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anoved's comments

anoved | 12 years ago | on: SpaceX Falcon 9 – Possible Explosion

I'm in no position to dispute the author's technical competency, but on the basis of a series of haranguing messages I received from him after making a small space-related thingy (http://wheresthatsat.com), I believe he does regard US-based space activities (including everything from NASA to commercial enterprise to hobbyists like me) with blanket disdain. That's consistent, for better or worse, with the conspiratorial tone you note.

anoved | 13 years ago | on: Tcl/Tk 8.6 released (now stackless, w/coroutines, tailcalls, and more)

I don't know of a paper, but on the Tcl wiki there is some discussion of the "non-recursive evaluation" (NRE) engine that enables these features [1]. More formal descriptions of the new coroutine [2] and tailcall [3] commands are listed, among others, here [4].

1. http://wiki.tcl.tk/37253#pagetocbefb5a57

2. http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/328

3. http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/327

4. http://wiki.tcl.tk/21276

Update: more details on the NRE implementation are available here [5] at the contributing author's site; anonymous login required.

5. http://msofer.com:8080/wiki?name=NRE

anoved | 13 years ago | on: Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read?

Jonathan's Space Report (http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html) is an exhaustive accounting of human activity in space (manned or unmanned), with a focus on recent launches. Released every few weeks. Back issues run to 1989 and continue to the present day.

Emily Lakdawalla writes some very good explanations of space science for the Planetary Society - very accessible, but with more detail and intelligence (IMHO) than you get from other media outlets. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/

anoved | 14 years ago | on: The Cost of Cracking

I don't deny that cracked screens appear to a problem, but surely you agree that going through 15 iPhones makes your case a bit of an outlier?

anoved | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN - Ever feel useless? How to get over it?

Nobody's useless. It's easy to get wrapped up in the impression that we are defined by our jobs (especially around this site), but we aren't. I have had some unrewarding jobs myself, with little big-picture purpose and no easy way out, but the solution is to find (and make) value in other activities. Cultivate a hobby or an art or a programming side project that is important to you. Even the small "feel good" activities you mention are not insignificant if they impact someone else - and if you choose activities that are more interesting to you I suspect you will find them to be more satisfying.

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Trimensional: 3D Scanner for iPhone

If you're working with real-world objects, one approach is to place the object of interest on a turntable, allowing you to capture multiple perspectives with a single camera/sensor. Philo Hurbain has made some delightfully clever LEGO NXT 3D scanners this way (delightful especially because they're used, in turn, to digitize the shape of complex LEGO parts) - one using a needle probe, and another using a laser.

http://philohome.com/scan3d/scan3d.htm http://philohome.com/scan3dlaser/scan3dlaser.htm

You might also be interested in the Makerbot folks' structured light 3d scanner kit: http://blog.makerbot.com/2010/09/14/new-makerbot-3d-scanner-...

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Trimensional: 3D Scanner for iPhone

Or what about using built-in motion sensors to record the relative camera location and orientation of a series of frames captured with an e.g. iPhone camera? I don't know exactly how the accelerometers and gyros work, or what sort of data they provide (linear distance vs just orientation changes?), but imagine holding down a "scan" button as you simply swing the phone around a subject to capture a series of images. I would think it would be possible to reconstruct 3d surfaces (at least under suitable illumination conditions, I guess) given known camera location/orientation for each frame. Pushbroom stereo, in remote sensing parlance...

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Trimensional: 3D Scanner for iPhone

Actually, it briefly displays a sequence of four illumination conditions - a white semicircle at the top, right, bottom, and left edges of the screen.

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: If I gave you $20.00 US, What would you buy?

Well, in reality, I would use it to buy food. Money is tight.

If we're talking some sort of online-only credit, I'd actually like to donate more to a number of podcasts I enjoy (escapeartists.net, drabblecast.org, starshipsofa.com). They work on a lot of productions that enrich the life of my mind.

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Who's Afraid of Cameras in the Courtroom

Courtroom artists serve exactly that function - to sketch the scene in courtrooms where cameras are not allowed, for distribution through the news media. I'm not sure what the trend is but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a waning profession, given increasing number of courts that allow photography/video.

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN : How to teach children to write fast?

I'll let others address your actual question of increasing speed, but I'd just like to make the [perhaps obvious] point that speed isn't everything. I'd argue that comprehension and composition (diction, logical structure, etc.) are more important than unqualified speed.

anoved | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: How to sell eBooks etc without the hassle?

Shopify + Fetch (http://fetchapp.com/) seems like a decent combination for selling digital goods. Fetch provides file hosting and download services and integrates with Shopify as well as other services. I believe it helps manage updates to your files too, eg. with an option to send out re-download notices to existing customers when you update a file.
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