Gemini Links 16/03/2024: Grid-based Distances and Google Stealing Other Technical Projects' Names
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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Nationwide
Since the last entry I have been nationwide. I have been to see Niagara Falls on the American side. The deep south, the midwest, the northeast, the west coast, etc. A standout was hanging out with country music fans in the Finger Lake region of upstate New York. Rural is very similar all across this country. People who blanket generalize great swaths of the US are typically only really referring to urban centers.
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Woolf through the door 📚
I ordered a copy of Leonard Woolf's childhood autobiography. I was curious about how a late Victorian upbringing of privilege had led to anti-colonialist lefty-ism. It only came through my door today, so I haven't read it yet, except for the page at the front that lists Woolf's other books. Under the heading "History and Politics" it lists worthy but dull titles like "Socialism and Co-operation" and so on. Then in the same section comes:
Quack, Quack!
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Science
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Determining Time From First Principles - Update 1
In my journal post "Winter Nights New Year Oath - Determining Time From First Principles" from back at the end of October, I wrote about making 4 pledges involving figuring out what time it was from first principles rather than relying on clocks.
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Physics: Reflections of Light on Glass Sheets
I have toyed with the idea of explaining observations of everyday physics for quite some time, so let me just start. This post features two pictures of reflections of light in a modern window. I hope to point out, what can be learned from these simple observations.
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Technology and Free Software
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Grid-based Distances
Anyways, which algorithm to use will depend on the context. Roguelikes may use round field-of-view (FOV) as it "looks best", see e.g. Brogue, though Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup switched at some point to a square FOV. Concerns here revolve around minor but maybe tactically significant points like whether diagonal moves "cost more" to make; that is, whether the game is more realistic or more like chess where a Bishop move does not involve the square root of two.
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google using names of pre-existing things
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Programming
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Emacs: Completion And Function Bundles (publ. 2024-03-15)
Something has worked very well for me, due to the rapidity of calling commands through fuzzy completion, is to wrap simple tasks in Emacs functions with descriptive names. This is particularly convenient due to the availability of the shell-command and async-shell-command functions, which allow me to call any command that I would normally call in a shell.
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Python question: argv in main()?
Since I apparently refuse to use Stack Overflow, can somebody please let me know which of the following approaches is more idiomatic in Python?
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