Monthly Archives: November 2009

Viva Honduras

Posted on November 30, 2009 by MXH

Sometimes, the good guys win. Today, simply because this election was held, it looks like Honduran democrats won, and the Chavez proxies lost. Good deal.

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Natural Language Mathematics

Posted on November 29, 2009 by MXH

I recently saw this story on Slashdot about “Revolution 4.0“, which claims to make programmers more productive by providing an “easy English-like language” in which to write code. This sort of thing strikes me as profoundly wrong-headed, and I’d like … Continue reading →

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New Sections

Posted on November 27, 2009 by MXH

A quick warning about the insertSections:withRowAnimation: method of UITableView. If you insert a section with this function inside a beginUpdates/endUpdates block, you should not insert rows into that section (with insertRowsAtIndexPaths:withRowAnimation:) inside the same begin/end block. Somewhat confusingly, the first … Continue reading →

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Mezzo Cammin

Posted on November 26, 2009 by MXH

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, … Continue reading →

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P.G. vs. AAPL

Posted on November 23, 2009 by MXH

Paul Graham discusses Apple’s iPhone App Store approval process in his latest essay. I think it’s fair to summarize the core of his piece as: The App Store approval process is opaque and frustrating Its bad design is driven by … Continue reading →

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0x5f375a86

Posted on November 22, 2009 by MXH

Okay, so, yeah: XKCD. The mouseover text for that one reads: Some engineer out there has solved P=NP and it’s locked up in an electric eggbeater calibration routine. For every 0x5f375a86 we learn about, there are thousands we never see. … Continue reading →

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Probability

Posted on November 20, 2009 by MXH

Something a little lighter today: a probability puzzle. Consider this snippet of code: def roll(a,b): # Assume that a and b are both integers greater than 0 return random.randint(0,a-1) > random.randint(0,b-1) What is the probability that roll() returns True for … Continue reading →

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Pre-Existing

Posted on November 19, 2009 by MXH

In the current U.S. health-care debate, you hear the phrase “pre-existing conditions” a lot – usually in the context of someone claiming that health insurers shouldn’t be “allowed” to consider pre-existing conditions when deciding whether or not to offer (or … Continue reading →

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@synthesize

Posted on November 17, 2009 by MXH

When declaring properties that will be created with the @synthesize directive, it’s natural to use the same name for both the property and the backing member. Something like this: @interface MyClass : NSObject { NSString* value; } @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString* … Continue reading →

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Table Cell Indentation

Posted on November 16, 2009 by MXH

Just a quick iPhone note: The “Table View Cell” group of the “Table View Cell Attributes” pane in Interface Builder contains a checkbox labelled “Indent While Editing”. It seems to me that this should control whether or not the cell … Continue reading →

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