Of snakes and their charming machinations

20 Sep 2004 · #techtalk

This post comes to you more than 18 hours after it’s intended arrival. Chalk it up to the usual Sunday routine of leaving house for greasy, expensive food at one of the zillion eating establishments that this island has to offer.

While the chief purpose of this post is to inform you, and - if I may add without offending you - inform the world at large, of the publication of the Audio CD ripping - the kickass way guide, I shall ramble along to other unrelated things.

Things like this ironic bit of news that the next GNOME summit will be held at the Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT. For those who aren’t in the loop, The Stata Center was made possible (in part) by a substantial grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Things like the totally geeky jokes Bala wrote some time ago. A (paraphrased) sample:

Quantum Constructions We build the best tunnels!

Things like this totally great but totally disappointing piece of news. $150, really?!

Things like my new found love for Python. When I initially started coding in Python, I was really coding in C using Python’s syntax and data structures. But slowly, I am getting into the Python way of doing things. Sample this string shuffler I wrote:

import random #duh!
def shuffleString(word):
    random.seed()
    a = list(word)
    random.shuffle(a)
    return reduce((lambda x,y:x+y),a)

Any thoughts on that?