Josh Wieder

Stanford created a strange, claymation character named Binky to teach students about the concept of Pointers in programming. Watch the video and share in the severe WTF-ness that comes along with it.

Watch a pre-Presidency Obama chat with Eric Schmidt of Google about sorting algorithms. Oh, how you've changed, Barry.

The video below provides a graphical display of a number of different sorting algorithms at work. Whats unique about this video, is that in addition to the graphical display, each operation in the sorting algorithm has also been assigned a tone - in other words, this video lets you hear the algorithms as well as see them! While counter-intuitive, the "song" that the tones play can provide insight into how the algorithm is working; at least for me, it is easier to distinguish small differences using sound than it is to do so using the often frenetic, fast moving images in sorting visualizations.  Check it out for yourself!

What does it mean for an algorithm to be "fast" or "efficient"? When we say an algorithm is fast, we are not referring to an explicitly notation in time, like seconds or minutes. There is a distinction here because of the distinction between hardware and software - performance of a program in real time can be drastically impacted by the hardware it is running on. In order to account for this distinction, while still providing an objective measurement for the efficiency of a program, computer scientists rely on Asymptotic Measurement and a notation format called Big O Notation to describe such measurements. The formal description as a formula is as follows: f(x) ∈ g(x) x o C f(x) ≤ C • g(x) x > x o In less theoretical terms; as the size of your input increases toward infinity, how does the runtime of your program grow? For example, imagine counting the number of characters in a string in the most simple way, by reading each character and summi

Looking for an apache log visualization program recently, I came across logstalgia. It turns your log files into a game of Pong between your web server and the internet, with each new request being the ball going back and forth! So cool.

Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today. Why would you...? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn't do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because everytime you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me [ garbled ] Selling cigarettes. I'm minding my business, officer, I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don't touch me. Do not touch me. [ garbled ] I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

Paid FBI informant , accused sex criminal and convicted embezzler Sigurdur Thordarson , who was paid thousands of dollars by his DOJ handler for 8 hard drives filled with internal Wikileaks documents , bears an uncanny resemblance to Augustus Gloop from Willy Wonka. Coincidence, or something more sinister ? Augustus Gloop , formerly of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory Sigurdur Thordarson , formerly of Wikileaks