Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Magenta DOES exist

It seems that it is necessary to help with the damage control.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Beginner instructions for OpenNLP

  • Build the tools, as per the readme.
  • Download the models and save them to
    [opennlpdir]/opennlp.models/[language]/[modeldir]/[model]
  • Make sure your classpath is set, e.g. before your run the tools, go to your opennlp dir and type
    CLASSPATH=`pwd`/output/opennlp-tools-1.4.3.jar:`pwd`/lib/maxent-2.5.2.jar:`pwd`/opennlp/lib/trove.jar:`pwd`opennlp/lib/jwnl-1.3.3.jar/
  • Now you can continue with the examples in the readme.

Script debugging

fork: Resource temporarily unavailable

Forget the top Google answers. Instead, check that your script doesn't go into an infinite recursion.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

ARGH!

Supervisor: I need you to take over development of X.
Me: Sure. What do you want me to do?
S: Oh, nothing for now. Focus on Y and Z (both long term goals) first.

(a month later)

Me: Ok, whoever wrote this in the first place didn't plan for any changes - in fact, most of the code is either broken or held together with spit and string. Here is a list of things that don't work.
S: Ok, but keep forcusing on Y and Z. Also, we don't have funding for X any more, so we're putting it on hold.

(2 months later)

S: WHERE ARE THE FIXES FOR THE BUGS YOU FOUND? THIS IS DUE IN 2 WEEKS!
Me: ... Ok, I'll get on it.

(next day)

Me: Ok, here is a demo of the things I changed to fix (half the bugs on the list + others that I found while coding)
S: OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU SHOULD ONLY FIX THE PROBLEMS, NOT ADD ANY FEATURES.
Me: ... These ARE the bug fixes.
S: NO NO DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING UNTIL I APPROVE IT, WE DON'T HAVE FUNDING FOR IT! JUST FIX THE BUGS.
Me: (just shoot me now)

Monday, November 17, 2008

Repeat after me:

A master document is not a tree. It can be viewed as a tree, but when an element has more than one parent, it is not a tree, no matter how badly you wan to call it one. NOT. A. TREE.

Also, displaying the content of a set of elements is not coupled to how said elements are stored. That's called designing before implementing, and using wrappers for displaying.

Friday, October 17, 2008

STOP!

One of these days I'm going to flip out. I'm sick and tired of almost getting run over by drivers that think that a red light or stop sign mean "slow down in case there's a cop around watching". AND THE BIKE LANE IS NOT A DAMN TURNING LANE!

Robot drivers. I can't wait for them.

F you, GE and Sylvania

I really loathe GE and Sylvania for advertising their extra-bright headlight bulbs. No, people don't need to see further so that they can drive faster. People need to get a bloody clue and not drive at breakneck speeds at night, and they need to learn to use the damn high beams. There is NO reason for having excessively bright headlights on at all times.