Author Archives

First steps with Scala: XML pull parsing

I’m now going to share some of the results of my recent experiments with the Scala programming language. In May I wrote that I had started looking at it. I’ve been using it to make some support tools that I needed for research work since. First a disclaimer: It’s been 4+ years since I did serious […]

The future of the web browser

The web browser, it is safe to say, has gone from humble origins to being the single most widely used piece of desktop software (based on my own usage, but I don’t think I’m untypical). This development continues today. The battles being fought and the tactical decisions being made here reach a very large audience […]

An unusual Java construct

I now break the longstanding tradition of not posting code on this blog. I just wanted to share what I believe to be a somewhat unusual pattern in Java: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 public IMethod findMethod(String name, String[] types) […]

Quantity as a success metric

I have something of an engineering background, so I easily end up thinking of success in terms of quantity. Maximizing this variable or that. Ensuring the greatest possible reward, or the smallest possible cost. But sometimes this is fallacious thinking. As an academic, I would like to publish prestigious articles. It would be nice to […]

Best bibliography management systems?

A question for readers who happen to manage bibliographies: what, if any, bibliography management systems do you use? I started using Aigaion for mine. Then I found out that there’s an open system called bibsonomy, which is potentially much better since it lets you tag and share bibliographies socially, and it seems to already know […]