Imported From Tumblr

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a project at work that has involved, among other things, parsing XML and updating existing XML files. Just like every other time I have to deal with XML, I do two things: Throw up a little bit. gem install nokogiri I found lots of code samples, including in the Nokogiri tutorials, that discussed how to create a new node and then insert a string as the node contents. This would have been ok if my node contents didn’t contain more nodes. Nokogiri tried to be helpful and escaped the node contents. So, not very many < and >, but lots of &gt; and &lt;. ...

I just started playing around with Beats, a command-line drum machine installed as a Ruby gem. It accepts YAML and outputs .wav files like it’s 1998. As I started noodling around with the tutorial, I noticed that the feedback loop could be tighter. I’m used to working with tools like grunt watch at work, and wanted a smoother flow. Rather than getting grunt running, I searched for some command-line solutions. This is what I found. ...

From https://gist.github.com/chrisbodhi/15210705414f1b4afcf2 to file_info[:control_info].map {|arr| arr[1] } to file_info[:control_info].map(&:last)

https://gist.github.com/1395926

Rather than writing object.map{ |o| o.action }, I just found out that I could write object.map(&:action). I’m currently attempting to suppress a very strong urge to refactor everything in my current project. No curly braces, no pipes? Sign me up! src & in the Ruby docs

As the bot goes on, its algorithm degrades as elements of randomness are introduced.

“A Ruby library for generating plain text x,y cartesian plots and histograms that can be displayed in a terminal session.” on GitHub

XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it. Nokogiri project page Starting a new project today that will heavily involve, you guessed it, XML.

The key point is that there was no programming or learning involved to create the behaviors. The connectome of the worm was mapped and implemented as a software system and the behaviors emerge. “A Worm’s Mind In A Lego Body” http://i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7985-a-worms-mind-in-a-lego-body.html via http://interconnected.org/home/