Yes, that's right. it eats the grass and grass now is 1...
@amyhoy Yes, that's right. it eats the grass and grass now is 1 tall instead of 2 tall. Next sheep eats and now it's just dirt. Unless there are seeds! Or you state that grass grows back, etc etc.
What's nice is you make a buncha agents and the methods are...
@amyhoy What's nice is you make a buncha agents and the methods are already there to tell you "what patches are around me? what variables do they have set? is there $GRASS for me to eat?" and to plot charts and suchlike based on what happens
that's apparently part of it—in practice you have
- arrays...
@amyhoy that's apparently part of it—in practice you have - arrays of agents each of which has variables (wolves/sheep) - arrays of "patches" that change state as agents act on them and can make new agents (grassy hills) #agents" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/programming.html#agents
In my quest to understand agent-based modeling I wrote a...
In my quest to understand agent-based modeling I wrote a simulator of my son putting on his shoes. He's the turtle. The green box is shoes. Whenever I “ask” he runs in random directions. In the run below I ask him 84 times before he finds his shoes (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR). twitter.com/...
photoshop actions are programming. yeah like i mean this is...
@juliettecezzar photoshop actions are programming. yeah like i mean this is part of the energy D&D channels from kids too. they teach it to them at after-school!
OH I will say doing random stories is really fun for kids...
@juliettecezzar OH I will say doing random stories is really fun for kids where you basically set up a template and pick elements from arrays mad libs style and have the computer read those out.
Ten minute bursts where the thing you are making together...
@juliettecezzar Ten minute bursts where the thing you are making together is incrementally changed. You driving then him. The only goal being that eventually he goes "what would happen if I changed THAT."
If you really want some programming to happen, go Sonic Pi...
@juliettecezzar If you really want some programming to happen, go Sonic Pi for music. But really just whatever media he likes to make, back that into programming. Twine is great for making clicker games. Abe and Ivy like when I have the computer say out loud “100 butts, 99 butts, etc.”
Programming is overrated also programming is everywhere. I...
@juliettecezzar Programming is overrated also programming is everywhere. I would suggest like, doing math in spreadsheets (make times tables up to 100x100?), photoshop actions w/mom (add his name in red to every image), Google maps quests, OPEN SOURCE DRUM MACHINES.
This is a great piece by @alanalevinson about personally...
This is a great piece by @alanalevinson about personally and professionally unpacking the global stream of harassment allegations from within the context of “ a men’s magazine funded by Dollar Shave Club.” No hard conclusions, just infinite awkwardness. melmagazine.com/...
About ten years ago an editor friend once told me, as I...
@john_overholt About ten years ago an editor friend once told me, as I descended into NYT outrage, "Listen, the Times contains multitudes and we all have to accept that." (Of course he's now an editor on the Magazine, so.)
In other news NetLogo is part of the secret firmament of...
In other news NetLogo is part of the secret firmament of interesting things persisting online and it's been around and freely available for 19 years or so.
The holidays is when I get a few drinks into me and start...
The holidays is when I get a few drinks into me and start to look at social dynamics simulations in NetLogo 6.0.2 ccl.northwestern.edu/... that “ethnocentric” behavior can evolve under a wide variety of conditions, even when there are no native “ethnocentrics” twitter.com/...
My son is talking about a part of the body called the...
My son is talking about a part of the body called the “hooraynus,” and after a lot of gingerly-worded questions it turns out he thinks it's the midsection of a reindeer.
Turing Omnibus is great. I've read like 1/3 of it and dip...
@HoeflerCo Turing Omnibus is great. I've read like 1/3 of it and dip in and out. It's just little chapters. One exercise shows a little graph theory by showing hands pulling on pieces of string.
Yes! This is the actual core of compsci. You're actually...
@HoeflerCo Yes! This is the actual core of compsci. You're actually asking about algorithms, which are expressly about creating and manipulating structured data. People will trip over themselves to recommend mitpress.mit.edu/... but I would suggest ALGORITHMICS and THE TURING OMNIBUS.
