obfuscated.org

If you’re going to cold call somebody pimping your candidates and rattle off a list of technologies that they are “expert level” in, please at least know what those technologies are. If you don’t know, please be honest enough to just say that you don’t. If you bullshit me on something like that — I got one today that described Lucene as a “hot new programming language” — there’s no way I’m going to trust you on other matters.

Jeff Atwood talks about card shuffling algorithms in a recent blog post.

As it turns out, the easiest way to implement a shuffle is by sorting. It’s not exactly faster, as the typical sort is O(n log n) compared to the O(n) of the Knuth Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm. We’ll just sort by a random number– in this case, a GUID.

   var cards = Enumerable.Range(0, 51);
   var shuffledcards = cards.OrderBy(a => Guid.NewGuid());

So we can ultimately implement a secure, unbiased shuffle as a one-liner in a modern programming language.

The obligatory nerd response here is to bang out the one-liner in your language of choice. Here’s one for Python:

>>> from random import random
>>> shuffled = [ b for (a,b) in sorted((random(), x) for x in cards) ]

OPTION-SPACE firefox

ENTER

APPLE-L

tv.yahoo.com

ENTER

/listings

ENTER

/mythbusters

donk

/goddamn mythbusters

donk

/i hate you

donk

/futureweapons

ENTER

Ha ha. Just kidding.

Cuban throws down in his usual style regarding the responsibilities involved in owning stock.

Its time for all shareholders to realize they have a responsibility as owners of stock. That if you dont fulfill that obligation, you are nothing more than a corporate Ho and your share of stock is nothing more than a baseball card, worth what the next Ho will pay for it.

Corporations aren’t going to quit trying to bend the rules whenever possible as long as the shareholders have their fingers in their ears screaming “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!”

A few weeks ago, Stephanie and I went to see 8-BIT at the Mr. T Bowl in Highland Park with The Cheat. Now, 8-BIT: They’re awesome. You know it’s true. They rap in space suits. That can’t be topped. I’ve done the math and it’s true. Want proof? Here it is: Crappy Video of 8-BIT #1 and Crappy Video of 8-BIT #2. Yeah!

Now, the Mr. T Bowl: Awezome. There’s really a bowling alley in there! No Lie! Plus, everybody there was 20-30 years younger than I was. Bonus! It’s the crowd that aspires to one day hang out at Spaceland, except they haven’t been hanging out at Spaceland yet so they aren’t all too cool for school.

Hick On The Hill
Originally uploaded by aqui-ali.

I use to know a guy who had a truck like this. It didn’t run very well. Whenever it would rain he would have to sacrifice livestock to make it start. This was inconvenient because we lived in a city and livestock was hard to come by.

It’s handy that the truck was, well, a truck, because schleping out to the sticks to find livestock would be a bitch in a Civic. You couldn’t even fit a goat in one of those things without it tearing up the interior. I bet some people would try to put chickens in the back of a Civic — especially if it was a hatchback. That would be a mistake. They won’t stay there. What were they thinking, putting chickens in the back of a Civic?

We were never shot at while hunting for sacrifice-ready livestock in the busted up pickup. You’d think that being out in Erie and Newton and Hayseville with city slicker tags and city slicker clothes and city slicker attitudes in a busted up truck trying to coax a llama or an ostrich out of its yard would draw more attention and perhaps ire. It did not. Country folk just don’t care about morons in a broken down truck. They’re wise that way. The country folk, that is.

Most of the time we didn’t bring back any livestock. We’d drive around rural Kansas, not stealing things, maybe stop by the Quick Trip for a cool, refreshing Squantrum of soda (or pop: Kansas does not have a cola-nomenclature preference the way Chicago or Los Angeles does). When it would rain we’d have to take my car, which was much less exciting on account of it would always start, even in the rain.

One day, after a particularly good thunderstorm, the truck refused to start. My friend wasn’t in the mood for killing animals so he got a loan at the credit union and bought a used Grand Am. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as the truck, but it had a better stereo (with a tape deck).