Monthly Archives: March 2011
Lisp and Python
| 27-Mar-2011 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under Lisp, Perl, Python, Ruby |
I’m bored, so I’m going to learn Lisp. Why am I bored? I hurt my knee at BJJ and have to take a week or two off training 
Fortunately it’s not too bad and I’ll be back getting beaten up (and beating up) soon!
I came across this fun looking book that inspired me – Land of Lisp – I started reading it in Dymocks and couldn’t put it down. But years ago I’d read Paul Graham’s blog and recently Joel Spolsky on The Perils of Java Schools. I was really surprised to learn that university Computer Science departments have stopped teaching pointers and recursion because they teach Java or .NET. I remember the joy 
in 2nd year Comp Sci of watching half the class being weeded out by Data Structures, then another half being weeded out the following semester by Functional Programming.
And here’s a post by Peter Christensen on who uses Lisp.
Oh yeh, I’m also learning Python – it seems the sanest general purpose scripting language around. Ruby is great and I love it, but it’s often not available (try telling Bank X or Phone Company Y that you’re going to install Ruby on several hundred of their production Solaris servers, see what sort of reaction you get). And Perl is unmaintainable line noise and shell scripts are tedious.
What kicked this all off? This great SlashDot post on why Expensify doesn’t hire .NET programmers 
PS I like Paul Graham’s Tweet on the book: “Turns out the border between genius and insanity is a pretty cheery place”.
Making Java Fun with Mirah
| 21-Mar-2011 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under Java, Ruby |
A SlashDot linked article on Mirah – Java with Ruby syntax (different from JRuby).
<religion>So when is someone going to do this to Perl? Or is that Perl6? Or Ruby just the “new Perl”?</religion>
BJJ – Brisbane 5 Mar 2011
| 14-Mar-2011 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under BJJ |
Results from the BJJ competition, Sat 5/Mar in Brisbane. I’ve left this too long, so a quick post.
Also: Laura’s post – 2011 Queensland State Championships results
My first grapple (no-gi) I submitted my opponent (Cara Johnson) by footlock in about 15 seconds, got declared the winner, then got disqualified a few minutes later by the head referee! (making Cara the winner) Reason being I rolled inwards on the footlock rather than outwards, thus putting unnecessary pressure on her knee (as you can see below. And my Left Foot position is a bit dodgy too). A rule that hadn’t lodged in my brain – I’ll remember it now
My second grapple (gi) was again with Cara. Neither of us dominated the grapple, but I narrowly won on points.
Thanks Cara for being a strong but friendly opponent – I’m sure we’ll meet on the mats again!
My other team mates (Arron and Les) were both “on fire”. I didn’t get to see many of their grapples as I was working on the tables, but I did manage to record this one of Les:
Also, I got a video of Cara Johnson versus Laura Ng in the Opens. For some reason (a blond moment?) I didn’t enter into the Opens – duh!
fuzzy rsync
| 03-Mar-2011 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under Rsync |
A nice option I discovered in rsync – the –fuzzy option. If a destination file is missing rsync looks for a similar file in the same directory, and copies/moves it. The current “similar” algorithm is “identical size and modified time”, or “similarly-named”. For example:
rsync foo/ example.com:video/foo/ --fuzzy --delete-delay ... sent 69712 bytes received 118992 bytes 75481.60 bytes/sec <-- small amount of data xferred total size is 4966997090 speedup is 26321.63 <-- woohoo! big speed up
Notice the –delete-delay option is fairly much required, as rsync by default does a –delete-before, thus removing the base file before it can be copied/moved.
When to use this? When you’re rsync’ing large binary files, and the only change you’ve made is to copy or rename files within the same directory. Which is often what I’m doing – at work moving around isos or install packages, and at home organising BJJ videos
Addendum
Also, the –partial and –partial-dir options are handy when working with large binary files. Tells rsync not to delete partially tranferred files if your transfer gets interrupted, for example by a network glitch. (Thanks AndyS).
BJJ – Abu Dhabi Pro Australian Qualifier 19 Feb 2011
| 03-Mar-2011 | Posted by Sonia Hamilton under BJJ |
I competed in the BJJ Abu Dhabi Pro Australian Qualifier on the 19th of February in Sydney. I won my first fight and lost my second fight. A pity, otherwise I would’ve been flying off to Abu Dhabi to compete!
The first fight. I gave in too easily to her pull to guard, and then took a while getting out. But then I passed to reverse half guard, half guard, side control, and back.
The second fight. I made the error of trying a flying armbar from standup, which went badly. I ended up stuck under a cross-face half guard. I should’ve been able to get out of this, it’s a beginner escape. But as they say, you always learn the most when you lose in competitions; since the comp I’ve been focusing on this escape…
And some photos:
Some videos of other fights:
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