Disqus - Latest Comments for moonmaster9000

Re: Do we need constants?

Matt Parker — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:36:46 -0000

I basically never create constants; in most systems, constants end up needing to be configurable at some point anyways, so I end up using methods.

Re: http://moonmaster9000.tumblr.com/post/511544143

Matt Parker — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:23:04 -0000

thanks for the code review! didn't know about that array trick, though what i really want is for "pad" to return a copy of self, and not modify self, so it might need to look something like self.dup.tap {|a| a[new_length - 1] ||= nil}

as for inject, i would normally use inject in a situation like that, except that i wanted to operate on the slices of the array, not the array itself, so i couldn't exactly figure out how to make that work with inject.

hey, i don't know what happened on disqus, but your comment and another guy's comment suddenly disappeared. i'm replying through the actual disqus site. it says that the url you commented on is "http://moonmaster9000.tumbl...", while the url of the blog post is "http://moonmaster9000.tumbl..." ... i'll try and figure out what went wrong and hopefully make your comment reappear on the blog post.

Re: http://moonmaster9000.tumblr.com/post/511544143

Matt Parker — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:19:19 -0000

yeah, the io monad in haskell is simultaneously brilliant and inadequate... what i really wish for is a haskell with ruby's dynamic typing and erlang's io.

Re: ruby v. haskell: a love tap

Matt Parker — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:07:13 -0000

if you commented on this post, and now your comments aren't showing up - i didn't delete them or anything... it seems something weird is going on with disqus...

Re: Check out the wonderful essays, interviews and podcasts at dGenerate Films

Matt Parker — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:23:13 -0000

last time i looked the comparative data was embedded in each yearly release.

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Encounters at the End of the World roundtable podcast with “Werner Herzog”

Matt Parker — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:12:57 -0000

wow thanks for sharing, great insights. i haven't seen it since it came out, but i do remember feeling like he was implicitly linking some of the characters he was interviewing to his discussion on world-record madness, of doing something for the sake of bragging rights. but gt's point is well taken; our interpretations in a lot of his films can change depending on our own mood (though i think there's very little wiggle room in grizzly man; treadwell was an egomaniacal child, and his friends were at best enablers).

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Lost in Translation video essay with Stephanie Zacharek

Matt Parker — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:17:55 -0000

brilliant essay. reminded me of why i love this movie so much. the sequence Steph describes creates a certain sincerity sooo lacking in so much film these days.

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Encounters at the End of the World roundtable podcast with “Werner Herzog”

Matt Parker — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:37:12 -0000

listening to it right now... have to disagree with KL on herzog being more reasonable with his characters in 'encounters'... i remember him respecting some, and having obvious disdain for others. i'm reminded of his interview with the self-styled "traveler" woman who he impatiently cuts off with his voiceover stating something to the effect of "her story goes on and on"

Re: Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson)

Matt Parker — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:46:21 -0000

ya, it has some great moments, like that opening hunting scene. but i'm most partial to "joan" and "escaped". their clarity and inevitability are infectious.

Re: 10 Films in 5 Hours: Notes from BamCinematek All Night

Matt Parker — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:56:47 -0000

i thought the hou film was a joke by the programmers. who could stay awake through one of his films in the middle of the night???

Re: Ruby and Functional Programming

Matt Parker — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:17:37 -0000

"However following recursion style has it’s own tax: Performance"

that's a common misconception, and often indicates an ignorance of asymptotic notation / algorithm analysis. recursive solutions, just like iterative solutions, are neither inherently efficient nor inherently inefficient. The real danger with recursion is duplication of work.

Consider this naive implementation of generating an array of the first n fibonacci numbers:

def nfib(n) seq = [] (1..n).each do |nth| seq << nfibr(nth) end seq end def nfibr(nth) if nth <= 2 1 else nfibr(nth-1) + nfibr(nth-2) end end

notice that nfibr(4) would first call nfibr(3) + nfibr(2), and nfibr(3) would call nfibr(2) + nfibr(1) - the problem being that nfibr(2) was already calculated from the nfibr(3) call. it's not hard to see that this method runs on the order of O(n^n).

however, a linear recursive solution (that builds fibonacci numbers from the bottom up) is trivial to conceive:

def fib(times) fibr([1,1], 1, 1, times-2) end def fibr(seq, n_min_2, n_min_1, times) if times > 0 n = n_min_2 + n_min_1 seq << n fibr(seq, n_min_1, n, times-1) else seq end end

Whereas nfib(40) will take something on the order of several millennium to compute, fib(40) returns instantly, since it's running in O(n) time.