I think if you're self-taught you tend to get very...
@harrisj I think if you're self-taught you tend to get very language-centric instead of data-centric whereas in truth languages are just more shitty software, and data is the actual real thing we are supposedly doing.
I often wish I had a CS degree so that I could have learned...
I often wish I had a CS degree so that I could have learned to think "I need to represent this messy data as a b-tree if at all possible" instead of "is perl or python better" for ten autodidactic years. twitter.com/...
wanna watch bright so bad it looks so bad i want to throw...
wanna watch bright so bad it looks so bad i want to throw off the algorithm and make netflix believe they should make more shitty movies and bring down the system from the inside
Her understanding of constraints is such a huge part of...
Her understanding of constraints is such a huge part of what made the Mac so attractive and interesting; the PARC interfaces just didn't have that same energy.
Her talk could easily have been, “I worked with some of the...
Her talk could easily have been, “I worked with some of the most difficult people on earth to change it.” But instead it was, “You can have enormous impact working for decades within well-defined rectangles.”
I woke up thinking about this. It's a very low key talk by...
I woke up thinking about this. It's a very low key talk by a brilliant person whose work has been seen and internalized by billions of people. You also see that her range is very broad, but she comes back to a few forms. The pattern seems to be "find your grid, get to work."
NetFlix just wants to show me lots of serial killers in...
NetFlix just wants to show me lots of serial killers in small towns right now so I watched Susan Kare talk about designing nice minimalist icons instead and was happier. vimeo.com/...
I'm not beating up on people rediscovering/reinventing....
I'm not beating up on people rediscovering/reinventing. After decades it was a fair assumption that Sketchpad just didn't fit into mainstream human thought. Now dynamic interconnected objects are critical to the design and flow of app prototypes. Which is wild!
unfortunately @joshuatopolsky and I have a completely...
@leahfinnegan@adampash unfortunately @joshuatopolsky and I have a completely legal, above-board, 100% lawyer-approved no-poaching agreement that has never been committed to email and that you should basically ignore
i'm fully corporate now, our first hire was HR, harassment...
@leahfinnegan i'm fully corporate now, our first hire was HR, harassment of any kind is a terrible risk to the careers people entrust us with and also a great risk to our business and brand
On holidays, winners don't sit home opening gifts with...
On holidays, winners don't sit home opening gifts with their families. They go down to the corner store, and put in the line time to buy lottery tickets. If you buy enough lottery tickets you can win 3.8% more of the time. That's the science of winning. That's LINE TIME.
That one direction what a feeling song is so good and then...
That one direction what a feeling song is so good and then I think about the dogs driving in the snow on Vine and really feel gods special purpose for each of us in this world.
I fell back to Vanilla JS for playing around with super...
@dphiffer@woolypixel@dontsave I fell back to Vanilla JS for playing around with super simple projects after looking at the paperclips game. It's totally fine.
It’s very important even when things are stressful to look...
It’s very important even when things are stressful to look around yourself and remember that you are just one person on a tiny planet in a giant cosmos that will one day be entirely made up of paperclips.
There’s this tiny movie theater in my neighborhood and...
There’s this tiny movie theater in my neighborhood and every time I look it up to see what’s playing, Google pops up this “Q&A,” and it makes me happy. twitter.com/...
i think for about 30-40 years there was a weak correlation...
i think for about 30-40 years there was a weak correlation between digital product development progress and general human intellectual progress probably due to the cost of the equipment requiring a certain educational level in users
tabbing works okay. I wish there was a keyboard command to...
tabbing works okay. I wish there was a keyboard command to insert a new thread tweet. also don't take away my TWEET button just because a thread tweet is empty. don't make me click the trash icon. just post the thread without the empty tweet.
i wonder if they'll eventually just let you smush the...
i wonder if they'll eventually just let you smush the tweets together, um, call them throgs, or twog twosts. that would be a great outcome, although it would be hard for the people who are all “Twitter is not a place for rational discourse.”
I think about this all the time. I walk by their...
