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d-crane

43 karma · joined July 9, 2015

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d-crane··on 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
The Ritman library is absolutely wonderful, and open to the public without appointment; if you find yourself in Amsterdam, it's absolutely worth it to go ring their doorbell and look around. It was the highlight of my post-high-school Europe trip.
d-crane··on The Xerox Alto, Smalltalk, and Rewriting a Running GUI
Thank you for the historical info, and the video; as a big computing history buff, I really appreciate both the first-hand account and the media of the time!
d-crane··on Essential C
As an undergraduate senior in the CS program at the University of Washington, I can definitely attest to memory management giving the majority of people a really hard time in our required C course. I've only talked to one other person in my cohort that likes programming in C, and unsurprisingly they don't have any trouble with the finer points of it at all.
d-crane··on Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?
Greg Egan's Diaspora starts with the details of what it's like for a new AI to be brought into existence in a society of advanced AIs, and jumps off from there. Definitely one of the more original hard sci-fi novels I've read.
d-crane··on Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with
That's interesting! As a former occult-type guy this was news to me. I can definitely see AC ribbing Waite over this endlessly.
d-crane··on List of Telnet-accessible Systems (1997)
I heard about SDF through telehack, and very much appreciate the similar vibe, to say nothing of the historical provenance of SDF!
d-crane··on List of Telnet-accessible Systems (1997)
My favorite telnet destination, and one of the few net destinations I still visit ~5 years later, is telehack.

telnet telehack.com

I've seen it mentioned a few times on HN, but only intermittently. I know they've recently added a system to exchange files (including BASIC programs, iirc!) with other users, which is pretty cool.

d-crane··on Ask HN: Has anyone read Introduction to Algorithms?
Well, our text for the course was Levitin's Design and Analysis of Algorithms, but I really can't speak to its quality at all - we just used the professor's own prepared information pretty much exclusively. From my brief look through the book, it looked okay, at least!
d-crane··on Ask HN: Has anyone read Introduction to Algorithms?
I just finished my undergrad CS algorithms course, and my professor mentioned this book, but we didn't use it. He essentially said that it contains so much material that it's rather all-encompassing as a reference book, but he definitely discouraged it as a textbook for learning as we would in a course. It sounds like you'd likely want to find something more geared towards teaching.
d-crane··on Which games do you most want a VR version of?
Alien: Isolation (for which I believe a short, non-publicly-available VR was made) would be an amazing and colossally scary VR experience. The immersion is already incredible just playing on the TV; I can't imagine the tension of trying to hide from the xenomorph only to have that barbed tail shoot through your chest unexpectedly.
d-crane··on Ask HN: How do I pursue an academic relationship with a professor?
Thank you, that seems like great advice. A few of his better known papers are definitely over my head currently, although I'm familiar with the basic concepts at least; but luckily he has some other work that is at least somewhat accessible for where I'm at. I'll keep working through his stuff and come armed with some questions, and as you point out, I can definitely use the practice in being able to read papers well and stay abreast of things.
d-crane··on Ask HN: How do I pursue an academic relationship with a professor?
Thanks! I'm definitely guilty of falling into that trap so far. I haven't wanted to show up and feel like I don't have anything interesting to say or like I can't make any kind of good impression, but your advice to just ask what I should do to go forward in the area I'm interested in totally makes sense.
d-crane··on Ask HN: How do I pursue an academic relationship with a professor?
Thanks for the reassurance that side projects and being the top of the class aren't particularly important. I definitely get a little worried when there I've got the 20-year-old classmates that have spent the last six months building some crazy thing, or have two internships and are launching a startup or whatever, so it's a relief to hear that being interested in the field and having ideas about it is enough.
d-crane··on Ask HN: How do I pursue an academic relationship with a professor?
Thanks, this is definitely helpful. I've got three or so weeks left in the quarter, so I can certainly go by during office hours between now and then. Very much appreciated.
d-crane··on A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine
I just fell into a serious rabbit hole watching every video I could find on this. The speed and accuracy of these things is wild, thanks for sharing it.
d-crane··on Wikimedia telnet interface
Huge telehack fan here, glad to see it get mentioned -- this immediately reminded me of TH.
d-crane··on Ask HN: Would people be interested in working on tiny projects with stranger(s)?
I'd be game for pretty much anything, honestly. Mobile or desktop, whatever. As a relative beginner, it's kind of daunting to approach a non-toy programming application, so I just find myself doing classical crypto applications (for example). Doing something actual, even if small and goofy, would be really cool.
d-crane··on Ask HN: Would people be interested in working on tiny projects with stranger(s)?
I think that'd be pretty cool, as a fairly new programmer!
d-crane··on Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
Personally, I think this really cool and hope it sticks around for awhile. If I saw meshtag graffiti, I would absolutely scan it, and that's the kind of use that's exciting to me. Awesome stuff!
d-crane··on Chex Quest, the first video game included in a cereal box
I was JUST telling my wife about Chex Quest! It was really way more fun than it had any right to be.