, the idea is pretty sweet. Need to run a survey? Just register to their site, create the survey, graph the link to it, and spread it around. Also, they allow you to upload surveys to their servers....
The other day I was playing to see how much I could squeeze out of a genetic algorithm written in Python. The code below shows the example I used. The first part implements a simple two loop version of a traditional allele random mutation. The second part is coded using numpy 2D arrays. The code also measures the time spent on both implementations using cProfile. from numpy import * pop_size = 2000 l = 200 z = zeros((pop_size,l)) def mutate () : for i in xrange(pop_size): for j in xrange(l) : if random....
If you are switching between mac and do not use mobile.me, but you want to carry your mail rule’s around you can play a little trick. The file that contains the mail rules is located at ~/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist You can just manually copy it from one box to another (you may want to make sure that the target machine does not run Mail), or you can create a little cron entry that uses rsync to keep them in sync....
Yesterday I just got to New Orleans for the Internet2 fall meeting. I was invited to give a talk about work we are doing on the SEASR project at NCSA. SEASR fosters collaboration through empowering scholars to share data and research in virtual work environments. The SEASR project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The last part of the week I will be at San Francisco joining the Project Bamboo workshop, again representing the SEASR project seeking a better understanding of possible synergies....
I have been looking over eReaders for a while, but I never found one that look quite right and cosy like good’old paper. Yes, Sony has his own eReader and Amazon launched Kindle, but still feel they are too small—not to mention aesthetics criteria. However, Plastic Logic is getting ready to release their take to eReaders based on their plastic electronics technology. Slim, light weight, days of battery life, and the ability to visualize all sorts of document formats (not like the Sony or Amazon ones) are some of the claims about the device....