MetaFilter posts tagged with code

SELECT specific_problem FROM problems WHERE specific_problem != 'A Bitch' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 99;

melorama — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:12:11 -0800

Songs in (computer) code (you can also see the Twheat seperated from the Tw-chaff over at Favrd)

Steamtwitter

ericbop — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:10:24 -0800

The wonderful Ben Schott (previously on Mefi) has posted an awesome excerpt from the 1891 Anglo-American Telegraphic Code, showing how folks got around (economically-induced) character and word limitations over a century before Twitter. Too wacky to be true? Gleam tus!

Apollo 11 Source Code

chunking express — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:48:15 -0800

The Apollo 11 Command Module code (Comanche054) and Lunar Module code (Luminary099) have been open sourced.

Thomas and the cipher

caddis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:43:18 -0800

Thomas Jefferson's cipher message from Robert Patterson For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.... To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering." "In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."

Base 26

hortense — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:17:06 -0800

Java Demo: "four-letter words have a special status in the english language and culture. counting in at over 1650 words,...this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words."

Bantoro = Henry Ford

Miko — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:25:07 -0800

Museum archivist, exploring Henry Ford's office records, stumbles into the interesting world of commercial telegraphic code.

Konami Code Sites

sciurus — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:18:28 -0800

Konami Code Sites

Yugos used Commodore Basic

mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:11:20 -0800

"The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter...about 5.7 million lines of code...Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner...about 6.5 million lines of software code. These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code."

Q. Would you like tea OR coffee? A: Yes.

grumblebee — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:47:24 -0800

What real-life bad habits has programming given you? "This has actually really happened to me. I was trying to hang a glass picture frame on the wall and accidentally dropped it. And in the shock of the moment, I loudly yelled 'Control Z!' Then the glass hit the floor and smashed."

Verlets fluttering in the wind

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:34:52 -0800

Cloth Physics Simulation

'An ode to developers everywhere...'

sunshinesky — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:58:49 -0800

[slyt] Hug a developer today.

"It was beautiful, kind of like abstract art"

subbes — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:08:38 -0800

In March 2007, the FermiLab Office of Public Affairs in Batavia, IL "received a curious message in code" via USPS. In May 2008, scientists posted a facsimile image of the letter to their blog in the hopes of soliciting cryptologists to decipher the letter. A partial solution began to appear by the very next day. Geoff Milburn (creator of the Homebrew Air Conditioner and employee of the Canadian Space Agency) noted that the first and last paragraphs appeared to be in base-3 and base-2, and got to work. By the 17th, he had experimented with possible mappings and reached a solution. Meanwhile, John Graham-Cumming whipped up a Perl program to experiment with the mappings and posted his Perl-decrypted version. The text? "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE," and "EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN." Two months later, the central paragraph remains unsolved, and a Chicago Tribune article has rekindled the web's interest, and spread work and comments on the mystery through blogs and forums. Too simple for you? Well, there's work still to be done on the Zodiac Killer's November 8 1969 cryptogram, the CIA's Kryptos sculpture (previously), the Voynich Manuscript (previously) and the Shugborough House Shepherd's monument inscription. And of course, there's always the Mayday Mystery (previously and previously).

"An experiment in organic software visualization."

signal — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:56:19 -0800

code_swarm, an animated visualization of open source software project commits. e.g.: Python.

The Androids are coming!

loquacious — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:37:00 -0800

Google's Android goes live for demo. Lots of video and stills. Cache.

Ham Radio and Antennas

fogster — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:23:31 -0800

It's no secret that amateur radio operators, or hams, often build their own equipment. Especially with the aid of antenna tuners, most anything can be used as an antenna. One group of hams took this to the extreme, using ladders and shopping carts as antennas as they started an annual competition that would eventually see trucks, train tracks, a tree, and even a pair of exercise machines and a football stadium used. I stumbled across the site last night, and it turns out that this year's competition is this weekend! Ham radio, by the way, no longer requires a Morse code exam, just a set of questions on electrical and operations theory. Those curious can take practice tests online, since the FCC releases the question pools.

Zip, Zip, Zip, Zip

Rafaelloello — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:25:15 -0800

Look up any Zip Code here, get lots of cool demographic data by entering it here (make sure you enter a zip code, not just a town and keep scrolling down, down, down). Look at great zip code maps here and get even more demographic info here.

512 bytes of text to create a movie

elgilito — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:29:27 -0800

POV-Ray Short Code Contest #5 - The animation round! This time the competitors were allowed 512 bytes of POV-Ray code to create a (short...) animation. The rules of rounds 2 and 3 (previously on Mefi) allowed 256 bytes but to create stills. And the winner is: #local C=clock*pi;#macro B(N,F)sphere{0F/7 1scale 1-pow(I.5)translate-I*F*x rotate y*N*90rotate-N*x*pow(5I)*10*sin(I*2-C*8+i)scale.2+x*.8translate-x}#end#local i=C;#while(i<2>translate*2rotate x*37pigment{slope y}}#local i=i+pi/8;#end light_source{<0>1spotlight}media{intervals 6scattering{2rgb<>/99}}

Getting to the Square Root of this Function

spiderskull — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:21:07 -0800

Getting to the source of 5 beautiful lines of Quake 3. Rys Sommefeldt traces the history of a very quick (and now infamous) inverse square-root function used in Quake 3. (via) The function uses a clever first approximation to the Newton-Raphson method, and although Rys doesn't find a definite source, the path he traces should be interesting to programming-inclined Mefites.

Wheel me out

klangklangston — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:47:51 -0800

MATSYS Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation.

B_Complex, N_Table, Endless Ocean, Endless Sky (more), P_Wall. more.

60 elements remain.

divabat — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:06:29 -0800

How many HTML elements can you name in five minutes?

A Good Story About Programming

grumblebee — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:00:35 -0800

"This is the story of when I re-wrote the Lotus Notes Formula Engine.... So here was I was, offered this position that I clearly wasn't qualified for. I had no experience with language runtimes or compilers, I knew very little about C and didn't know anything about C++, I had never dealt with platform byte ordering and packing and all the other issues associated with writing something for eight different operating systems, I had never even used proper version control. But none of that mattered to me. It seemed to me like an amazing opportunity and I would be doing exactly the kind of stuff I enjoy most..."

Not Your Ordinary Barcode

Lush — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 04:31:15 -0800

Bar Code Revolution! With more than just lines and rectangles, Japanese company Design Barcode works around the basic elements of a barcode and infuses real, functional barcodes with creative designs and silhouettes. See barcodes as tomatoes, stomachs, rain, pianos, guns, train tracks, waterfalls, cliffsides, and yes, even combovers.

I has 1337 code. lol!!1

jeffburdges — Tue, 29 May 2007 11:01:39 -0800

lolcats a r e great but now they can code!

A Secret Society Spills Its Secrets

huskerdont — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 20:51:42 -0800

Freemasonry has a long history of accusations of evil conspiratorial machinations, both in print and elsewhere. But it seems that, if you ask most Masons, they're just in it for the booze. Now, the newspaper of record is taking a look at the Masons' efforts to open up to the public in this post-Da Vinci code age.

Is Scientific American's Spell Checker Broken?

justkevin — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 08:41:44 -0800

Gbalf Xozmn Ram Rqzyk Wtacu Lkugc Aaxjx Owkyu Dkoxk Zamdg Bnuio Nmrxk Zmqyf Nqeog Ziqxf Gutxe Nkmxd Gzmqj Brqge Kxkfs Qqzui Nactg Djfnq Eenaa Xjnk