Re: People on Sunday

Matt Parker — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:08:21 -0000

hmmm yeah I didn't really dig the apartment. jack lemmon was great... but the whole thing just fell kinda flat for me. i'll check out butterfield 8. peace!

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Live-blogging Platform (2000, Jia Zhang-ke)

Matt Parker — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:56:37 -0000

that was awesome bro. and holy christ man... i have to see that original cut... that final shot you're describing... why would they f'ing cut that?????!!@!@!

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)

Matt Parker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:05:44 -0000

you hated sparkle motion??? inconceivable!

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)

Matt Parker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:04:57 -0000

it's just the opposite! the first 2 hours have a linearity, or at least a direction we can follow; the last 30 minutes are buck shot! the irony is that the first 2 hours are the dream, while the last 30 minutes are the characters' real lives.

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: The Madness of revisiting a personal movie landmark

Matt Parker — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:09:06 -0000

even if it did shatter your image of the objectivity of a film's value, I still hope you'll complete your best of the decade derby. every list is subjective and has to be taken with more than a modicum of skepticism; on the other hand, they're one of the best ways to open people up to new film, new ideas.

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)

Matt Parker — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:54:54 -0000

i had an opposite reaction... i loved it when i first saw it 7 years ago (and still loved it upon immediately rewatching it). then i watched it again after about 4 years (having been exposed to a lot more film in the meantime) and found that it didn't live up that initial thrill. like a freshman in college, i was viewing it with a new-found arrogance. then i saw it about a year ago with my wife (after having seen still more great film in the meantime) and we loved every minute of it.

though what i enjoyed most (or at least remember most) about the film was the "gleeful baiting of conservatives" - especially the deranged fanatical mother. but yeah, better than all of that: sparkle motion!

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)

Matt Parker — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:44:26 -0000

inland empire is a film inside the same film viewed from that film's perspective while watching the film on a big screen.

Re: Best of the Decade Derby: In the Mood (or not) and 13 ways of looking at Maggie Cheung

Matt Parker — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:43:05 -0000

Though I've done it several times, I do believe that films aren't like books - we're not meant to start and stop. Films (or at least good ones) cast a spell over us, and with several films, it's easily broken by this process. that doesn't mean their bad films, it just means we've broken the rules.

For me, it's interesting for me to compare and contrast this film with another film I saw recently about an affair: Silent Light. Both films are really about nothing else (In the Mood intentionally so, while Silent Light being more of a missed opportunity to dive into some of the potential subtexts related to the film's setting). While I was watching Silent Light, I resented it for really being about little else than an extramarital affair and its effects on the main character's relationship with his wife. I felt like I needed more from a film. But looking back, I loved In the Mood despite that it was about nothing more than the faux affair between the two neighbors. I guess a great artist can turn even the most common and prosaic into art.

Re: Silent Light (dir. Carlos Reygadas, 2007)

Matt Parker — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:15:18 -0000

as they say, there's no accounting for taste :-) and that's what makes this world beautiful.

Re: Video Essays as a teaching tool: a testimonial

Matt Parker — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:54:44 -0000

Admittedly, I've seen neither film, but from what I can tell from your video essay, the criminal in the Vanishing proceeds not unlike a detached surgeon, steadily refining his craft, while the investigator in Zodiac is obsessed and very personally and emotionally invested in his task, not unlike Jack Nicholson's character in "The Pledge." Although on the surface both seem obsessed with their work, the actions of the criminal in the Vanishing seems truly indicative of mental insanity, while the obsession of the investigator in the Zodiac seems closer akin to the personality disorder of a work-a-holic, retreating into a self-obsessed world of work because he can't deal with real life.

Re: 953 (95). Heimat (1984, Edgar Reitz)

Matt Parker — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:08:05 -0000

kudos for commitment. 15 hours of German television is no light undertaking.

Re: 954 (96). Starship Troopers (1997, Paul Verhoeven)

Matt Parker — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:55:25 -0000

One thing I love about this site.... it encourages me to revisit films. I was 15 when Starship came out, and I can barely remember anything about, other than thinking it was absurd and pop-culture nonsense. I'm pretty sure that part of my distaste for the film grew in direct proportion to how popular the film was among the jocks in our little hick-town. And since I was a product of that town - a Texas hell-hole that prided itself on racism, religious fundamentalism, and ignorance - I had no idea what fascism or communism even were, so the feminist and political subtexts were completely lost on me...

Re: Best of the Decade Derby POLL: Best English language film from 2000

Matt Parker — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:27:36 -0000

Traffic - although truthfully I like both of them in spite of their didacticism. Why do you like Requiem more than Traffic?

Re: Milk (Gus Van Sant)

Matt Parker — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:53:01 -0000

There were plenty of better films... they just weren't American.