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This week I started exploring turtle graphics with my son as he is very interested in drawing and crafts (he calls his room "art room"). We wrote one program together in python's turtle graphics library. It's here - face.py , and this is what it looks like :)

So this got me reading and exploring a bit more about turtle graphics, especially since the tools and language python were not really easy enough to use for my son. So I decided to create my own turtle environment (currently I'm thinking about doing this in electron so that it's available on all platforms …

Recently I've again started reading Dijkstra's book "A Discipline Of Programming". In the very first chapter "Chapter 0 on executional abstraction", he mentions a board game which when played correctly produces the GCD of two numbers. It is just an implementation of Euclid's Algorithm. I wanted to write a program to play this game.

I'd also discovered a library to produce svg animations called vivus, which I wanted to try.

So here's my implementation of the GCD game in html/javascript - GCD Board Game. Note that the numbers are provided using URL params to the html (x, and y are …

This is my first post on the new jekyll site on my github page. I'm currently learning node.js using nodeschool.io tutorials. I'm recording my progress at learnnode

Got thinking with this old article on wired: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

Fascinating!

I have recently had trouble remembering things because of my interest in so many fields. This looks promising as a strategy to learn more and more.

Excellent quote from above article:
"You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life. It is a severe …

Today I created my own library at the Google Books site. Its publicly accessible at Abhishek's Library.

I have added some of the books I recently bought to the library. Some comments/observations about the service:

1. The "Import Books" feature is excellent. It uses the ISBN number to look for books and add them to your library. But, it failed to find some of my books. These I had to add using the book search option.
2. The following two books, I could not find even after a search.

97801433335818 The Exploits of Professor Shonku
81-87-98118-0 The Best of Saki

stretching abstraction very far.... at any moment in time (say t), one could think of one's life as a cons pair of time gone by and the future.

such that:

(car life) -> past
(cdr life) -> future.

(cons past future) -> life

and now at the time t+1, one could recalculate life as
(cons (+ past 1) (- future 1))

if expected age is a constant *FULL-LIFE*, then in the beginning we are
(cons 0 *FULL-LIFE*)

and in the end
(cons *FULL-LIFE* 0)

and mid-life crisis is when
(eqlp (car life) (cdr life))

A recently compiled list of films in the psychological sci-fi genre, which I would like to watch.

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)
2. 12:01 PM (1990 film)
3. Equilibrium (film)
4. Primer (film)
5. A Scanner Darkly (film)
6. K-PAX (film)
7. It Happened Here
8. Avalon (2001 film)
9. Fantastic Planet
10. Donnie Darko

A new release of lambda-tube is now available - version 0.2 alpha. Release notes are here Release Notes for lambda-tube.

Downloads are available here lambda-tube downloads. (Download the latest files - executable installer for Windows XP and tgz for Ubuntu 8.04).

The most significant changes since the last release are:

• A new NSIS based installer for the Windows XP version. NSIS is Nullsoft Scriptable Install System - an open-source install system.
• Connections through unauthenticated http proxies are now supported.
• I18N changes. lambda-tube is now available in Hindi apart from English.

Screen-shot of lambda-tube in Hindi

Comments:

hi , i downloaded the version …

Its the beginning of the monsoon season. Yesterday (23rd May 2008) around 4 in the evening, we had heavy rains in Bangalore.

Look at some photos I took using my phone camera.

मानसून की बारिश - २३/०५/२००८

Looking forward to a great monsoon!

I have been working for the past month on an application to search and download videos from youtube. This application now has most of the featues that I had initially planned. In the spirit of “release early release often”, I have released an alpha verson of the software. You can get it at http://code.google.com/p/lambda-tube/.

A little about why I wrote this program. It is actually a coming together of a few favourable factors.

1. I have been learning Scheme through books like “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”, “The Scheme Programming Language” etc. In learning every …