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	<title>Impromptus</title>
	<link>http://imprompt.us</link>
	<description>Computer Science and Teaching and Other Ancillary Things</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:28:56 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<language>en</language>
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	<item>
		<title>Current Projects</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My current projects list is out of control. I have replicated it below, with project statuses. Internet Topology It got me a PhD, and now its just sitting there. I haven&#8217;t touched it since my talk @Google, but it needs to get (re)written up and submitted to an actual journal. Status: only barely able to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/current-projects/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>BSD Heapsort is busted</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And so are many other sorts, I bet. The libbsd heapsort can&#8217;t sort an array that is larger than 2 Gb. This is probably because they have a line somewhere like if (2*i+1 &#62; size) and with a 2Gb region, 2*i will overflow and return a negative number. It is a very strange experience to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/bsd-heapsort-is-busted/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>It&#8217;s 2010, and mass storage still sucks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let me tell you how mass storage should work: I stick in a new disk, power on the machine, and then the new disk is there waiting to be written to, having been identified as new and then joined into a storage cluster in which a group of non-identical disks mutually back each other up. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/its-2010-and-mass-storage-still-sucks/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Ulam spiral, take 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Mostly this is posted for its pleasantly recursive nature. In response to many people asking me how I made the Ulam Spiral, I have produced a a PDF of the spiral which includes the code to make said PDF. I really like how it turned out. One subtle touch that fellow Python programmers will appreciate [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/ulam-spiral-take-2/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Ulam Spiral Algorithm</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I looked at many things online which detail how to draw the Ulam Spiral, and all of them use various bad-sounding algorithms. I recently drew the Ulam Spiral and it went very quickly and the algorithm I used was both straightforward and basic-sounding. So I will reproduce it below so that others won&#8217;t have to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/ulam-spiral-algorithm/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Sieve of Eratosthenes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Sieve of Eratosthenes, implemented lazily in Python def integers_from(start): &#160; &#160; x = start &#160; &#160; while 1: &#160; &#160; &#160; &#160; yield x &#160; &#160; &#160; &#160; x += 1 def filter_out_multiples(stream, f): &#160; &#160; return (i for i in stream if i%f != 0) numbers = (i for i in integers_from(2)) while [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/sieve-of-eratosthenes/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Discoveries</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been reading books on the subway too and from work. It is wonderful. I&#8217;ve been alternating between books of quality, and trashy scifi. I just finished my most recent &#8220;quality&#8221; book, and highly recommend it to all my fellow science nerds and enthusiasts. In The Discoveries, Alan Lightman has collected the most groundbreaking scientific [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/the-discoveries/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Generate a random true boolean lisp statement</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just in case you want generate a random tautology, you can find python code to do so at: http://pastie.org/933675. It&#8217;s actually pretty sweet &#8211; it won&#8217;t generate all true statements, but it will generate all tautologies of a given depth. Also, it has some clever hacks that allow it to be random (instead of true) [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/generate-a-random-true-boolean-lisp-statement/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Biases in Curricula Design</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In Mindstorms (the groundbreaking book, not the Lego set) Seymour Papert writes that part of what drives the mathematical curriculum is the technology available to students. As I see it, a major factor that determined what mathematics went into school math was what could be done in the setting of school classrooms with the primitive [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/biases-in-curricula-design/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Ada Lovelace Day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On Ada Lovelace Day, one is encouraged to write about a great woman involved in computer science. That&#8217;s today, and I&#8217;ll take Barbara Liskov! She figured out what she, in her book &#8220;Program Development in Java&#8221;, modestly calls &#8220;the substitution principle&#8221;, but everyone else in the world calls &#8220;the Liskov substitution principle&#8221;. It&#8217;s an insight [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://imprompt.us/2010/ada-lovelace-day/</link>
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