Saturday, May 16, 2015

Mathematical Theory of Claude Shannon

Claude Shannon is well-known for having pioneered information theory and switching theory.  Here's a great overview of his approach to these and other areas he studied.

http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2001/Shannon1.pdf

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Software: Pagegen Static Site Generator

Pagegen converts a directory tree of RST docs into a static site.  "Aims to generate a fully featured site ready for CSS styling," according to the docs.

blogodex = {"toc" : "PageGen", "idx" = ["Software"]};

Book: The Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin

When I was in China, I met some Sci Fi enthusiasts and asked who their favorite authors were.  I wasn't sure who might have been translate, and how the various political points of view might have affected what was brought in to the country.

To my surprise, they had a lot of authors, all of them Chinese.  It turns out that the country's enthusiasm for science led to Science Fiction being very popular in the country.

I hadn't heard of any of them, and none of the works seem to have been translated into English. Perhaps this is going to change, starting with this book?

Amazon link and their blurb:
The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience this multiple award winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin. 
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
blogodex = {"idx" : ["Books", "Science Fiction", "Three Body Problem", "Liu Cixin"]};

Requests Notes: Python HTTP API

A very pleasant HTTP library for Python.
"Requests takes all of the work out of Python HTTP/1.1 — making your integration with web services seamless. There’s no need to manually add query strings to your URLs, or to form-encode your POST data. Keep-alive and HTTP connection pooling are 100% automatic, powered by urllib3, which is embedded within Requests."
References

Incantations


blogodex = {"toc" : "requests", "idx" = ["python", "http"]};