@katzish@harrisj I think about this all the time. I walk by their mini-studio in the flatiron building every workday and they have plastic Swiss cheese 🧀 there and I start to feel reality slipping.
The whole Internet is here to support Gavage Duck, a sad...
The whole Internet is here to support Gavage Duck, a sad little duck that is force-fed milkshakes. *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck's mother is racist.
I forgot about Dexter, which is really cool: @ankane/introducing-dexter-the-automatic-indexer-for-postgres-5f8fa8b28f27" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://medium.com/@ankane/introducing-dexter-the-automatic-indexer-for-postgres-5f8fa8b28f27
This is one of those tech things where it basically makes...
This is one of those tech things where it basically makes sense that it would work this way, and, if it works, it will be like that snakehead fish that kills all the other fish in the pond. twitter.com/...
If I zone out it's almost always because someone is selling...
@patrickdoupe@tressiemcphd If I zone out it's almost always because someone is selling me a pile of abstractions/beliefs. They've lost connection to actual production and believe that ever-higher abstractions are the answer. I listen/live for clear reproducible explanations of process.
Boredom is my most powerful warning system when hiring....
@tressiemcphd Boredom is my most powerful warning system when hiring. It’s never about subject matter. I am into some incredibly dry shit and LOVE when dry people love dry subjects. I’ve concluded that being boring is really just halfway to lying.
I see it more like, Mt. Gox taught us all a very valuable...
@jackrusher I see it more like, Mt. Gox taught us all a very valuable lesson about digital currencies. And the inherent value of that lesson increases almost every day.
280 characters means that we can now have TWEET...
280 characters means that we can now have TWEET TEMPLATES!!!!!!!!! [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example. ]]] Anyway,
I would love it. In the age of NetFlix and Steam, why not?...
@harrisj I would love it. In the age of NetFlix and Steam, why not? Put it on archive.org, and then there’ll be a torrent. Maybe @textfiles will let you add it to the datasets collection. archive.org/...
I keep thinking about this @BW piece. It's like DEATH WISH...
I keep thinking about this @BW piece. It's like DEATH WISH MEETS EQUIFAX. It's about seeking revenge against the way technology platforms commoditize people, and what happens when bad actors use data against us. I read it as a warning. bloomberg.com/...
It's rough how much is shutting down right now but it's...
It's rough how much is shutting down right now but it's worth noting @Outline and @topicstories as two really bright spots in online media and storytelling. twitter.com/...
I really liked reading this careful and thoughtful...
I really liked reading this careful and thoughtful @katienotopoulos article about how white supremacist trolls got her Twitter account locked and how Twitter support doesn’t have any capacity for context or nuance. buzzfeed.com/...
In the early days of audio recording they would say a radio...
@tcarmody@jadedid In the early days of audio recording they would say a radio show was “transcribed” for playback and I like “transcription onto [medium name]” because it implies information loss. Wars can be transcribed onto pillars and speech can be transcribed into long-playing records, etc.
Probably because I was messing with LISP and ptpython is...
@vboykis Probably because I was messing with LISP and ptpython is like a simpler version of a LISP repl. It's very nice about popping recommendations up and providing docs inline, which lets me be dumber.
I've been messing with REPLs and just found this great,...
I've been messing with REPLs and just found this great, simple python terminal REPL. github.com/... — is there anything like it for JS? Doesn't have to be terminal-based. Mancy? What else?
I love seeing the @PostlightStudio used for good things by...
I love seeing the @PostlightStudio used for good things by orgs like @weareci on nights and weekends. And that only works because people like @christinee515 and Erica S. coordinate from our side and do the work to make it happen. twitter.com/...
Oh I mean, everything is so fun and free and consistent and...
@jfeckstein Oh I mean, everything is so fun and free and consistent and documented now. It sometimes seems obscene how things are improving in technology while the world loses its mind.
The LISP language was designed to process lists of data. It...
@wdesmet The LISP language was designed to process lists of data. It has two famously essential operations it performs on lists: car, which returns the first element, and cdr, which returns a list with everything but the first element.