I've watched a couple of good films recently. First, a couple French films distributed in Australia by Madman Films.
The Dinner Game (or Le Diner De Cons) is a wonderful comedy about a yuppy and the man who was to be his guest to an "idiots dinner." This is a fabulous film and everyone, lover of farce or not, should see it.
Tais Toi (Official site). The description on the Madman site is better than anything I could come up with, though it does spoiler the entire plot. Starring Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno, this is one of the best films I've seen this year.
MirrorMask (IMDB) sees Helena transported from her own life (travelling and performing in her family's circus) into another world. Stephanie Leonidas makes a wonderful heroine and her engagement with the almost entirely artificial world around her is testament to her ability as a actor. While the prevalence of special effects was a little overwhelming and the characters did occasionally seem a little detached from the mostly animated world around them, the art and design was absolutely gorgeous. Graphic artists and anyone who like Neil Gaiman's work would do well to see this film.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Dead Witch Walking and Pure Dead Magic
Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison.
Dead Witch Walking is yet another paranormal romance. In a similar vein to the works of Laurell K. Hamilton, Tanya Huff, Charlaine Harris, Kelly Armstrong, Sherrilyn Kenyon and many others, this blends aspects of the thriller; the fantasy; the crime and the romance novel into one compelling whole.
Buy | Amazon
Pure Dead Magic by Debi Gliori.
The first in a trilogy of children's books with magic and the supernatural as a main theme, Pure Dead Magic is 220 pages long. Being a children's book, the writing, plot and characters are a little simple, but it was entertaining none the less. The Strega-Borgia family has about it an aura of the Addams Family, though Titus and Pandora (the 12 and 10 year old, respectively, hero and heroine) aren't as idiosyncratic as Pugsley and Wednesday Addams.
A good book, from a good author, it'll appeal to most kids of an age to find Emily Rodda's Deltora Quest and Rowan of Rin books interesting.
Buy | Amazon
Dead Witch Walking is yet another paranormal romance. In a similar vein to the works of Laurell K. Hamilton, Tanya Huff, Charlaine Harris, Kelly Armstrong, Sherrilyn Kenyon and many others, this blends aspects of the thriller; the fantasy; the crime and the romance novel into one compelling whole.
Buy | Amazon
Pure Dead Magic by Debi Gliori.
The first in a trilogy of children's books with magic and the supernatural as a main theme, Pure Dead Magic is 220 pages long. Being a children's book, the writing, plot and characters are a little simple, but it was entertaining none the less. The Strega-Borgia family has about it an aura of the Addams Family, though Titus and Pandora (the 12 and 10 year old, respectively, hero and heroine) aren't as idiosyncratic as Pugsley and Wednesday Addams.
A good book, from a good author, it'll appeal to most kids of an age to find Emily Rodda's Deltora Quest and Rowan of Rin books interesting.
Buy | Amazon
Friday, March 31, 2006
Gold Falcon
I saw a little display in Birchall's today advertising the imminent release of Katherine Kerr's latest book Gold Falcon (excerpt). This is very, very good news — if they're sending posters out to bookshops, then it's all but certain to actually ship!
Permission-based ownership: encapsulating state in higher-order typed languages
Permission-based ownership: encapsulating state in higher-order typed languages by Neel Krishnaswami and Jonathan Aldrich. In PLDI'05.
I'm still puzzling through the examples, but it looks pretty cool. The essential idea is to use the type system (an extension of System F with references and ownership called System Fown) to ensure that the internal details of modules cannot be messed with.
They give an illustrative example involving customers in one domain, banking machinery in a second and account details in a third. The customers are allowed to call the banking machinery, and the banking machinery can access the account details, and all other access is invalid. The goal of System Fown is to prove these sorts of properties.
ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike
I'm still puzzling through the examples, but it looks pretty cool. The essential idea is to use the type system (an extension of System F with references and ownership called System Fown) to ensure that the internal details of modules cannot be messed with.
They give an illustrative example involving customers in one domain, banking machinery in a second and account details in a third. The customers are allowed to call the banking machinery, and the banking machinery can access the account details, and all other access is invalid. The goal of System Fown is to prove these sorts of properties.
ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Google Page Creator
I just got an email telling me that I've got a Google Page Create account.
I've got a demonstration page up at http://thsutton.googlepages.com/home.
I've got a demonstration page up at http://thsutton.googlepages.com/home.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Essential Language Support for Generic Programming
Essential Language Support for Generic Programming by Jeremy Siek and Andrew Lumsdaine.
This paper presents an extension of System F called System FG. The motivation for the work is in the construction of generic algorithms and, more importantly, the verification of their use. It looks to me as though the authors have taken a little bit too much of C++ on board.
The concepts of the paper are very similar to Haskell's type classes (according to section two, the main difference is that type classes are designed to allow Hindley-Milner type inference) and the associated types seem to me to be filling a similar role as functional dependancies. I found it rather interesting and it's the first type system paper I've read since I achieved a vague understanding of type systems.
ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU
This paper presents an extension of System F called System FG. The motivation for the work is in the construction of generic algorithms and, more importantly, the verification of their use. It looks to me as though the authors have taken a little bit too much of C++ on board.
The concepts of the paper are very similar to Haskell's type classes (according to section two, the main difference is that type classes are designed to allow Hindley-Milner type inference) and the associated types seem to me to be filling a similar role as functional dependancies. I found it rather interesting and it's the first type system paper I've read since I achieved a vague understanding of type systems.
ACM | Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU
Sunday, March 19, 2006
An efficient implementation of SELF a dynamically-typed object-oriented language based on prototypes
An efficient implementation of SELF a dynamically-typed object-oriented language based on prototypes by Craig Chambers, David Ungar, and Elgin Lee. (PS)
I read this paper for a compulsory milestone papers course at the ANU Department of Computer Science. In it, the authors describe the techniques used to implement that the SELF efficiently. SELF was unusual (and still is, in some respects) in that it was a dynamic, prototype-based object-oriented language. The techniques pioneered by the SELF team formed the foundation upon which most modern virtual machines, including the various JIT technologies for Java, are built.
This paper and SELF have been discussed at Lambda the Ultimate on a number of occasions.
DOI | ACM | Google | CiteULike | Citeseer
I read this paper for a compulsory milestone papers course at the ANU Department of Computer Science. In it, the authors describe the techniques used to implement that the SELF efficiently. SELF was unusual (and still is, in some respects) in that it was a dynamic, prototype-based object-oriented language. The techniques pioneered by the SELF team formed the foundation upon which most modern virtual machines, including the various JIT technologies for Java, are built.
This paper and SELF have been discussed at Lambda the Ultimate on a number of occasions.
DOI | ACM | Google | CiteULike | Citeseer
Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C#
Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C# by Nick Benton.
This paper presents the solution to the Santa Claus problem in the Polyphonic C# language. Polyphonic C# is an extension of Microsoft's C# language with concurrency primitives based on those of the join calculus. It was intended for use in "orchestrating distributed applications built on asynchronous messaging," but is "equally applicable to programming with multiple threads in a shared-memory environment."
This is, the authors claim, another piece of evidence supporting the claim that the join calculus is an effective basis for concurrent, as well as distributed, programming.
Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU
This paper presents the solution to the Santa Claus problem in the Polyphonic C# language. Polyphonic C# is an extension of Microsoft's C# language with concurrency primitives based on those of the join calculus. It was intended for use in "orchestrating distributed applications built on asynchronous messaging," but is "equally applicable to programming with multiple threads in a shared-memory environment."
This is, the authors claim, another piece of evidence supporting the claim that the join calculus is an effective basis for concurrent, as well as distributed, programming.
Google | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | LtU
Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy
Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy by Benjamin H. Barton.
An interesting paper from the Michigan Law Review. The author interprets the Harry Potter books as presenting a particular view of government (libertarianism) based on J. K. Rowling's rendering of her fictional Ministry of Magic. The structure, corruption and abuses by the Ministry of the populace (and Harry and his friends in particular) are presented, if I recall correctly, as an allegoric parallel of the U.S. and U.K. governments. I'm not sure how much of this aspect of J.K.R.'s work is intentional but, Barton's analysis is certainly compelling (even if I don't agree with the politics of conclusions he reaches).
SSRN | CiteULike | Del.icio.us
An interesting paper from the Michigan Law Review. The author interprets the Harry Potter books as presenting a particular view of government (libertarianism) based on J. K. Rowling's rendering of her fictional Ministry of Magic. The structure, corruption and abuses by the Ministry of the populace (and Harry and his friends in particular) are presented, if I recall correctly, as an allegoric parallel of the U.S. and U.K. governments. I'm not sure how much of this aspect of J.K.R.'s work is intentional but, Barton's analysis is certainly compelling (even if I don't agree with the politics of conclusions he reaches).
SSRN | CiteULike | Del.icio.us
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I
Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I by John McCarthy.
A milestone paper in computer science, this is one of, if not the, first LISP paper. This contains one of the earliest descriptions of garbage collection, functional programming and several other topics. It doesn't contain anything particularly enthralling for modern readers, but that is due to the fact that everything thatis in it has been absorbed into every aspect of modern computer science.
One thing that I found interesting was the syntax given for conditional expressions:
pi is a propositional expression (one that is either true of false) and ei is an arbitrary expression. The value of a conditional expression is that of the first ei such that pi is true (or is undefined).
This is quite similar to the description of structures in the ρ-calculus given in Matching Power.
ACM | DOI | CiteULike
A milestone paper in computer science, this is one of, if not the, first LISP paper. This contains one of the earliest descriptions of garbage collection, functional programming and several other topics. It doesn't contain anything particularly enthralling for modern readers, but that is due to the fact that everything that
One thing that I found interesting was the syntax given for conditional expressions:
(p1 → e1, …, pn → en) where This is quite similar to the description of structures in the ρ-calculus given in Matching Power.
ACM | DOI | CiteULike
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